The X.Org Server Continues Cruising Along As We Approach 2019

[Britoid]

Like network transparency, the clean separation of window manager and server, which more follows the Unix philosophy compared to the monolithic nature of Wayland, and the fact X apps do not need to have video hardware access.

X, when properly implemented, fully supports app <-> server network transparency, using GLX protocol which puts OpenGL commands into a command stream to send to the X server. Many prefer this, some people prefer not to have video card drivers inside of applications. Render extension can then be utilized to composite screen buffers together on the server side,

Network transparency would make a lot of sense and work pretty well if an extension were added to the X server to support X server side decoding of AVC, VP9, JPGs, GIF, PNG and most other image and video formats allowing for an efficient stream based use, perhaps housing the codecs in a seperate sandboxed process.

Another thing that will help is the Glamour project which will allow the X server to use the same video drivers as Wayland does which will save resources and allow people to choose which environment to use.

I wouid like to see the X server run as a non-root user using kernel sandboxing and fine grain kernel access controls.

more extensions to fix something that was never designed to handle what it's currently being used for? There's a reason Android never used Xorg.

Some would argue network transparency is a security risk.
I would argue Wayland is less monolithic, since compositing and Window management is left to the DEs to implement.
For modern systems, there's no good reason to not have accelerated video hardware access. If you really need it, fine - stick with X11. That doesn't mean Wayland should be treated like the plague.

Isn't there a CPU-renderer in the works for Wayland?

[oiaohm]

I was kind of amazed how absolute coordinates is something that is not supported. It seems like such a no-brainer. (And it's also one of the reasons why Wine is not supported on Wayland.) If it's things like this that drove Canonical to create Mir, I wish they would have stuck with it.

Garbage about Mir. The Mir protocol is still online if you know where to look it also has no support for absolute coordinates. Mir features of different was shell independent to server and server side window decorations. Current wayland protocol support server side decorations and once it did Canonical gave up on Mir protocol.

Wine virtual desktop can be support under Wayland its just lack of resources to implement that. At the 2017 wine conference applications in wine running on wayland were demonstrated. Finer points of windows management need to be worked out and implemented. So its likely one day wine will be running on wayland just there is no rush.

[Weasel]

This is a common problem in the open source world. You have far too many people with childish personalities.

Yeah, like the retarded and stubborn Wayland devs. Which is kind of the problem with Wayland.

[TheOne]

Meanwhile the Arcan Display Server keeps improving and adding where wayland lacks: https://arcan-fe.com/2018/10/17/arca...eature-parity/

[Raka555]

Meanwhile the Arcan Display Server keeps improving and adding where wayland lacks: https://arcan-fe.com/2018/10/17/arca...eature-parity/

I am holding my breath for Arcan. It is very promising.

[lumks]

[...]
meanwhile I'm using wayland for 1 year nonstop at work and private.

[MrCooper]

[...] the fact X apps do not need to have video hardware access.

Neither do Wayland apps (nor compositors, for that matter).

Another thing that will help is the Glamour project which will allow the X server to use the same video drivers as Wayland does which will save resources and allow people to choose which environment to use.

Not sure why you're using the future tense, as this is already the case. Glamor has been part of xserver since 1.16 and is being used by the Xorg modesetting and amdgpu/radeon (with GPUs released within the last decade) drivers, as well as Xwayland and Xephyr nested X servers.

I wouid like to see the X server run as a non-root user using kernel sandboxing and fine grain kernel access controls.

This has been the case in most setups with KMS based drivers for a while.

Wayland has arrived, and it's here to stay. Distros shipping xserver 1.21 will mostly default to Wayland based desktops, so I (the third most "prolific" xserver developer in 2018 according to the article) think it's natural that the focus of xserver development should shift from Xorg to Xwayland, as is already the case.

[Vistaus]

So inevitably, DE devs were kinda forced to slowly and painfully convert their compositors. At least GNOME and KDE are in pretty good shape as of today.

Enlightenment is also in really good shape on Wayland.

[dungeon]

X evolved a lot since i started using openbox, 'bout 15 years ago

[johnc]

not too much upstream activity for this mature display stack

"Mature" is just a different way of saying "perfect".