XWayland Sees Updated Protocol Support To Help WLROOTS & KDE

[treba]

Minimize for example, all minimize does is place the window behind the desktop, but Wayland has no method of handling it. Input latency for another example, Wayland handles input, but has no method for tracking latency of the input. Network transparency as another example. Screen capturing as another. Window querying is another. This is just off the top of my head, I'm certain there's much more. All of this has to have interfaces reinvented by every compositor and then every driver needs to implement the interfaces that were reinvented. And Weston is so horribly incomplete that there is no precedence at all. It's either insane or stupid.

Hm not sure here. Most things you mention are simply out of scope of the (core-) protocol. And what has the driver to do with minimizing? Or screen capturing? Or network transparency? I do agree that lot's of stuff needed to get reinvented, but that was pretty much intended. For example screen capturing: letting every app spy on every other one is IMO one of the worst problems of X11 (for end users, not devs), as it makes it pretty much impossible to properly sandbox apps. Not going the easy route certainly is painful, but we now benefit from it, as the base is not a bunch of hacks over hacks over hacks.

I personally would say that the route taken is rather smart: not repeating the mistakes of the past. Because creating a whole new protocol without tackling (most) of the problems - that would be insane (says Albert Einstein). The fact that takes so long -> missing manpower. Lots of people here should be able to help on that front.

[duby229]

The other solution is a native wayland linux OS. An Os without xorg. The mistake that the developers are doing is to adapt the Os to wayalnd protocol, instead of to adapt the Os to wayland. So they waste time to make the OS compliant with two different graphical protocols and compositors as well. It's more simple to use only wayland so to verify what is good and what is wrong.

That makes no sense at all. If your app is GTK3 or QT4 it will just simply work. Period. It's not apps that need to be written for wayland, it's compositor functionality that needs to be reinvented for wayland. Xwayland is for every app that isn't already GTK3 or QT4.

[Azrael5]

What other solution could there be? Not one, there is no other solution....

The other solution is a native wayland linux OS. An Os without xorg. The mistake that the developers are doing is to adapt wayland to an Xorg Os, instead of adapting the Os to wayland. So they waste time to make the OS compliant with two different graphical protocols and compositors as well. It's more simple to use only wayland so to verify what is good and what is wrong.

[Baguy]

Kde is a mess on the Wayland protocol integration above all as for Nvidia users.

Just because gnome's wayland is slightly more stable, doesn't make kde a mess. Wayland as a whole is pretty buggy and unstable right now. Plasma in X11 however can easily rival gnome in stability and performance, getting down as low as XFCE in resource usage too. Not only that, but you can actually customize plasma out of the box unlike gnome, and all of the customization options are built right in, which is why it's such a big project and was so buggy in the past (Even wayland in plasma has blur and wobbly window effects among other things).

[duby229]

Is it? I'm not aware of big implementation differences between GS and Weston, nor did I hear that KDE or WLROOTS went into total different directions. And the FOSS drivers...do they differ much? I had the impression they get ever more standardized, only needing a mesa driver which needs to implement some EGL stuff, but no individual X driver for example.

Do you have some examples? I'd be really curious.

Minimize for example, all minimize does is place the window behind the desktop, but Wayland has no method of handling it. Input latency for another example, Wayland handles input, but has no method for tracking latency of the input. Network transparency as another example. Screen capturing as another. Window querying is another. This is just off the top of my head, I'm certain there's much more. All of this has to have interfaces reinvented by every compositor and then every driver needs to implement the interfaces that were reinvented. And Weston is so horribly incomplete that there is no precedence at all. It's either insane or stupid.

[treba]

You are right about nVidia, but only concerning GBM and nothing else. There are -tons- of interfaces that either aren't implemented or are buggy as hell on the OSS drivers and it's because they -all- had to be reinvented. And not just once either.... -Every- compositor needs to reinvent their own interfaces individually and then -every- driver needs to implement them individually. It's either insane or stupid, everybody can make their own choice.... Nvidia made their choice and it too was either insane or stupid, just like how the OSS drivers and the compositors are making their choices.... And the whole entire reason why is because Wayland makes it so they don't have a choice, either they reinvent everything or no compositor...

It may be true that Gnome is further ahead in this progress of reinventing everything, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen. The truth is it took them a -decade- to get this far.

Is it? I'm not aware of big implementation differences between GS and Weston, nor did I hear that KDE or WLROOTS went into total different directions. And the FOSS drivers...do they differ much? I had the impression they get ever more standardized, only needing a mesa driver which needs to implement some EGL stuff, but no individual X driver for example.

Do you have some examples? I'd be really curious.

[duby229]

Well, that's mostly NVidias fault. Even in Gnome it's still too buggy to be the dafault option. If NVidia would just implement things as they are done from the OS drivers, things would be much easier.



Is that an informed opinion? Do you have experience in protocol design? If you can't say 'yes' to both, maybe you should be more careful with your words. Those people are really not the worst programmers and they work quite much to make the linux desktop better. So please lets try to keep the discussions here civil.

You are right about nVidia, but only concerning GBM and nothing else. There are -tons- of interfaces that either aren't implemented or are buggy as hell on the OSS drivers and it's because they -all- had to be reinvented. And not just once either.... -Every- compositor needs to reinvent their own interfaces individually and then -every- driver needs to implement them individually. It's either insane or stupid, everybody can make their own choice.... Nvidia made their choice and it too was either insane or stupid, just like how the OSS drivers and the compositors are making their choices.... And the whole entire reason why is because Wayland makes it so they don't have a choice, either they reinvent everything or no compositor...

It may be true that Gnome is further ahead in this progress of reinventing everything, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen. The truth is it took them a -decade- to get this far.

[duby229]

Indeed, Xwayland is X11, a solution that I consider a scam.

What other solution could there be? Not one, there is no other solution....

[treba]

Kde is a mess on the Wayland protocol integration above all as for Nvidia users.

Well, that's mostly NVidias fault. Even in Gnome it's still too buggy to be the dafault option. If NVidia would just implement things as they are done from the OS drivers, things would be much easier.

It's not KDE's fault. Wayland is far too incomplete a protocol. Remember it took Gnome a decade to get this far, and Mutter is far, far more than just a Wayland implementation, they had to reinvent so much stuff it is literally stupid.

Is that an informed opinion? Do you have experience in protocol design? If you can't say 'yes' to both, maybe you should be more careful with your words. Those people are really not the worst programmers and they work quite much to make the linux desktop better. So please lets try to keep the discussions here civil.

[Vistaus]

KDE doesn't run the greatest for AMDGPU users with Wayland either.

And Intel users (it's still crash-prone and buggy on my 2017/2018 Intel-only hardware).