Raspberry Pi OS Adds Experimental Wayland Support

[Waethorn]

Are there any ARM chips with SystemReady ES support (i.e. have a standard firmware and bootloader that allows you to install an OS from a USB boot drive instead of "flashing" it from another computer) with mainline Linux kernel support and a GPU that has a more-or-less complete Linux kernel driver with full support for HD and/or 4K video playback for web video (i.e. VA-API) with full GPU hardware acceleration? The Pi's don't meet these specifications because of the bootloader and GPU.

[tildearrow]

X11 is 37 Years old and still can't sync a single frame to the screen refresh rate.
With its 7 years since the Wayland Protocol got out of draft, hard to consider it old and guess what, it does the basics right since day one, things like being able to schedule frames.

X11 is 37 years old and you can set global hotkeys and query the mouse position, screen size and other things, regardless of desktop environment.

With its 7 years since the Wayland Protocol got out of draft, hard to consider it old and guess what, it still fails to do this in an universal, DE-agnostic way.
(There is a proposal for a hotkey protocol though)

[Quackdoc]

nice, can't wait to see android running atop it lol

[jacob]

X11 is 37 years old and you can set global hotkeys and query the mouse position, screen size and other things, regardless of desktop environment.

Which was a terrible idea 37 years ago and is still a terrible idea today.

[tildearrow]

Which was a terrible idea 37 years ago and is still a terrible idea today.

Yeah, for sure useful functionality is a terrible idea.

This mentality is what prevents Wayland from being taken further. If security is a concern, a permission system wouldn't hurt.

[jacob]

Yeah, for sure useful functionality is a terrible idea.

This mentality is what prevents Wayland from being taken further. If security is a concern, a permission system wouldn't hurt.

Not every functionality is good. Functionality to create files by bypassing the filesystem journal would obviously be a moronic idea and so is the possibility for anyone to create keyboard events or follow the mouse pointer over the entire screen. Wayland hasn't been designed to be a drop-in replacement for X11 or to reproduce every functionality, tool or hack that existed under X11.

Btw a permissions system is exactly what Wayland provides but for obviously understandable reasons it has to be implemented by the compositor.

[tildearrow]

Not every functionality is good. Functionality to create files by bypassing the filesystem journal would obviously be a moronic idea

Placing the ability to set hotkeys in the same privilege level as "creating files in a direct way" is like placing the ability to bake a cake in the same privilege level as being able to manufacture an atomic bomb.

and so is the possibility for anyone to create keyboard events or follow the mouse pointer over the entire screen. Wayland hasn't been designed to be a drop-in replacement for X11 or to reproduce every functionality, tool or hack that existed under X11.

...and therefore lead to fragmentation, requiring developers to duplicate a lot of code to handle every possible compositor's way of doing data query/global hotkeys (if the compositor even provides a way to do so) when it was all possible with one piece of code under X11.

Btw a permissions system is exactly what Wayland provides but for obviously understandable reasons it has to be implemented by the compositor.

Nope, not really. Just look at these multiple issues regarding the lack of a global hotkeys protocol and the proposed all-different incompatible solutions.

[gssdu]

I have to wonder what the percentage of people will be, when confronted with the create user dialogue, who just enter "pi" (with a password of "pi") and get on with it.

[rclark]

I run mostly headless on my pi(s) so the wayland issue is moot. X has always worked great. Man always has to try to build a better mouse trap.... So along comes wayland.

But the 'enter username/password at boot' is a great idea. Wahoo. One less 'shuffle' that I have to do when setting up a new RPI . Why? Because I use nfs on my local network and the uuid needs to be same for all users across the board to access file resources. So have to move default user pi to an out of the way uuid and all that entails and then add my users with correct ids. This will eliminate that setup step.

As for 'pi/pi' mentioned above, it is on the users head now and not the RPI foundation how secure the user wants to make his system. I know quite a few people here that use auto login for their windows boxes and phones, so would surprise me if there are a bunch of pi/pi or pi/raspberry out there... I personally set everything up to require a login with at least an 8 mixed char password and then if using a gui, lock the screen when away from the computer(s), as I feel it a good habit to get into.

[DanaG]

Are there any ARM chips with SystemReady ES support (i.e. have a standard firmware and bootloader that allows you to install an OS from a USB boot drive instead of "flashing" it from another computer) with mainline Linux kernel support and a GPU that has a more-or-less complete Linux kernel driver with full support for HD and/or 4K video playback for web video (i.e. VA-API) with full GPU hardware acceleration? The Pi's don't meet these specifications because of the bootloader and GPU.

The Honeycomb board is pretty close (I have a Radeon in the PCIe slot on mine), but the ARM maintainers have been dragging their feet on allowing merging important commits. Also, when I ordered it, it took many months to arrive.

https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/hardware/motherboards-chipsets/1126305-16-core-honeycomb-lx2k-arm-workstation-looks-to-offer-a-decent-performance-oomph?p=1313883#post1313883