GTK+ 3.8 Released With Support For Wayland 193
kthreadd writes "Version 3.8 of the GTK+ GUI framework has been released. A new feature in GTK+ 3.8 is support for Wayland 1.0, the display server that will replace X on free desktops. Among the other new features are improved support for theming, fixes to geometry management and improved accessibility. There is also better support for touch, as part of an ongoing effort in making GTK+ touch-aware."
Re:Replace X? (Score:5, Informative)
Poor summary. Wayland allows the running of X11 applications through an X server, with work being done to support this on Intel and AMD graphics:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2010-November/000292.html [freedesktop.org]
Re:Replace X? (Score:5, Informative)
What is this "long line" you have been hearing of?
It consists of X, then Wayland.
Just off the top of my head:
Y Window System - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Window_System [wikipedia.org]
Berlin/Fresco - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresco_(windowing_system) [wikipedia.org]
Xynth - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xynth [wikipedia.org]
MicroXwin - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroXwin [wikipedia.org]
DirectFB - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directfb [wikipedia.org]
Mir - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(display_server) [wikipedia.org]
Then there is whatever Android uses -- SurfaceFlinger?
Re:Replace X? (Score:4, Informative)
To be fair, whatever Android uses -- and whatever TiVo and other embedded systems use -- are successful, and were never aimed at replacing X. They were aimed at providing graphical output strictly for their devices, and if they hit the market, did so nicely. Android's interface is used by a bunch of software these days.
The rest were all aimed at general desktop usage as a main priority, and absolutely you're right: X outlived them all. That doesn't imply that will always be the case, merely that it is much more difficult than most people think, for a wide variety of reasons.
There *does* seem to be much more momentum toward a change recently. It feels a bit like the XFree86 to XOrg leap era.
sigh (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Replace X? (Score:4, Informative)
Well all that does is demonstrate your ignorance of the subject.
There is nothing preventing wayland to be implemented with a remote renderer, and in fact one of the goals of the protocol is to allow efficient remoting (without hampering local drawing).
Seeing as the protocol is being explicitly designed to minimise round-trips, it has potential to be significantly more efficient than remote X.
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Wayland-prototype-for-rendering-software-that-runs-remotely-1715463.html
It's really pretty simple to educate yourself, which is a really good idea if you plan to rant about a subject on a public forum.
VNC is one to one not many to one or one to many (Score:4, Informative)
Also that block diagram implies speed hits from the complexity and ignores that the wayland server+compositor is going to be doing a similar number of things internally as both the X server and compositor, so it doesn't prove your point and I doubt the person that drew it intended it to be used to try to prove that point.
It's been a long time and a lot of claims - why no benchmarks for identical task yet instead of handwaving and "X sux!!11!"
Re:Replace X? (Score:4, Informative)
What X is, is a heap of arcane apis which nobody uses
Bullshit. You ahve no idea what you're talking about.
What you *think* you're talking about is the font mechanism, which few people use any more. Oh the horror, X has a small unpopular part in the core protocol.
I guess it will take up kilobytes of space on disk while the unused code sits paged out.
Perhaps you're thinking of the drawing mechanism? Only some parts are unused. When coupled with the XRender extension it works just fine, and the two work together.
The reparenting mechanism is still used. The window manipulation mechanisms are still used. The remoting is still used. The elegant (and yes, it is elegant if you actually take the time to figure it out) copy/paste and now DnD mechanism is still used. The input basic mechanism is still used for most things. The screensaver mechanism works just fine.
And so on.
Basically most of it is just fine and for some reason people kile you get their knickers in a twist about an old protocol call which is not much used any more.
It's inefficient, complex (since clients must explicitly code for exensions with fallback behaviour).
So... your solution for requiring clients keep massive backwards compatibility is to break backwards compatibility. Okay, but you could jus tnot code clients with backwards compatibility to non extended X as well. Did that even occur to you?
Okey dokey. So it's not OK if you do it with X but it is OK if you do it with Wayland. I sense the FUD is strong in this one.
Proposing to get rid of it is not "esoteric" or "boredom", it's rational and pragmatic.
Basically the only thing people seem to coherently complain about is the little used and unloved font mechanism in X. Removing that is certainly worth losing remoting for!
And yes I'd like my desktop to "draw shit to my screen fast and efficiently". Doing away with X11 will facilitate that.
You are apparently not aware that X supports direct rendering and so has been able to "draw shit efficiently" for quite a long time now. Switching to Wayland won't change the rendering path.
The only efficiency improvement is that you input events will go from kernel->wayland->program not kernel->X->WM->X->program. If that has measurable latency then you're running on a 386 (good luck---it's out of support for Linux now) and rendering is the least of your worries.
And for people who "like using X11" can continue to do so - over Wayland.
FUD ATTACK!!! This has been rebutted many times including by me (again) elsewhere in this thread.