KWin On Wayland Without X11 Support Can Startup So Fast It Causes Problems

[polarathene]

Use Xfce, it works fine with the Pentium III&512MB Ram and up. With Xfce you can freely configure panels,the desktop and the Whisker menu that does not exist in KDE. My Debian testing Xfce installation uses 240MB ram after booting to the desktop. With Xfce you make your desktop to look the way you want.

This whisker menu? https://gottcode.org/xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin/

What about that doesn't exist in KDE feature wise? My default menu on Manjaro KDE has the same features afaik. Uses 400-500mb RAM on a fresh install last I checked. You also make the desktop look the way you want on KDE, as well as function the way you want :P That's kind of the main selling point(and/or deterrent) of KDE that it's known for, configurability everywhere. Ran it on an old dual core Intel core 2 duo laptop with ATI graphics and 2GB RAM, performed great.

[vw_fan17]

There is reason not to go full Qt on this suite? I imagine that you guys started in Tcl and rewrite everything in Qt is not worth it?

My guess is OP and I work at the same company :-). If that is true, not only is Tcl used as the scripting language for the application (so EVERYTHING needs Tcl), Tk has long been supported as a scriptable-GUI extension for customers to use if they want to make their own GUI-based scripts, and is often used by prototype enhancements (i.e. new features) as a way to figure out what is needed so internal people can play with it, before there's time to make a full-blown Qt version. I use Tk almost daily as part of my job. So until that's 100% compatible, no way we can even think about switching.

Also, isn't one of the "big" things with Wayland that it no longer supports remote desktops/screens? We're all about VNC and running on server A and displaying on server B, etc. If that isn't 100% bulletproof as well, then, same answer - no way, no how..

Mind you, I REALLY haven't kept up on Wayland, other than to hear that it wouldn't support remote desktops and since I 100% need that, I didn't feel it was worth following, so maybe it's been fixed by now? I'm still pretty happy with Xorg + KDE as my desktop (at home via Slackware and at work via Red Hat/CentOS), and I just don't have time to follow it as closely as I did 20 years ago..

[Luke_Wolf]

Also, isn't one of the "big" things with Wayland that it no longer supports remote desktops/screens? We're all about VNC and running on server A and displaying on server B, etc. If that isn't 100% bulletproof as well, then, same answer - no way, no how..

No. You're a victim of the telephone game. Wayland does away with the drawing command interface for X11 that toolkits didn't actually use and instead just passes buffers around and so it's no longer "network transparent" though "network transparency" in X11 was long dead anyway. Wayland is perfectly capable of VNC/RDP however it is left up to the compositor to implement such things, just like it's left up to the compositor to do screen recording and the like. Because the security model says that only the compositor can scrape the screen or globally receive input.

Mind you, I REALLY haven't kept up on Wayland, other than to hear that it wouldn't support remote desktops and since I 100% need that, I didn't feel it was worth following, so maybe it's been fixed by now? I'm still pretty happy with Xorg + KDE as my desktop (at home via Slackware and at work via Red Hat/CentOS), and I just don't have time to follow it as closely as I did 20 years ago..

You really need to get better sources, I'm not familiar with the current state of VNC on Kwin on Wayland but I know GNOME just implemented it in August, if Kwin doesn't have it now, I fully expect it'll show up in 2018

[oiaohm]

Also, isn't one of the "big" things with Wayland that it no longer supports remote desktops/screens? We're all about VNC and running on server A and displaying on server B, etc. If that isn't 100% bulletproof as well, then, same answer - no way, no how.

Really this is the stuff is not following what wayland development is up-to.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Weston-RDP-GL-Accel

https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/wayland-gnome-remote-desktop

https://github.com/udevbe/greenfield

Wayland protocol itself does not include remote. There is a important question to ask does Wayland protocol need to support remote at all? Links above serous-ally suggest does not need to as this is 3 different Wayland compositors implementing remote support in different ways.

Also the existence of virtio-gpu pass between guest vm and host by wayland combined the Wayland over wire experiments says that wayland could be extended to include a network add on proxy that does not have to be part of the core protocol. Even things that people raise about accelerated video play back on clients that is not cleanly supported by X11 now and would require hooking the acceleration interfaces.

Wayland is not the end of the world but it different. Wayland is designed to avoid a huge number design issues with X11 but that does not mean all design questions have been answered. In one way a VNC/RDP remote access should turn up as a normal kernel listed screen its the kernel where acceleration features have to pass though.

[vw_fan17]

You really need to get better sources, I'm not familiar with the current state of VNC on Kwin on Wayland but I know GNOME just implemented it in August, if Kwin doesn't have it now, I fully expect it'll show up in 2018

Yeah, but.. Saying that it's supported for SOME specific window manager/desktop configuration (I guess a window manager is now called a compositor?) is ridiculous - remote desktop/VNC is supported in X11 in pretty much every case, regardless of window manager.

We already have to support 6 or 8 different window managers - no way we can tell our customers it's only supported under gnome. We use 5 or 6 internally already. We still have customers using cde and twm..

I guess maybe if QT supports it transparently (i.e. works both under X or Wayland for the same binary) that would solve most of our problems - we're using QT for all the "native" stuff. But Tk would definitely also have to support it..

[Luke_Wolf]

Yeah, but.. Saying that it's supported for SOME specific window manager/desktop configuration (I guess a window manager is now called a compositor?) is ridiculous - remote desktop/VNC is supported in X11 in pretty much every case, regardless of window manager.

We already have to support 6 or 8 different window managers - no way we can tell our customers it's only supported under gnome. We use 5 or 6 internally already. We still have customers using cde and twm..

I guess maybe if QT supports it transparently (i.e. works both under X or Wayland for the same binary) that would solve most of our problems - we're using QT for all the "native" stuff. But Tk would definitely also have to support it..

That's nice, but X is a display server, Wayland is a protocol. There is no Xorg that everyone is using under Wayland. Instead KDE, GNOME, etc must all implement wayland themselves. Which for the two desktops that matter is done or mostly done, and is supported in a mix of secondary environments such as Enlightenment and Sway (i3). Ergo anyone who wants to implement remote desktop features on top of Wayland, just as they had to do it on top of Xorg since Xorg is not natively capable of VNC, has to implement that in each of the compositors.

You may not like that but it's important for security. That said CDE is deader than a mouse in the center of a nuclear explosion, so those particular clients aren't going to be getting an update to wayland because nobody is working on it. twm someone may end up writing a replacement for in wayland though it's unlikely since all the "cool kids" that like that sort of thing are now using i3/sway.

[andre30correia]

A lot of apps depends of X, for exemple steam and their games. I don't see xwayland go way in one year, maybe in 3 or 4. Or steam have a way to run games without x by default. And probaly I will not change to KDE for ubuntu 18.04 since nvidia drivers won't support wayland yet

[oiaohm]

Yeah, but.. Saying that it's supported for SOME specific window manager/desktop configuration (I guess a window manager is now called a compositor?) is ridiculous - remote desktop/VNC is supported in X11 in pretty much every case, regardless of window manager.

Reality you need to take a serous look. More applications are using opengl. Result is more applications don't work with RDP and VNC under X11 simply any more.

That's nice, but X is a display server, Wayland is a protocol. There is no Xorg that everyone is using under Wayland. Instead KDE, GNOME, etc must all implement wayland themselves. Which for the two desktops that matter is done or mostly done, and is supported in a mix of secondary environments such as Enlightenment and Sway (i3). Ergo anyone who wants to implement remote desktop features on top of Wayland, just as they had to do it on top of Xorg since Xorg is not natively capable of VNC, has to implement that in each of the compositors.

Few things wrong KDE,Gnome ... are mostly not implementing wayland themselves instead using a common shared library. libwayland-server.

VNC under X11 was design when X11 graphical drivers were UMS(usermode setting). Meaning all the key stuff was in userspace. Today we are KMS(kernel mode setting). The reality this has to be updated.

So what would be the simplest way to get on top of X11 and Wayland with VNC and RDP that right implement them in the kernel DRM(Direct Rendering Manager. In the kernel you could use PRIME to allow opengl applications to be rendered on physical hardware and then sent out over the network. From kernel level would be able to provide accelerated video play back options the remote solution supports as well.

So the idea of implementing VNC/RDP.... in the compositors be it X11 or Wayland is really the wrong place. Early vnc was implemented where UMS X11 drivers were development. Today we use KMS drivers that are in kernel so that is where VNC/RDP interfaces should be today. About time people stop attempting to use UMS patterns for implementing graphical interfaces. You would say that the X11 vnc is the last of the UMS drivers still in use and it need to be replaced with a KMS equal.