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Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

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Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#41

Post by JoachimSchipper »

paol wrote: post #39
JoachimSchipper wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while ? You must have never read the UNIX-HATERS Handbook ( http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf ), which should be required reading for any unix fan, along with the Plan9 design documents (cat-v.org). In this case, "the X Windows disaster" chapter seems most appropriate. Feel free to ignore the VMS fanboys, though. And yes, I am a dedicated unix (OpenBSD) user.

While I loved reading the Unix haters handbook it gets many things wrong. It gets a lot right too, but the point is it takes some critical thinking (and good knowledge of Unix) to tell which is which. In that respect I found the chapter on X to be one of the weakest. They trot out the old "X named the client and server the wrong way around" chestnut for example...

Yes, I completely agree: that's the "ignore the VMS fanboys" part.

It's a very good resource, but a rather uncritical collection of criticisms - some highlight important deficiencies, some highlight alternative implementations, some of it is out-of-date (most unices are quite stable nowadays), and some are just plain ignorant.

I recall the chapter on X being rather sensible, but I don't exactly love X either. Maybe that coloured my perception.

Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#43

Post by sqrt17 »

sgt wrote: post #5

I have no worries about this. Linux distributions always do a couple of releases of "disasters", (e.g. KDE 4) before it starts becoming stable. Wayland is theoretically superior and with iteration after iteration, I'm sure it's going to come out on top. Just don't be one of the early adopters, but that's a given when it comes to Ubuntu, in my experience (unless you really do like the risks involved with cutting edge…

Have you ever tried to repair things in a new car with electronic fuel injection and computer-driven brakes? A huge advantage of X11 and all that other "70s technology" is that you can fix things more easily because it's built for being maintainable in the first place.

Having said that, I think that splitting the X server into one lightweight compositing manager and one slightly less heavyweight X-server-on-top-of-the-compositing-manager is less of a disaster than what we got with KDE4. I'll only start worrying when KDE and Gnome catch up and they start having UI programs talk directly to the compositing engine.

Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#44

Post by StavrosK »

motters wrote: post #37

It looks as if Shuttleworth is concentrating squarely on desktop bling, and this may be the right strategy if he wants Ubuntu to gain mass popularity and really eat into the Windows user base.

How? From what I gather, Wayland is better for the mobile/touch space, servers don't use GUIs and there's not much that uses only X...

Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#45

Post by thingie »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #12
mahmud wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland uses OpenGL ES for rendering, preparing Ubuntu for handsets. Ubuntu must be eying a future alongside Android, which is an excellent bet. There have been many attempts at X replacement, all well justified, and if Wayland is the best of them, it would still be better than the baroque X protocol. Like almost every C++ programmer working in the early 00s, I too hacked on Berlin :-|

It looks like Wayland runs on top of X, not replacing X. Which makes sense. OpenGL is just an API, not a hardware wire-level protocol. Unless Wayland implements its own graphics drivers (which I find highly unlikely), it'll just make use of the same drivers that X uses for implementing OpenGL. And that still leaves things like input handling. From the Wikipedia entry it looks like Wayland uses X for input and renderi…

Well, it's an X server, in fact :-) It uses the parts of X server that were moved to the kernel in the last year or two (KMS, large part of graphic drivers). Wayland itself is very small, you can look into the source code to find anything you want to know, it's all there, easy to find.

That's the good thing, perhaps, breaking that large and ugly X thing into small parts that we can easily understand, check, improve. I'm very glad of this and it's a great improvement. But it's still just a part, this whole idea that Ubuntu is ditching X server is so frightening. It's not happening, instead, they are breaking X into small parts, improving them, not having to deal with the insanely large X stack at once. Finally cleaning that large outdated codebase and so on.

But. If you see it as 'we're getting rid of X11 completely, not coming back again', you are going to repeat every mistake made in the last 20 years. I'm afraid that's exactly what Shuttleworth and his minions are going to do :(

Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#46

Post by rufugee »

gvb wrote: post #36

Just for comparison, Apple "ditched" X too (they never used X). When they went to OS X they used Display Postscript rather than X. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_PostScript This has been a mixed bag: it has been good for Apple-only programs, but it significantly slowed and complicated the porting of existing and new X-based programs to Apple.

Yeah, and it made starting up any X-based application on OS X a real pain. X apps are second-class citizens. This is one (of many) reasons I could never quite reach a level of comfort on a Mac.

Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#47

Post by daveungerer »

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.

Maybe gambling is too strong a word. He's not in it for the money, but to create a viable competitor to Microsoft. So not taking this "gamble" and sticking to the status quo would be actually be the riskier strategy for him.

If it backfires, it doesn't take him that much further away from achieving his original goal.

Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#49

Post by jrockway »

StavrosK wrote: post #44
motters wrote: post #37

It looks as if Shuttleworth is concentrating squarely on desktop bling, and this may be the right strategy if he wants Ubuntu to gain mass popularity and really eat into the Windows user base.

How? From what I gather, Wayland is better for the mobile/touch space, servers don't use GUIs and there's not much that uses only X...

So, did you post that comment from a mobile phone or a server?

Oh yeah, there's this thing called a "workstation". I hear there are a few in existence...

Re: Ubuntu To Ditch X Server For Wayland

#50

Post by barrkel »

paol wrote: post #39
JoachimSchipper wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while ? You must have never read the UNIX-HATERS Handbook ( http://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf ), which should be required reading for any unix fan, along with the Plan9 design documents (cat-v.org). In this case, "the X Windows disaster" chapter seems most appropriate. Feel free to ignore the VMS fanboys, though. And yes, I am a dedicated unix (OpenBSD) user.

While I loved reading the Unix haters handbook it gets many things wrong. It gets a lot right too, but the point is it takes some critical thinking (and good knowledge of Unix) to tell which is which. In that respect I found the chapter on X to be one of the weakest. They trot out the old "X named the client and server the wrong way around" chestnut for example...

Well, the naming is one thing; the architecture itself is worse. It's far more likely today for you to want to run applications on a server and be able to connect to and disconnect from them, like VNC or much better RDP, than it is for you to want all your applications running on the server to terminate when you disconnect your machine from the network.
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