Are You Sure You Want X.Org To Die?

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Are You Sure You Want X.Org To Die?

Whenever posting news items about the X.Org Foundation, it's common to routinely see a few comments about "let X.org die already!", "Wayland is the future!", and other similar remarks...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Xorg-Vs-Foundation

[danieru]

Is wayland more portable than x.org? I mean by dependencies.
x.org run on minix 3, BSD, and other open source OS. But wayland only on linux, that might be normal though, being experimental technology.

[zuxun]

I think in most of these comments the people are kidding about Xorg-the-server dying.

I was using KDE with vsync-full-screen-repaint turned on and everything run fine(!).


Edit: This setting is actually not worth doing. when running glxgears with this setting on it makes the whole desktop lag.

[chuckula]

I take umbrage at that logo!
The modern version of X11 is from 1987, not 1980!

More seriously, I don't really care if they lose their x.org website, but the project does need to live on for two reasons. First, they need to maintain the x.org software, which is going to hang around for a while. Second, they need to make sure that Wayland actually happens even though the going has been slower than most people would like.

[smitty3268]

Is wayland more portable than x.org? I mean by dependencies.
x.org run on minix 3, BSD, and other open source OS. But wayland only on linux, that might be normal though, being experimental technology.

Wayland requires kernel side APIs, so no - it's less portable. And writing that code to interface with GPU hardware isn't easy, either, even if you can copy a lot of it from the linux kernel.

However, the client side bits are far simpler and so you could certainly say that side of it is more portable than the big complicated project X is. X is just everywhere because it's the only thing available to those OS's besides writing something from scratch.

[GraysonPeddie]

What is the current state for Openbox when it comes to Wayland?

[Gusar]

What is the current state for Openbox when it comes to Wayland?

Openbox is a pure X application. Porting it to Wayland would basically amount to a total rewrite.

I would like that to happen though - for someone to create something that's compatible with openbox's configuration files and theme definitions and otherwise behaves just like openbox (pipe menus!! ), but is actually a Wayland compositor instead of an X application.

[SystemCrasher]

I think Xorg would not "die" in sense it not going to be "killed" in forcible manner. But it looks like it going to be eventually phased out. And looking on how it performs and especially into its code (warning, it can give you nightmares!) I think it going to be phased out. These days only few mortals dare to touch it, and even these seems to have distaste about it, Xorg is clearly getting least attention of all graphic stack things around.

[GraysonPeddie]

Openbox is a pure X application. Porting it to Wayland would basically amount to a total rewrite.

I would like that to happen though - for someone to create something that's compatible with openbox's configuration files and theme definitions and otherwise behaves just like openbox (pipe menus!! ), but is actually a Wayland compositor instead of an X application.

I don't know if there are any panels that are written to support Wayland, let alone docks, such as Plank (from elementary OS). Currently, I have a vala-panel along with a global menu applet that I got from an AUR. Together with openbox, xcompmgr, plank, nitrogen, and vala-panel, my setup barely used more than 1% of my CPU resources. When I run top in a terminal, all of my four cores show 0% and some of my cores hover between 0% to 1%. I wish GNOME Shell would have accomplished the same feat.

[theriddick]

Have never really used wayland, I'm just using Ubuntu MATE 15.10 atm which I believe uses X.Org still. I will wait until wayland is FULLY ready for my distro of choice, not really interested in prototype testing nightly builds of it.