Arcan Open-Source Display Server Continues Progressing As Alternative To Wayland, Mir

[TheOne]

A toy working sufficiently well such that even google uses it for running android applications on chrome os....

Well chromeos is a toy OS so they fit well together, people that do some real work on a computer use something else...

[morteasherah]

Well chromeos is a toy OS

I hope you are joking http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/19/11...us-idc-figures

[andre30correia]

wayland it will become the new X, a piece of crap, same devs with old ideias

[TheOne]

I hope you are joking http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/19/11...us-idc-figures

Jokes aside I admit that having the ability to run android applications on ChromeOS is nice (even thought I'm not sure how well they will look given most of them are designed for phones with some having tablet support), having that said... increased sales on ChromeBooks doesn't means the OS is any better, people buy chromebooks because they are really cheap, most of them don't even know that what they are getting is a desktop shell which only purpose is to launch a web browser and some misc web apps. Also most of them are casual computer users that just check emails, facebook, that sort of thing...

Going back to subject, from what I have seen Arcan seems like a much more advanced display server than wayland, so thats why I joked of Wayland been a toy in contrast to Arcan. And as I said before in other posts, wayland been just a protocol is kind of a disadvantage, thats why it has taken so many years to replace X, everybody has to write a compositor which kind of sucks with the huge fragmentation that plagues the linux ecosystem. I remember when I first read about wayland like 5 years ago I was really excited, now I don't even care, X works perfectly fine for me and I just accepted I will stick with it for years to come.

[morteasherah]

people buy chromebooks because they are really cheap

And good enough for the majority of users.

most of them don't even know that what they are getting is a desktop shell which only purpose is to launch a web browser and some misc web apps

Which satisfies the needs of a good part of the user base. And, as an added bonus, you have a hardened zero-config operating system, lightweight and fast. Not bad.

Going back to subject, from what I have seen Arcan seems like a much more advanced display server than wayland, so thats why I joked of Wayland been a toy in contrast to Arcan. And as I said before in other posts, wayland been just a protocol is kind of a disadvantage, thats why it has taken so many years to replace X, everybody has to write a compositor which kind of sucks with the huge fragmentation that plagues the linux ecosystem. I remember when I first read about wayland like 5 years ago I was really excited, now I don't even care, X works perfectly fine for me and I just accepted I will stick with it for years to come.

Maybe it is a big case of management incompetence. A lot of the Wayland developers are Xorg developers. They invest a big part of their time on Xorg instead of Wayland, maybe this is why Wayland is progressing slowly. And Wayland needs a lot of pieces, some in the kernel, who have been implemented in the last 3-4 years. A big revolution made step by step.

The fragmentation is an issue, but if everyone will adhere to the protocol, no problem.

[c117152]

Jokes aside I admit that having the ability to run android applications on ChromeOS is nice (even thought I'm not sure how well they will look given most of them are designed for phones with some having tablet support), having that said... increased sales on ChromeBooks doesn't means the OS is any better, people buy chromebooks because they are really cheap, most of them don't even know that what they are getting is a desktop shell which only purpose is to launch a web browser and some misc web apps. Also most of them are casual computer users that just check emails, facebook, that sort of thing...

Going back to subject, from what I have seen Arcan seems like a much more advanced display server than wayland, so thats why I joked of Wayland been a toy in contrast to Arcan. And as I said before in other posts, wayland been just a protocol is kind of a disadvantage, thats why it has taken so many years to replace X, everybody has to write a compositor which kind of sucks with the huge fragmentation that plagues the linux ecosystem. I remember when I first read about wayland like 5 years ago I was really excited, now I don't even care, X works perfectly fine for me and I just accepted I will stick with it for years to come.

You must be a debian\ubuntu user. Cause Arch been doing first class wayland for years now (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/wayland).

[Michael_S]

Well chromeos is a toy OS so they fit well together, people that do some real work on a computer use something else...

Chrome OS users can use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google search, Bing search, Google drive, Office 365, Slack, Gotomeeting, Hangouts, SSH Clients, simple spreadsheets, simple documents, printing, Netflix, Vudu, Amazon, Ebay, and Amazon streaming. Plus there are hundreds of HTML5 and Chrome add-on games.

If you're a skilled technology enthusiast - and clearly you are, or you wouldn't be on this forum - that's not enough. And if you're serious about PC gaming, it's not enough. It's also not enough for software developers, data analysts, video and photo editors, or people using CAD software.

But for the average person, Chrome OS for home computing plus a console for gaming is probably the least amount of cost and maintenance for all of the features they care about. You say it's a "toy OS", but it's real enough for 95% of the population. Most people don't need to be power users.

If you don't care about software freedom, the biggest problem with Chrome OS is that the middle market is empty. You have the Chromebook Pixel at the top end and cheap little boxes at the bottom, but few machines at the $500-$1000 price point.

[TheOne]

You must be a debian\ubuntu user. Cause Arch been doing first class wayland for years now (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/wayland).

I'm a Arch user that got tired of waiting for good AMD drivers performance and bought an Nvidia GPU. Is Nvidia doing stupid things like the new eglstreams? Of course they do, but their video drivers at least have good opengl performance and I dont have to wait decades for support on hardware that later gets deprecated... Has AMD improved? Yes, maybe next time I will buy AMD. Meanwhile Arcan already supports nvidia drivers If I recall correctly, while wayland developers are still fighting against nvidia eglstreams... sad

[lexa2]

Keeping wayland discussion aside as offtopic I have to admit that Arcan/Durden looks like an awesome toy. It is capable, it could already be used for doing stuff in its current state and I wouldn't be surprised to see it being picked up by some niche project for kiosk-like workloads.

[finalzone]

Why? Wayland is a toy compared to Arcan...

Wayland protocol already used in mobile, embedded and desktop, a toy? Okay.