VMware & QXL X.Org Video Drivers See New Updates After Several Years

[dragon321]

Does this mean VMware and other virtualization apps still rely on Xorg? No wayland support in a VM?

No, this is about Xorg drivers. Xorg have own video drivers (provided by packages like xf86-video-something) that does some Xorg specific things. Those drivers were updated and they are not connected to Wayland in any way. Wayland doesn't has concept of separate video drivers, it uses APIs provided by actual driver (like amdgpu, nvidia, i915 etc.) to do its job.

I don't know if VMWare graphics driver for Linux is able to run accelerated Wayland compositor but I can confirm that Qemu virgl works fine with Wayland. You can get accelerated Wayland desktop under Qemu KVM just fine.

[luno]

do they high refresh rate (more than 60) now in VM ? last time I tried VMware it was laggy as hell due to only supporting 60 hz

[coder]

Hmmm that's real odd... Haven't seen anyone else report this issue.

Last time I noticed it, someone else chimed in and said it also happened to them, for that same thread. I forget who, or what thread. It was a couple months ago, I think.

Were you browsing the forums right around 24 January 2023, 06:40 AM? That would be one of the only things in mind was some sort of race condition in the forum software.

Seems plausible, but a race condition wouldn't be my first guess. Not least, because I didn't subscribe to any new threads at that time.

[caligula]

No, this is about Xorg drivers. Xorg have own video drivers (provided by packages like xf86-video-something) that does some Xorg specific things. Those drivers were updated and they are not connected to Wayland in any way. Wayland doesn't has concept of separate video drivers, it uses APIs provided by actual driver (like amdgpu, nvidia, i915 etc.) to do its job.

I don't know if VMWare graphics driver for Linux is able to run accelerated Wayland compositor but I can confirm that Qemu virgl works fine with Wayland. You can get accelerated Wayland desktop under Qemu KVM just fine.

Maybe you didn't understand this simple logic but if the Wayland stack does not have client side support for a particular hypervisor like VMware, the user has to run Xorg instead. Yes, Xorg != Wayland and Wayland does not use X drivers in any way. I know there are virtual display drivers in the kernel for many hypervisors, but the reason I asked this is I have no idea if they support Wayland.

[dragon321]

Maybe you didn't understand this simple logic but if the Wayland stack does not have client side support for a particular hypervisor like VMware, the user has to run Xorg instead. Yes, Xorg != Wayland and Wayland does not use X drivers in any way. I know there are virtual display drivers in the kernel for many hypervisors, but the reason I asked this is I have no idea if they support Wayland.

This is not about client side support for hypervisor. Graphics drivers are not written for X11 or Wayland only. These patches are not for Linux graphics drivers, they are for X11.

[Quackdoc]

Maybe you didn't understand this simple logic but if the Wayland stack does not have client side support for a particular hypervisor like VMware, the user has to run Xorg instead. Yes, Xorg != Wayland and Wayland does not use X drivers in any way. I know there are virtual display drivers in the kernel for many hypervisors, but the reason I asked this is I have no idea if they support Wayland.

no, you are missing it completely, neither X nor Wayland require the xf86 drivers now, these are (usually alternative) secondary drivers to mesa/modesetting drivers. neither X nor Wayland require these for vmware afaik, but if its such a massive concern, you could always test it yourself

[caligula]

This is not about client side support for hypervisor. Graphics drivers are not written for X11 or Wayland only. These patches are not for Linux graphics drivers, they are for X11.

I'm pretty sure you have no idea what you're talking about. Assume I run MacOS, windows, os/2, haiku, dos, Linux, and NetWare as guests in VMware. Only Linux could make of any use of the X11 graphics drivers.

[cj.wijtmans]

There is Wayland support in latest VmWare.
But Wayland supporters will not want to run their wares virtualized in VmWare anyway, because Windows host could read their pixels. O no, security!
From a real world usage point of view, there is nothing to gain but trouble if you run Wayland session within VmWare. Even the famous tearing is guaranteed.

If a guest can read all host buffers it does seem like a security issue.

[dpeterc]

If a guest can read all host buffers it does seem like a security issue.

No, it is vice versa. Host can read the screen of the guest.
And it is normal, the virtualized Linux desktop is shown in a screen in Windows, and in windows you can do screenshot, do (video) desktop sharing or any other sharing of the whole screen of just the window of the virtualized guest OS.
To me, this is normal way of work, actually very useful and I use it a lot.
I am just saying this, because the ability to read other window's contents on X11 within the same desktop session was cited on this forum so many times as security hole. Which Wayland prevented. So on XWayland, a color palette can't have a color picker tool, to get pixel value from any window on the screen, like on bare metal X11.

[cj.wijtmans]

No, it is vice versa. Host can read the screen of the guest.
And it is normal, the virtualized Linux desktop is shown in a screen in Windows, and in windows you can do screenshot, do (video) desktop sharing or any other sharing of the whole screen of just the window of the virtualized guest OS.
To me, this is normal way of work, actually very useful and I use it a lot.
I am just saying this, because the ability to read other window's contents on X11 within the same desktop session was cited on this forum so many times as security hole. Which Wayland prevented. So on XWayland, a color palette can't have a color picker tool, to get pixel value from any window on the screen, like on bare metal X11.

If you can give the colour picker permissions i don't see the problem. I will give wayland one thing. Its more secure