Drafting Plans For X12, The X11 Successor

[dnebdal]

All the code that Wayland uses to talk to Xinput, for example, can easily be send over the network, just like all the Mesa talk, etc.

So that's just bullshit and you know it.

You know, it'd be so much easier to talk to you if you replaced every random insult with a bit of explanation. I truly have no idea what you're even trying to say, so no - I do not know it.

The most interesting part is and remains 2D graphics. At the moment there is a standardized stream format for those: I can start an X11 server almost anywhere, and it will be able to display near enough every X11 app. If we move to per-toolkit network transparency, it certainly sounds like this goes away, to be replaced by separate packages to install locally for every toolkit I want to forward. (Not to mention the niggly little things like if they'll be version sensitive, and how they'll want the network set up).

[V!NCENT]

All the code that Wayland uses to talk to Xinput, for example, can easily be send over the network, just like all the Mesa talk, etc.

So that's just bullshit and you know it.

[dnebdal]

A lot of people are saying that Wayland lacks certain features. But why can't things like network transparency be added later? Isn't Wayland still in development? You shouldn't expect everything to work immediately.

It's mostly because having it as a fundamental design feature instead of bolting it on later forces some differences in development style: If you want to make it work over a network in the first place, you have to create separated layers and a defined protocol between them. Creating a fast solution for local use might well require violating some of these layering separations, and that's fine - but having them in the first place at least makes it explicit what shortcuts you're taking. Trying to create network transparency later on requires either sneaking in above or below the entire stack, or rewriting (potentially large) parts of it. Running below basically means pretending to be a graphics driver, and running above gets you variants of screen-scraping. If you can get the network transparency done between those extremes, you get the different forms of protocol forwarding; things like NeWS and X11.

The alternative is to do it on the toolkit level, but then you suddenly don't have standardized display network transparency anymore; you have per-program network transparency for some of them; probably with varying success, quality, and remote-system support depending on the toolkit used by any given program.

[Ex-Cyber]

A lot of people are saying that Wayland lacks certain features. But why can't things like network transparency be added later? Isn't Wayland still in development? You shouldn't expect everything to work immediately.

Network transparency isn't a "feature" that can be "added"; it's a property of the API/ABI design. Things like VNC and RDP aren't network transparency, they're hacks to get around the lack of network transparency.

[AlbertP]

A lot of people are saying that Wayland lacks certain features. But why can't things like network transparency be added later? Isn't Wayland still in development? You shouldn't expect everything to work immediately.

[BlackStar]

Wayland is simply a WM state tracker (much like X.org will be, but then with a stable API).

Now there is no way why anyone, with at least half a brain, would want to replace Wayland. The point is that X12 should be on top, like Xlib is on top of X11, or (still on top) inside the widget toolkit.

Cutting the xlibish layer will improve speed, but not compatibility. X12 directly on top of Wayland will be slow and laggy.

I'd say the best option for this soup is:
- Wayland on top of Gallium and other things;
- Widget toolkit on top of Wayland;
- X12 next to the widget toolkit (also directly on top of Wayland);
- Problems solved.

Of course, the real question is why you'd need X12 in this scenario? You can already layer X11 on top of Wayland with no performance impact, so backwards compatibility is a non-issue. Remote access to non-X11 applications can be solved through a forwarding server (these applications are not X network transparent anyway) . You already have all the functionality you need, so why add a hypothetical backwards-incompatible X12 server to the mix?

Personally, I don't believe X12 will ever materialize nor that X11 will ever go away. At some point we'll get a modern, fast stack and an X11 compatibility layer, exactly like Windows and Mac OS X (just a decade later).

If X12 will give the same improvements as Wayland then probably nobody will protest. However, Wayland is already in development.

Exactly. Wayland exists, X12 doesn't. It's that simple.

Or, seen in a different light, Wayland is X12.

[V!NCENT]

If X12 will give the same improvements as Wayland then probably nobody will protest. However, Wayland is already in development.

Wayland is simply a WM state tracker (much like X.org will be, but then with a stable API).

Now there is no way why anyone, with at least half a brain, would want to replace Wayland. The point is that X12 should be on top, like Xlib is on top of X11, or (still on top) inside the widget toolkit.

Cutting the xlibish layer will improve speed, but not compatibility. X12 directly on top of Wayland will be slow and laggy.

I'd say the best option for this soup is:
- Wayland on top of Gallium and other things;
- Widget toolkit on top of Wayland;
- X12 next to the widget toolkit (also directly on top of Wayland);
- Problems solved.

[kraftman]

Agreed, but when X on top of Wayland is still needed, why not take X12?

If X12 will give the same improvements as Wayland then probably nobody will protest. However, Wayland is already in development.

[barkas]

Wayland is a step _backwards_, because it removes the network transparency which makes X so great. And it does so in an era where people have never been more networked, when the evangelists tell us that we're all going to be running programs in The Cloud, while displaying the output on our phones.

I honestly don't understand why the whole IT industry seems to be in full metal retard mode right now; everyone is abandoning things that work in favor of the Glorious Utopian Future which will do less and do it less efficiently.

X11 over network is so slow as to be completely unusable for everything except where you have to use it - for example installing oracle on a networked server on some strange unix where no nx exists.
I'd gladly do away with that POS in favour of some sort of remote desktop that actually can be used even if your connection speed is slower that, say, fast ethernet.

[V!NCENT]

Why is there a problem with Qt C++ streaming, or GTK+ HTML streaming?

Look, I understand that 0.006 procent of all people would like to call home to play Doom3 at work. The problems is that it is:
A. Ugly and outdated;
B. Replacements exist (Windows remote desktop can get your work done without X11);
C. X.org can still work on top of Wayland.

X11 just stalls all kms+gallium work. It's not even a state tracker...

If X12 would be invented, nothing is problem. It's called X11 because it has already changed 10 times from version 1, and X wasn't the best graphics streaming client. It's a bit like the Gnome of the networked graphics; it's a faint smell of piss in a subway; it's everywhere and there's nothing you can do about it.