Are You Sure You Want X.Org To Die?

[Luke]

I do not want the X.org Foundation to die, I want X.org server to die. I really do. It's fine that the X.org server is maintained for now until a different display server like Wayland or MIR takes over, but it should be maintained knowing that it is on it's deathbed, and the X.org Foundation, realizing this should look to the future. After they finally let X.org die, when all major desktop environments that are still being actively maintained (KDE, GNOME, Unity) have been ported away from the X.org server, which will be within the next 3 years, definitely prior to 2020, probably within 2016..

MATE is a major desktop environment and I don't see any way it will be ready to run natively on Wayland this year. Components like mate-panel still have direct calls to X that segfault when run in Xwayland, and nobody has icons on the desktop in Wayland yet. No icons on the desktop would be a dealbreaker for me and probably a hell of a lot of MATE users. As I've said before this could be done by setting a background for one folder (the desktop) and having the filebrowser simply open to that window and fullscreen it with all toolbars, sidebars etc suppressed and an always on the bottom attribute, done totally inside the filebrowser. GNOME is said to be working on a standalone library to do the same but I have yet to see it.

I think all of this will get done-but not in 2016. Right now the MATE team is just starting to get things ready for distros to build everything with GTK3 by default, and keeping up with constant changes in GTK3 slows that down. There are 11 themes to port to GTK3.20 right now, with massive changes in each, and that eats time that could go to other GTK3 and then wayland work.

Yes you can use GNOME on wayland right now, if you can deal with no icons on the desktop, if your session manager can start it, and if you don't mind running most apps in Xwayland.

[unixfan2001]

proprietary nvidia drivers ARE windows drivers with linux wrapper. and they do not work under linux in general, only under some arbitrary linux subset, pulled out of nvidia's ass

Care to elaborate or just hating as usual?

[pal666]

I meant proprietary Linux drivers for AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, not Windows drivers, to play Steam Linux games etc.

proprietary nvidia drivers ARE windows drivers with linux wrapper. and they do not work under linux in general, only under some arbitrary linux subset, pulled out of nvidia's ass

[unixfan2001]

I meant proprietary Linux drivers for AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, not Windows drivers, to play Steam Linux games etc.

He's referring to the fact that the proprietary NVIDIA drivers share the same core code with their Windows brethren. They're essentially "wrapped" Windows drivers.

rabcor

2016 is overly optimistic. As is 2020. Most software (particularly the one written against Xlib/XCB rather than a modern toolkit) won't run natively by then and XWayland can still benefit from the input of X.org.

As for Apple: They've actually had more radical changes in the display server department than any other player. The most radical change at Microsoft came with the introduction of the DWM (which, although often not appearing quite as smooth as Quartz compositing on the Mac, is, IMHO, more advanced in other regards. Such as real live preview which, AFAIK, Mac OS X' Mission Control still doesn't do).

[rabcor]

I do not want the X.org Foundation to die, I want X.org server to die. I really do. It's fine that the X.org server is maintained for now until a different display server like Wayland or MIR takes over, but it should be maintained knowing that it is on it's deathbed, and the X.org Foundation, realizing this should look to the future. After they finally let X.org die, when all major desktop environments that are still being actively maintained (KDE, GNOME, Unity) have been ported away from the X.org server, which will be within the next 3 years, definitely prior to 2020, probably within 2016. And at the point where major distributions (fedora/ubuntu/suse, etc) have switched to a different default display server, which is also definitely happening, I mean fedora have been planning to do it for a while, so has ubuntu, suse will probably fall in line once kde is ported to wayland as well. I think the X.org Foundation should be looking to the future "What do we do after the X.org Server is dead?" should be the question, there's no question whether or not it is dying, nor whether people want it to or not (they do, it is apparent), where should the X.org Foundation focus it's efforts? Should they jump behind an existing development like Wayland, refocus on different projects (Like Mesa or something) start a new project (X12, something else entirely?) or should they simply dissolve, they should decide this.

Luckily they have time, wayland is only partly ready, and so is xwayland, but all things considered, it shouldn't be that hard to embrace the future. X.org Server has had it's run for 36 years, that is a brutally long lifetime for software like it, I mean how often have Microsoft switched display servers over the last 20-30 years? (At least twice), even Apple has abandoned X if I recall correctly, and they're the slow and far behind everyone else guys on the desktop market. It's time for a replacement, X.org Server is outdated software with more up to date features sorta somehow duct taped onto it. Everyone knows it's not going to last against the competition, not against MIR, definitely not against Wayland.

[Cerberus]

if people want to run windows games on windows drivers they could just as well use windows

I meant proprietary Linux drivers for AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, not Windows drivers, to play Steam Linux games etc.

[unixfan2001]

if people want to run windows games on windows drivers they could just as well use windows

That's just as asinine as any comment I've ever heard of the "init freedom" crowd.
Why the heck do you care about marginal things that don't even matter to the end user?

Besides. Being able to re-use part of the Windows codebase isn't a bad thing. It proves a system's flexibility.

[unixfan2001]

RE: Remote Applications

Theoretically, one could turn xpra into a Wayland compositor. xpra already handles remote applications far better than plain old xdmcp sessions.

[pal666]

It does for some people, games

if people want to run windows games on windows drivers they could just as well use windows

[ferry]

That should be multiple seats (mouse/keyboard/display/user) per machine... Not multiple servers.
But I agree, a lot of this is way faster than VNC (vnc has a major lag), some applications are being an ass though...
But the first time I played doom in a dos box, the output was on a DecImage station 2000 or so... an X-terminal only 1280x1024 @ 24 bits per pixel. The PC could render everything, but it's graphics were so terrible... My first experience with a PC at home was therefore headless or console only.

With X you can have multiple X servers, one for each video card, AFAIK, never tried myself.

And GL probably would need to be streamed as video to a remote client. I don't know if that is already applied. Nomachine maybe.