Wayland's Weston Gets A FreeRDP-Based Compositor

[Rexilion]

Wayland =~= X11
Weston =~= X.org/X86free/Anything else implementing X11

Repeating what you said earlier won't make stuff more understandable. And besides, if Wayland is purely a protocol then explain me why I'm seeing c code and header files inside it's git repository? Why is there an executable called Wayland if it's only protocol?

Your statements make no sense to me.

[przemoli]

Wayland =~= X11
Weston =~= X.org/X86free/Anything else implementing X11

[Rexilion]

Ok, lemme get this right...

In other words, you could launch [RDP_Compositor] and have your desktop compositor run underneath it, and/or run your desktop compositor and have [RDP_Compositor] run under it. Or, your desktop compositor could be [RDP_Compositor].

So, comparing this to vnc. First variant would be starting Xvnc being rendered locally yet viewed over the RFB protocol (which is optionally locally possible). This is comparable to a server with thin clients (right?). And the second variant would be running X locally, and have x11vnc polling for changes and making those available as an RFB stream (like me assisting my parents).

But this time, it's integrated into the compositor in the new Wayland 'model'.

1) Yes until we get a library that can just supply all possible backends (probably a good idea for someone to write) to any wayland compositor that wants it... until then, every compositor has to implement this on their own.

So, something like: a compositor (e.g. Weston) depending on a library (e.g. librender). This librender depends on libfreerdp, libvnc, libnx or whatever. So whatever compositor links against librender get's the rest for free. Would be nice.

The answer to this is: it depends, if the other compositor is able to use Wayland as its back-end (Weston can do this) then you can nest/stack them..

So, instead of what renox said: You write a compositor purely for RDP and another compositor purely for VNC and stack that on a compositor currently rendering on a local backend (like DRM or FB).

Since you can nest Wayland compositors... anRDP "client" can be started and run I ER any other compositor. Similar-ish to how you can use any text shell, since sshd handles the networking, not the shell itself.

But for that to work, you need screen to manage this shell in order for this terminal to be available both locally and remotely. I guess Wayland is analogue to screen in this case?

Weston is able to run as x11 client with the x11_backend (like XNest or Xephyr) and it is also able to run on a tty with the drm or fbdev backend. The headless backend is just for testing and debugging the wayland code independent of the backend (the functions are just stubs). They wayland backend lets you run a wayland compositor as wayland client/window (also like XNest).

But you still need Wayland for every backend, right? E.g. gtk is ported to Wayland. So you should get GTK+ -> Wayland -> Weston -> FBDev. And not GTK+ -> Weston -> FBDev. And the final step depends on Weston supporting whatever back-end you want it to.



This is getting 'interesting'. X was split into Wayland and Weston. Okay, so one could say that Wayland is purely a middelman that connects toolkits to your screen. But to manage your screen you use a compositor that responds on user input. I follow on that. Now, this compositor get's all sorts of plugins. BUT, the functionality those plugins provide could also be used by (supposedly) other (stacked of course) compositors. So you have 2 ways of implementing the same functionality. Just one is compositor specific and the other one is not. However, the compositor specific method could be build into a library so that all the compositors that link to it recieve that same functionality.

Please understand that I don't quite follow the general idea anymore...

[Nobu]

The answer to this is: it depends, if the other compositor is able to use Wayland as its back-end (Weston can do this) then you can nest/stack them..

In other words, you could launch [RDP_Compositor] and have your desktop compositor run underneath it, and/or run your desktop compositor and have [RDP_Compositor] run under it. Or, your desktop compositor could be [RDP_Compositor].

(1) would be weird...not sure how it would work. Sort of like remoting multiple desktops, I guess. (2) would be like running a single app remotely, or running multiple apps in a virtual desktop remotely. (3) would, obviously, remote your whole desktop.

remote -- not just an adjective anymore, now it's verbing.

[Ericg]

Question(s)!

This is a Weston back-end. So this has to be implemented for every compositor over and over again?

Is this for Wayland itself??

1) Yes until we get a library that can just supply all possible backends (probably a good idea for someone to write) to any wayland compositor that wants it... until then, every compositor has to implement this on their own.

2) Its for Weston, which is the reference / example compositor that is in the Wayland repository that is actually fairly usable to show people how to write a wayland compositor and what you should do style / implementation wise.

[renox]

Question(s)!

This is a Weston back-end. So this has to be implemented for every compositor over and over again?

The answer to this is: it depends, if the other compositor is able to use Wayland as its back-end (Weston can do this) then you can nest/stack them..

[elanthis]

Since you can nest Wayland compositors... anRDP "client" can be started and run I ER any other compositor. Similar-ish to how you can use any text shell, since sshd handles the networking, not the shell itself.

[runeks]

If this leads to smooth remote GUIs then that is absolutely awesome.

I second Rexilion's question though, can it be used to connect to existing sessions, new ones / ones started specifically for RDP, or both?

I presume the module is loaded when you start weston, and then weston listens for incoming RDP connections and allows RDP clients to control the session over RDP.

[roland]

If this leads to smooth remote GUIs then that is absolutely awesome.

I second Rexilion's question though, can it be used to connect to existing sessions, new ones / ones started specifically for RDP, or both?

[przemoli]

Wayland - protocol
Weston - implementation of Wayland protocol

So Weston gained another back-end. Now it can work on fbdev or drm or on FreeRDP. Nice.

Still Wayland as protocol do not specify HOW things should be implemented but WHAT is required.

So any other Wayland server can do without any dependency on FreeRDP.