Drafting Plans For X12, The X11 Successor

[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.

[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.

[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]

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]

OK. Over time X.org developped a lot of stuff that completely bypasses X11. The next step in the X.org roadmap is bypass itself entirely (almost) and become a state tracker.

Because all this new functionality can function without X11 itself, but horribly because that's not how X.org was build from the ground up, Wayland axes all that cruft and replaces it with itself.

Now a lot of people don't even know what Wayland is. Wayland is what X.org will eventualy become: a state tracker with built in windows management.

Now because Wayland sits on top of the new X.org-ish tech, it's modular. That means that Wayland talks to, and relies on, other software that it needs to talk to. That talk can instead be routed over the network. Simple.

[V!NCENT]

And if you're thinking "What the hell is this for a solution?", then considder that Microsoft has been doing that for ages with everything, even the upper layers of the NT kernel.

[AlbertP]

We are in the Linux world right now. It's not allowed to say that Microsoft is doing something well .

[BlackStar]

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).

Nope. Modern applications already use those graphics toolkits rather than X drawing commands. Those nice subpixel anti-aliased fonts in your browser? They are not rendered through X, they are sent to it as little pre-rendered pixmaps. Those pretty anti-aliased 2d graphics? Same thing. 3d graphics? Again.

Modern applications have already relegated X network transparency to sending pre-rendered bitmaps over the wire. And guess what, VNC is more efficient sending bitmaps than X (and even more efficient protocols are already available).

Wayland doesn't really change anything. You can still run an X server or a VNC server on top of it - the only difference is that you'll get better performance and more robust applications.

Edit: btw, what was the last plain X app you used? For me, it was Xsane 3 years ago. I don't miss it.

[V!NCENT]

We are in the Linux world right now. It's not allowed to say that Microsoft is doing something well .

Ah yes... er-... We don't need this bandwith rape, because the commandline is ten trillion times more powerful and FUSE is already killing... er-... That Exchange shit!

[drag]

Hrm...

You guys do realize that X11 is just a network protocol?
It's like http or ftp.

Arguing over Xlib vs Wayland or whatever other insanity is entirely besides the point. It's like saying that the Firefox web browser is better then HTML because Internet Explorer sucks. It really doesn't make any sense.

Xlib is just old C bindings for X11. It's not X11.

You X server is just a 'browser' for X11 nework protocol. Ideally, Wayland can support X11 or X12 or whatever pretty much as well as your XServer can. (and it already supports X11)

What people really hate about Wayland is that you do NOT have to use X11 to program for it. You can use, theoretically, all sorts of APIs. X11 is just one of them you can use. They are, for whatever reason, are scared that their network transparency is disappearing or whatever unless all application developers are forced to use stuff they really do not want to use if given a chance.

It's really all quite silly.

If X12 is going to kick-ass, and network transparency is really valuable and is demanded by users then it's going to be used regardless if your using Wayland or not.