Ubuntu Developer Proposes "Non-Windowing Display Server" For Wayland
Effectively his aim with this "non-windowing display server" is more of a helper library for Wayland compositors to utilize. He's trying to come up with a way to lower the barrier for Wayland compositors each having to maintain multiple back-ends such as for DRM, Wayland, X11, and other smaller targets like Raspberry Pi and RDP. There's also the issue he's hoping to address by lack of standardization against the different Wayland compositors for adjusting the screen resolution and other display-related items not being unified by Wayland compositors as they're not covered by the Wayland protocol.
"My idea is to create a display server that doesn’t handle windowing. It handles display-related things, such as drawing pixels on the screen, changing video mode, etc… Wayland compositors and other programs that require direct access to the screen could then use this server and trust that the server will take care of everything display-related for them. I believe that this would enable for much simpler code, and add a good deal more power and flexibility," wrote Joel.
He also talked of making a unified input server too, but on that front, most compositors are now settling for using libinput.
There is merit to lowering the amount of work needed to get-up and running a new Wayland compositor -- and to maintain it -- so it will be interesting to see if this project does manage to materialize in some form. The developer expressed interest in engaging in this work if others do so too, but for right now he's just collecting feedback. Those wishing to find out more can read this blog post.
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