The Founder Of Wayland Has Joined Google

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Founder Of Wayland Has Joined Google

Last week we reported on Kristian Høgsberg, the founder of Wayland and a long-time Linux graphics developer, leaving his position at Intel. We now know he headed off to Google...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Kristian-Hoegsberg-Joins-Google

[coastiron]

I think that Gnu/Linux distributions with Wayland environment (and any other Linux systems with Wayland too) are competitors to Android and Chrome OS. It would surprise me if somebody working for Google will be actively develop Wayland or make pragmatic environment for desktop/Wayland session.

[bug77]

Unfortunately, any details beyond that aren't public right now, but will be interesting to see what he ends up working on!

What do you mean? Of course he'll be working on inserting ads into Wayland!

[SpyroRyder]

I think that Gnu/Linux distributions with Wayland environment (and any other Linux systems with Wayland too) are competitors to Android and Chrome OS. It would surprise me if somebody working for Google will be actively develop Wayland or make pragmatic environment for desktop/Wayland session.

Competing with Android how? It's the master of the mobile space which is, as both Jolla and Canonical have shown, a really tough market to get into. ChromeOS I could maybe see some distros competing against except that in all of ChromeOS's time on the market none have really focused on being designed for that sort of hardware and situations.

[starshipeleven]

ChromeOS I could maybe see some distros competing against

Once they deploy the Android app compatibility layer, that's a lost battle.

I'm seriously considering one myself if that layer pans out well.

[coastiron]

Competing with Android how? It's the master of the mobile space which is, as both Jolla and Canonical have shown

Canonical and Jolla are relatively small companies. Samsung with Tizen (which internally has Wayland since 3.* version I think) is more capable competitor.

Unfortunately I think that Google is more probable to sabotage Wayland development than to support it.
However Kristian Høgsberg, as a father of Wayland, probably is not interested in killing its own child-project, so probably he will be focused on more constructive projects i.e. enhancing SurfaceFlinger and Android drivers etc.
It is time for Google to reveal Lennart Poettering of Wayland, so to speak.

[Palu Macil]

I'd love to hear that he's working on a pure Go GUI toolkit... but there is no basis to support that; I'm only spreading rumors.

[blackout23]

Once they deploy the Android app compatibility layer, that's a lost battle.

I'm seriously considering one myself if that layer pans out well.

They rolled out the PlayStore to the R11 (which I own) and Pixel 2 today.
It's working great for something that's in the Development Channel. Really adds a lot to the Chromebook experience.

[Michael_S]

I would guess that Google is officially indifferent to Wayland. Even if Cinnamon, KDE, GNOME 3, MATE, Xfce, LXQt, or any other Linux desktop was rock solid, secure, and high performance with Wayland it's not likely to steal even 0.5% of the Android or Chrome OS market share. But making desktop Linux better doesn't help Google in any way either. So they get no benefit from killing it or supporting it.

[starshipeleven]

They rolled out the PlayStore to the R11 (which I own) and Pixel 2 today.
It's working great for something that's in the Development Channel. Really adds a lot to the Chromebook experience.

Ooh, cool. Can't wait.

Unfortunately I think that Google is more probable to sabotage Wayland development than to support it.

Why? It would make plenty of sense to migrate to that and dump a good chunk of development effort for their own display subsystem.