GTK+ Is Becoming Very Usable With Wayland

[F i L]

I have my doubts about that though. Based on what we have seen from the exchanges between Mir and Wayland developers, coupled with Michael's reports, seem to suggest that Mir and Wayland retain significant low-level differences even if they try to accomplish the same thing, and that will most likely translate to potential driver incompatibilities, especially binary driver incompatibilities down the road. Sure AMD and Nvidia will be able to create a standard driver 'base' thanks to both Mir and Wayland using EGL, but I's suspect that there there will be different 'special sauces' needed to actually get it to work on their respective display servers.

I am concerned as well, but I have high hopes the differences between Wayland & Mir wont be a problem. EGL is basically just a library which gives you commands to: create a GPU buffer & create a OpenGL/ES context (and a few other things). If that's all there is too it, then Wayland and Mir can request buffers and GL contexts all day, and they can do as they please with those things and it shouldn't matter at all to Nvidia or AMD's blobs. It looks like both Wayland & Mir are designed to simplify what the "display server" is responsible for in general, so we may never see a need for proprietary driver vendors to go outside the bounds of EGL as long as Wayland and Mir both strictly adhere to that standard. Even if there was differences, they would most likely be very minor.

Again though, I'm not sure about any of that. I write OpenGL code, but I don't fully know the capabilities of EGL or what is required by driver vendors to support it.

Then we will have to see how well Canonical can create mirway/waymir shim since the Wayland devs are surely not going to do that job and they cannot just repurpose code like what they did for Xmir.

My biggest concern here is Steam Box games and the growing number of Windows developers who are interested in Linux. To and entering developer, having two DS targets seems horribly fragmented, and they may end just choosing to support one (and Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distro) as not every Linux app uses GTK or Qt. If Valve eventually choose Mir instead of Wayland for Steam Box since Canonical seems to have their ear, then it looks like the community will need to right a mir-wayland backend, since it would be needed to play Steam games on Wayland systems and I doubt Canonical will have much interest in writing it.

I hope in a few years Canonical will come to their senses and switch to Wayland, but that's completely unlikely at this point. Here's to hoping Steam Box uses Wayland as well.

[Sonadow]

+1 This is pretty much my exact feelings on the issue as well. When Mir was first announced, I thought NVidia/AMD would have to choose sides. But after reading a G+ post by one of the developers stating that, since both target EGL as the only way to manage GPU buffers, it would be very likely that any proprietary driver made to support one would also support the other. I believe it may have been a conscious goal of Wayland (& Mir) in choosing a EGL centric design as it would mean much less efforts required by proprietary driver vendors. Since other OpenGL platforms (eg Mac) are moving towards EGL as the standard, it may even be possible for both Linux and Mac to share the same (or very similar) drivers at some point... though that's just a complete guess on my part. I don't fully understand the interworking requirements of software at that level yet.

I have my doubts about that though. Based on what we have seen from the exchanges between Mir and Wayland developers, coupled with Michael's reports, seem to suggest that Mir and Wayland retain significant low-level differences even if they try to accomplish the same thing, and that will most likely translate to potential driver incompatibilities, especially binary driver incompatibilities down the road. Sure AMD and Nvidia will be able to create a standard driver 'base' thanks to both Mir and Wayland using EGL, but I's suspect that there there will be different 'special sauces' needed to actually get it to work on their respective display servers.

Mir will still cause compatibility issues between Wayland software, and Ubuntu software. Though since Mir is Ubuntu specific, it seems very few software will target Mir exclusively. Eventually there might need to be a mirway/waymir shims (like xwayland) to run those few exceptions. So overall it's not that huge a thing. It did however, mostly kill my trust in Canonical as a open-source spear-head, and my enthusiasm for Ubuntu Phone. Where I was planning on getting an Ubuntu Phone on day 1, I think I may just wait for Tizen now.

Then we will have to see how well Canonical can create mirway/waymir shim since the Wayland devs are surely not going to do that job and they cannot just repurpose code like what they did for Xmir.

[Ericg]

Why not sailfish?

Why not Zoidberg?

(Sorry, couldnt resist >.>)

[chithanh]

No, "we do not" and "we will not" are not close.
And "will not ever" is right out.

Those phrases have precise meanings in corporate speak. NVidia said that they "have no plans" which is different from the neighboring "we will not". I'll quote myself from back when the article about NVidia and Wayland was published:

Well, this is marketspeak. "We have no plans" is worse than "We are looking into" but it is still better than "We won't"

[dee.]

Why not sailfish?

[F i L]

I had a conversation with one of the Mir developers recently, and he assured me that Mir and Wayland have approximately the same requirements, so if anything shocking does not come about, there will be support for Mir AND Wayland, at same time.

This is the only issue i have had with Mir, and being assured that it will be a non-issue, is enough for me. If this turns out to be bullshit, i will never again trust anything that comes from the Ubuntu camp, but currently i don't have bad feelings towards them, just think they took a bite too big to handle with Mir.

+1 This is pretty much my exact feelings on the issue as well. When Mir was first announced, I thought NVidia/AMD would have to choose sides. But after reading a G+ post by one of the developers stating that, since both target EGL as the only way to manage GPU buffers, it would be very likely that any proprietary driver made to support one would also support the other. I believe it may have been a conscious goal of Wayland (& Mir) in choosing a EGL centric design as it would mean much less efforts required by proprietary driver vendors. Since other OpenGL platforms (eg Mac) are moving towards EGL as the standard, it may even be possible for both Linux and Mac to share the same (or very similar) drivers at some point... though that's just a complete guess on my part. I don't fully understand the interworking requirements of software at that level yet.

Mir will still cause compatibility issues between Wayland software, and Ubuntu software. Though since Mir is Ubuntu specific, it seems very few software will target Mir exclusively. Eventually there might need to be a mirway/waymir shims (like xwayland) to run those few exceptions. So overall it's not that huge a thing. It did however, mostly kill my trust in Canonical as a open-source spear-head, and my enthusiasm for Ubuntu Phone. Where I was planning on getting an Ubuntu Phone on day 1, I think I may just wait for Tizen now.

[varikonniemi]

I had a conversation with one of the Mir developers recently, and he assured me that Mir and Wayland have approximately the same requirements, so if anything shocking does not come about, there will be support for Mir AND Wayland, at same time.

This is the only issue i have had with Mir, and being assured that it will be a non-issue, is enough for me. If this turns out to be bullshit, i will never again trust anything that comes from the Ubuntu camp, but currently i don't have bad feelings towards them, just think they took a bite too big to handle with Mir.

[tweak42]

Nonsense.



Clear as it gets. They have no plans to support Wayland. NOTHING about not supporting Wayland indefinitely.

I think at the time they said this Wayland was still in it's infancy (just announced) and I'm pretty sure they didn't want to commit any resources to a replacement for Xorg that may have not panned out. Ideally all the fire MIR started will kick them into gear and they will output some solid drivers. However I think Intel at this point will be the probably be first on the ground for early adopters.

Still it would be nice to have an official commitment from Nvidia so hardware buyers could commit to upgrades knowing there will be future support.

[Nobu]

More like English 98 (that class you have to take in college if you dropped out of high school), but for PR.

[AdamW]

Nonsense.



Clear as it gets. They have no plans to support Wayland. NOTHING about not supporting Wayland indefinitely.

Right. "We have no plans" is a classic piece of PR, it's pretty much PR 101: it's wonderfully non-committal. It commits you to nothing, but on the other hand, leaves entirely open the possibility of doing something; you can change your mind the next day and it's perfectly fine, because you still 'had no plans' _at the time you said you had no plans_. Hell, you can just flat out lie when you're saying it and still be fine, because it's just about impossible for anyone else to prove you _did_ have plans, and if they do, you can just say whoever made the statement wasn't aware of them. It's bulletproof, and virtually meaningless.