3D-Accelerated Remote Wayland Displays Are Being Discussed Again

[phoronix]

Phoronix: 3D-Accelerated Remote Wayland Displays Are Being Discussed Again

The subject of remote Wayland displays with hardware-acceleration is again back to being talked about, this time initiated by the developer of VirtualGL...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Remote-Wayland-3D-VirtualGL

[ElectricPrism]

Executed properly this feature could be big.

Real world scenarios where I would like a remote display:

1. Using a 10-18" Android Tablet or iPad as a Display via something like Miracast that way I can interact with clients at the office on a touch screen ipad for some portions of Design work.

2. I wouldn't mind consolidating the 5 current-gen PC's in my home into 1 server with 5 heads (I'm not sure what technology this would require, Intel NUC, MSI Cubi, etc..)

For me that's mainly it, I think it's important to keep real world benefits in mind when pursuing technical goals and keeping a focus on simplifying complex things.

[Jabberwocky]

Executed properly this feature could be big.

Remote gaming will be big in ~10 years for sure.

I've used "gaminganywhere" ~4 years ago. Major pain to set it up back then, but it worked. Now I just use Steam stream from Windows host.

[starshipeleven]

Remote gaming will be big in ~10 years for sure.*

*only in selected areas of the world.

And I'm including everyone, even First World countries have rather spotty high-speed internet.

[slacka]

There are 3 things I want them to "fix" in Wayland.

1) Proper input api/handling so all the old x tools can work again, even if they are required to use a new API.
2) Gamma support, so all my old games are visible again and tools like redshift can work
3) Remote access a first class citizen

I'm glad to they are addressing at least one of my concerns.

[Zan Lynx]

There are 3 things I want them to "fix" in Wayland.

1) Proper input api/handling so all the old x tools can work again, even if they are required to use a new API.
2) Gamma support, so all my old games are visible again and tools like redshift can work
3) Remote access a first class citizen

I'm glad to they are addressing at least one of my concerns.

None of that has any business being part of Wayland. Wayland should keep its nice tight focus. We should come up with a new name for the various things that a Wayland compositor can be expected to do, like gamma adjustments or remote display.

[ssokolow]

None of that has any business being part of Wayland. Wayland should keep its nice tight focus. We should come up with a new name for the various things that a Wayland compositor can be expected to do, like gamma adjustments or remote display.

Because of Wayland's "sandboxing first/untrusted unless proven safe" approach to APIs and the fact that there's no longer an X server sitting under all the compositors as a common component, all of them have to be specified in Wayland if you don't want ecosystem fragmentation as each compositor invents its own APIs.

[Zan Lynx]

Because of Wayland's "sandboxing first/untrusted unless proven safe" approach to APIs and the fact that there's no longer an X server sitting under all the compositors as a common component, all of them have to be specified in Wayland if you don't want ecosystem fragmentation as each compositor invents its own APIs.

Sure, standards are good but I don't think we have to call it all Wayland. Leave that for the local graphics protocol. Because I don't think we want a situation where there's a lot of partial Wayland implementations. If we keep adding stuff to Wayland then implementations that don't do remote display will be "Wayland, but without remote" or "Wayland, but without gamma adjustment", etc.

Instead do it like OpenGL where individual groups can create their own custom named extensions and every so often a standards group will find the best ones and group them into Compositor Extensions 1.3, or whatever.

[ssokolow]

Sure, standards are good but I don't think we have to call it all Wayland. Leave that for the local graphics protocol.

Wayland IS the local graphics protocol. The whole point of Wayland is to eliminate overhead between the compositor and hardware while ensuring that applications are sandboxed.

Anything other than letting Wayland sit as an intermediary to implement resource-sharing and enforce security policy would be equivalent to the "Don't clutter up the kernel. Let the application bit-bang directly." that made XFree86 into such a monstrosity and gaping security risk.

Instead do it like OpenGL where individual groups can create their own custom named extensions and every so often a standards group will find the best ones and group them into Compositor Extensions 1.3, or whatever.

Except that they call it "OpenGL 4.5", not "Rendering Extensions 4.5 for OpenGL 2". I don't see how we're disagreeing here.

[uid313]

VirtualGL?
What about VirtualVulkan?