Wayland preparing its first stable release!

[Jodell88]

I know that we don't post news and such. However, I think this is a huge step for Linux going forward.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA1MTQ

 

[Nothinman]

Nice to see progress, but I don't see how that will have any tangible effect on LotD because X isn't the problem with its adoption.

 

[lxskllr]

I've read bits about it here and there, but I'm not sure why I should care. Does it provide anything useful to a dumb end user like me?

 

[Nothinman]

I've read bits about it here and there, but I'm not sure why I should care. Does it provide anything useful to a dumb end user like me?

Exactly, Xorg works very well despite its design issues so I'm not sure why the mad rush to replace it exists.

 

[Jodell88]

Taken from the Wayland FAQ.

Why not extend the X server?

Because for the first time we have a realistic chance of not having to do that. It's entirely possible to incorporate the buffer exchange and update models that Wayland is built on into X. However, we have an option here of pushing X out of the hotpath between clients and the hardware and making it a compatibility option. I'm not deluding myself that any general purpose desktop Linux distribution will stop shipping X as we know it or as a Wayland client anytime soon. Nor should they, there will still be X applications to run and people expect that from a Linux desktop. What's different now is that a lot of infrastructure has moved from the X server into the kernel (memory management, command scheduling, mode setting) or libraries (cairo, pixman, freetype, fontconfig, pango etc) and there is very little left that has to happen in a central server process.

What is wrong with X?

The problem with X is that... it's X. When you're an X server there's a tremendous amount of functionality that you must support to claim to speak the X protocol, yet nobody will ever use this. For example, core fonts; this is the original font model that was how your got text on the screen for the many first years of X11. This includes code tables, glyph rasterization and caching, XLFDs (seriously, XLFDs!) Also, the entire core rendering API that lets you draw stippled lines, polygons, wide arcs and many more state-of-the-1980s style graphics primitives. For many things we've been able to keep the X.org server modern by adding extension such as XRandR, XRender and COMPOSITE and to some extent phase out less useful extension. But we can't ever get rid of the core rendering API and much other complexity that is rarely used in a modern desktop. With Wayland we can move the X server and all it's legacy technology to a optional code path. Getting to a point where the X server is a compatibility option instead of the core rendering system will take a while, but we'll never get there if don't plan for it.

 

[Nothinman]

Taken from the Wayland FAQ.

No one is arguing that Wayland isn't better than X and having major upheavals that kill legacy support on occasion is a good thing, but that doesn't answer why it matters to end users. To end users X works just fine as is. From the xeyes up to hardware accelerated games. X isn't an impedance to Linux on the desktop as it stands right now.

 

[Jodell88]

No one is arguing that Wayland isn't better than X and having major upheavals that kill legacy support on occasion is a good thing, but that doesn't answer why it matters to end users. To end users X works just fine as is. From the xeyes up to hardware accelerated games. X isn't an impedance to Linux on the desktop as it stands right now.

I agree, to us the end users, X works, is dependable, gets the job done. To the people who create the toolkits (GTK, Qt, etc.), window managers and the like, will most likely tell you of the horror stories of working with plain X.

I also believe that it has started to show its age with the recent advancements with composited desktops. After all, X is older than 20 years at this point and can be considered a bit of a dinosaur in computer years.