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Facts about Wayland vs X

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Re: Facts about Wayland vs X

#51

Post by toyg »

My issue with Wayland is that it risks being another KDE 4.0 (or another PulseAudio): the hype-machine was started too early in its development cycle and this is creating expectations that are then frustrated in practice. If you're trying to switch people en masse from such an entrenched technology, you must have a killer app ready from day 1. Is there an app that directly benefits from Wayland so much that it will entice people to switch?

I understand this sort of strategy is difficult in the OSS world, where development is mostly done in the open, but there's a difference between developing and evangelising.

Re: Facts about Wayland vs X

#52

Post by vacri »

AhtiK wrote: post #6
astine wrote: post #4

I was sold on Wayland in terms of technology a while ago. Where Wayland is losing people is when is it going to be ready to use? Sure, you can install Wayland now, but there are no applications that target it. Yes, XWayland is meant to solve this problem. But, XWayland is not ready yet (or is it?) and Wayland is still "just around the corner." That may be for legitimate reasons, but it's what the article really shoul…

According to https://live.gnome.org/Wayland Gnome 3.12 will be fully ported to Wayland at Spring 2014. Hopefully others will pick up soon as well. I am not sure if "smaller" window managers such as XMonad would benefit but hearing about XMonad being ported to Wayland would be cool.

The cynic in me wonders if at that point there'll be any users still using vanilla Gnome in order to be affected by the switch...

Re: Facts about Wayland vs X

#53

Post by vacri »

zqfm wrote: post #36
belorn wrote: post #32

One key feature of X that Wayland refuses to implement is the concept of remote access. Everything is intended to be local only. For those "strange" users out there who want remote access, the developers replies has so far been to use VNC. Its kind of odd that remote access has been shoved to the side in this age of cloudiness and always connectedness. One would think that there existed better methods to remote acces…

As someone who has never used X's remote access, what are its benefits over VNC?

I'm told that sending the native code is smaller than sending pictures of the desktop - meaningless on your home network, but it has ramifications on a busy network.

Re: Facts about Wayland vs X

#54

Post by Tuna-Fish »

mercurial wrote: post #10
AhtiK wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to https://live.gnome.org/Wayland Gnome 3.12 will be fully ported to Wayland at Spring 2014. Hopefully others will pick up soon as well. I am not sure if "smaller" window managers such as XMonad would benefit but hearing about XMonad being ported to Wayland would be cool.

Sure, but I assume this would mean Haskell bindings for Wayland first, which as far as I know don't exist yet.

In Wayland architecture, the window manager is the display server. To provide wayland-XMonad, you don't need Haskell bindings, you need an implementation of the protocol in Haskell.

This isn't as horrible as it sounds, because unlike X, the display server in Wayland is pretty tiny. The current implementation is like ~10k lines. I expect it to fit in sub 3k lines of Haskell. :)

Re: Facts about Wayland vs X

#55

Post by vacri »

toyg wrote: post #51

My issue with Wayland is that it risks being another KDE 4.0 (or another PulseAudio): the hype-machine was started too early in its development cycle and this is creating expectations that are then frustrated in practice. If you're trying to switch people en masse from such an entrenched technology, you must have a killer app ready from day 1. Is there an app that directly benefits from Wayland so much that it will e…

The problem is that the video system for your computer isn't just a commodity app, it's a huge, interoperative clump of software. It drives the primary interaction device on most computers, and that interaction is a complex beast on every level.

If it was something you could hack up in a basement in a couple of months, we'd already have dozens of choices.

Re: Facts about Wayland vs X

#56

Post by StavrosK »

bbatchelder wrote: post #46
smalltalk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performant is not an adjective. Performantly is not an adverb. Niether is a word. Use real words when you write. Maybe write, "It didn't work properly / perform adequately," instead of writing nonsense.

It obviously conveyed the author's meaning. Not sure what more you look for in a word.

One of my (subjective) requirements is that the word not be annoying (i.e. incongruent with the rest of the language). "Performantly" certainly was not, I think smalltalk is only complaining for complaining's sake.

Re: Facts about Wayland vs X

#57

Post by wmf »

dietrichepp wrote: post #48
wmf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

krh is working on a lossless "codec" that uses a rsync-like rolling hash that should provide good compression with no artifacts (as long as the app isn't too skeuy). http://people.freedesktop.org/~krh/rolling-hash&#x2F ;

...but why? In my experience, using H.264 to encode screen captures gives you extremely high quality video for reasonable CPU and network expenditures. Is the last 1% of video quality really worth it? For a demo, you can try using FFmpeg + x264 using the x11grab input. It's very easy to adjust the amount of CPU used (by changing the preset) and the bandwidth (by changing the CRF, or by setting the bit rate).

I would expect the rolling hash to be much faster than H.264 while also being lossless.

Re: Facts about Wayland vs X

#58

Post by wmf »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #54
mercurial wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but I assume this would mean Haskell bindings for Wayland first, which as far as I know don't exist yet.

In Wayland architecture, the window manager is the display server. To provide wayland-XMonad, you don't need Haskell bindings, you need an implementation of the protocol in Haskell. This isn't as horrible as it sounds, because unlike X, the display server in Wayland is pretty tiny. The current implementation is like ~10k lines. I expect it to fit in sub 3k lines of Haskell. :)

Realistically I would expect people to reuse as much Weston code as they can.

Re: Facts about Wayland vs X

#59

Post by wtetzner »

smalltalk wrote: post #43
tome wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool link, thanks! What do you mean "regret it"? It didn't work properly/performantly?

Performant is not an adjective. Performantly is not an adverb. Niether is a word. Use real words when you write. Maybe write, "It didn't work properly / perform adequately," instead of writing nonsense.

https://www.google.com/search?q=define:performantly is good enough for me.
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