Keith Packard Exploring "Semi-Automatic Compositing" For The X.Org Server

[pal666]

Shouldn't this have been written like... 20 years ago?

there were no compositors 20 years ago

[pal666]

There's some irony in VR driving the need for applications to be aware of exactly when pixmaps are presented on the screen, while the analogous Color Management requirements that applications be able to be aware of which display their pixels land on is disregarded as a "wrong approach" by the Wayland crowd

there is no analogy here and one pixmap can be presented at multiple screens at the same time. color management is compositor's job

[pal666]

In the mean time Keith is quietly fixing the problems in the X server, and making a pretty good job of it.

problems in the x server are "overengineered" and "insecure by design" and keith does no job at it. he merely makes x server more suitable for vr

[Vistaus]

there were no compositors 20 years ago

AmigaOS already had a compositor in 1985. Applications could first request a region of memory outside the current display region for use as bitmap. The Amiga windowing system would then use a series of bit blits using the system's hardware blitter to build a composite of these applications' bitmaps - along with buttons and sliders - in display memory, without requiring these applications to redraw any of their bitmaps.

So in general, there were compositors back then. But no, not on Linux or anything else using X.

[smitty3268]

AmigaOS already had a compositor in 1985. Applications could first request a region of memory outside the current display region for use as bitmap. The Amiga windowing system would then use a series of bit blits using the system's hardware blitter to build a composite of these applications' bitmaps - along with buttons and sliders - in display memory, without requiring these applications to redraw any of their bitmaps.

So in general, there were compositors back then. But no, not on Linux or anything else using X.

OS X gained a compositor in 2002. If linux wanted to compete with that, X developers probably should have started work towards a compositor by at least 2000, which is pretty darn close to that 20 years.

[dkasak]

OS X gained a compositor in 2002. If linux wanted to compete with that, X developers probably should have started work towards a compositor by at least 2000, which is pretty darn close to that 20 years.

Most of the devs around me choose to use Linux ... but when I ask those who choose OSX why they choose it over Linux ( and when the answer isn't "because of corporate IT policy" ) ... I guarantee you that the answer is not "because OSX had a ( software ) compositor first".

[Rallos Zek]

Sorry KeithP, but this is stupid. It will be 4 years before this can be finished, implemented, stabilized, and deployed to the masses. By then, X will be dead in terms of desktop users which is who's going to want to be using VR anyway.

X will outlive Wayland on the desktop, just like X outlived News, berlin, matchbox, y, directfb, ggi, and a host of other pretenders to the throne.

[Rallos Zek]

problems in wayland are it's "overengineered" and "defective by design" and no one wants to admit it .

FTFY o/

[cj.wijtmans]

X will outlive Wayland on the desktop, just like X outlived News, berlin, matchbox, y, directfb, ggi, and a host of other pretenders to the throne.

Va,ve will bring Xorg back. But i hope in the meantime they make steam damn 64 bit. Screw the small percentage still using 32bit OS that probably have 64bit CPUs.
Wayland has done a lot of damage to the linux desktop ecology. Its basically turning into a non-productive feature-defective xorg clone.
Want to record using OBS? Nope use the damn Gnome or KDE recording software. What?!