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Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

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Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#71

Post by krschultz »

mikebike wrote: post #57
notauser wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was selling software to defense companies I'd support IE6. If I was selling software to primary school teachers I'd support 800x600. If I was selling technology to engineers (especially CUDA types building render farms of thousands of nodes) you can bet your life I'd support Ubuntu. I wouldn't want to give them any reasons at all not to use my stuff everywhere, in case I accidentally opened a niche my competitor…

None of the mechanical engineering packages (finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics) I've encountered explicitly support Ubuntu. Typically, it's RHEL that is explicitly supported.

But their driver doesn't have to support Ubuntu, Ubuntu is taking advantage of their driver's OpenGL capability. So the better the Nvidia OpenGL driver, the better Ubuntu will run on it. It shouldn't really matter RHEL or Ubuntu so long as the driver has good OpenGL performance.

Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#72

Post by dfranke »

cookiecaper wrote: post #62

Unless they're planning this for 13.04 or later, it definitely sounds like a bad deal. Wayland just moved to a "real" project space outside of Kristian's personal repo, and it is nowhere near mature enough to support something like Ubuntu. Even if GTK and QT "mostly work", there's still a lot more in the X ecosystem that is hard to replace, namely proprietary drivers and the knowledgebase associated with working with…

You're right, which is why I'll continue to stick with Debian stable or Ubuntu LTS while this all blows over. It will blow over, however, and I'm happy to have a major player out there forcing it to happen.

Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#74

Post by JoachimSchipper »

rick_2047 wrote: post #38

Just one question, I hear that Wayland is hugely dependent on the latest Graphics cards. So that would mean that ubuntu will no longer be usable by people like me who have moderately old hardware (mine is p4 with on board intel graphics, which are already having problems even with X). I liked how ubuntu was stable on my computer (till around 8.10 I think and 9.04 was not bad). I will miss the compatibility

There will probably be some compatibility layer. And it's not like the transition is going to happen this year: you'll have plenty of time to upgrade to another old-and-cheap machine.

Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#75

Post by hencq »

metageek wrote: post #66
mahmud wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is straight from this FAQ: Wayland is a nano display server, relying on drm modesetting, gem batchbuffer submission and hw initialization generally in the kernel. Wayland puts the compositing manager and display server in the same process. Window management is largely pushed to the clients, they draw their own decorations and move and resize themselves, typically implemented in a toolkit library. That last part…

> Window management is largely pushed to the clients, they draw their own decorations and move and resize themselves, typically implemented in a toolkit library. Well, there's a bad idea. I suppose I could see an X replacement which incorporated window management into the server, instead of into a special client; but letting all the clients draw their own borders is a recipe for chaos.

Isn't an X window manager just another X client too at the moment? Couldn't that system still work on Wayland?

I might be completely wrong about this though, so someone more knowledgeable please explain. :-)

Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#76

Post by jhancock »

lwhi wrote: post #20

I think Mark Shuttleworth is taking bold steps to ensure that Ubuntu is well positioned for the future. He's creating differentiation between Ubuntu and other debian-type distributions and he's potentially mapping out a route to new platforms. It does seem like he might be a gambling man though.

It may seem bold but is well supported by Nokia (and Intel). MeeGo will use Wayland. Qt is being ported to Wayland. Nokia has firmly moved all its dev money squarely in this space. Recent moves show this is not an experiment or a side project for Nokia.

Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#77

Post by pyre »

naner wrote: post #70
paol wrote: post #22

This is a huge shift if it happens. X has been synonymous with GUIs on unix for more than 20 years, and has accumulated all the attendant baggage (both good and bad). There are also some big consequences for the linux landscape. The first and obvious one is that if other distros don't imitate Ubuntu they will drift farther apart. People complain about Ubuntu going their own way now , image what it will be like if the…

It will be several years before we need to worry about that. Nvidia's drivers actually replace a huge chunk of the Xorg graphics stack because it has sucked so terribly[1] for many years. 1: http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/06/nitty-gritty-shit-on...

That must be why XMonad has funky artifacting on window borders when a monitor is rotated under the Nvidia drivers. I could never understand that (as it works fine when the monitors aren't rotated 90deg).

Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#78

Post by sielskr »

paol wrote: post #40
pilom wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu is certainly not too big to ignore. I have never seen any source say Linux (let alone Ubuntu) has more than 5% marketshare. Does your company support 800x600? How about IE6?

Uh, NVIDIA made the decision to fully support linux a long time ago. Within that ecosystem , Ubuntu is too big to ignore.

"NVIDIA made the decision to fully support linux a long time ago."

NVIDIA is not legally obligated to support Linux; are they?

Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#79

Post by levesque »

paol wrote: post #40
pilom wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu is certainly not too big to ignore. I have never seen any source say Linux (let alone Ubuntu) has more than 5% marketshare. Does your company support 800x600? How about IE6?

Uh, NVIDIA made the decision to fully support linux a long time ago. Within that ecosystem , Ubuntu is too big to ignore.

NVIDIA kind of supports Linux as a family of distro. There is only one driver for ALL the Linux distros out there, which is nice, keeps things simple for them.

If they need to wrap out a second series of drivers just for Ubuntu and Wayland, I'm not sure it's going to be quality material. Anyway, anything would be better than the current NVIDIA drivers, which are crappy as hell in my book. Now is this because X is also crappy, I can't tell.

Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#80

Post by sielskr »

I've been unhappy with X since I learned enough (in the 90s) to have an opinion -- but not for the reason Shuttleworth gives:

"We don’t believe X is setup to deliver the user experience we want, with super-smooth graphics and effects. I understand that it’s possible to get amazing results with X, but it’s extremely hard, and isn’t going to get easier. Some of the core goals of X make it harder to achieve these user experiences on X than on native GL"

My unhappiness stems from my perception that the ways I have tried to customize X and things closely coupled to X (e.g., my window manager) have proved much more difficult (and in particular have forced me to contend with much more complexity) than they could have.

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