Ubuntu To Ditch X For Wayland

[Joylove]

http://digitizor.com/2010/11/05/ubuntu- ... r-wayland/

The next major transition for Unity will be to deliver it on Wayland, the OpenGL-based display management system. We’d like to embrace Wayland early, as much of the work we’re doing on uTouch and other input systems will be relevant for Wayland and it’s an area we can make a useful contribution to the project.
-Shuttlework

X will however stay for the next release, Ubuntu 11.04, though and possible some more releases after that. As Shuttleworth mentioned, six month is an unrealistic period for something like this. We may see some signs of Wayland in Ubuntu in about a year (Ubuntu 11.10). However moving the entire ecosystem to Wayland will take several years.

Wonder if LM will continue with Ubuntu 11.10

[Joylove]

Wayland's official site (the demos looks decent enough)
http://wayland.freedesktop.org/


Wayland running a GTK app

Mark Shuttlework's announcement:
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551

Phoronix on Wayland
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=a ... land&num=1

The Wayland display server is very simple: everything is direct rendered and composited. There is no complicated APIs or objects to deal with like there is now with the X.Org Server. In an email to Phoronix, Kristian Høgsberg, creator of Wayland and also responsible for much of the DRI2 work in the current X.Org Server, describes this project as "a new display server that implements just the tiny fraction of X features that we actually use when running a composited desktop. Which is essentially buffer management (close to what DRI2 does in X.org), input handling and hooks to allow a compositor to composite the desktop. All rendering is done client side as direct rendering (how OpenGL works today, but pixman and thus cairo, for example, could learn how to do direct rendering too), and modesetting and other hardware setup is done in the kernel. This takes a lot of complexity out of the server."

[markfiend]

Seems to be yet another in a long line of "Ubuntu to ditch (well-established foo) in favour of (experimental bar)"

I mean I'm all for living on the cutting (even bleeding) edge, but I'm not sure why Ubuntu suddenly thinks it needs to reinvent the wheel for everything.

I have my suspicions that eventually they will try to make a custom fork of the kernel. Then they'll ditch some of the free-libre components in favour of proprietary stuff and hey presto, Ubuntu becomes OS-X mark 2.

[waldo]

I mean I'm all for living on the cutting (even bleeding) edge, but I'm not sure why Ubuntu suddenly thinks it needs to reinvent the wheel for everything.

Easy answer. Linux desktop has been floundering around as a hobbyist plaything for well over 10 years. In the mean time Windows and Apple have advanced the graphics in their OS's considerably, preparing for the wave of touch devices. The mouse will disappear. Linux is not well prepared for this.

Shuttleworth appears to have decided it's time to get serious or get out. He has chosen to get serious. I'm sure he made this decision back when he decided to turn over the reins of his company to Jane Silber, and devote his time to development.

Up to recently, he let the development community call most of the shots. No more of that. He has chosen to lead. No one needs to follow, but anyone can.

[piratesmack]

Wayland requires kernel mode setiing?

Hopefully the Nouveau driver is good enough by then, because it doesn't look like the proprietary Nvidia driver will ever support KMS:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=113645

[randomizer]

This may actually be a good thing. X was never built for desktop usage and it brings with it so many quirks from 20-year-old design decisions.

[ej64]

This may actually be a good thing. X was never built for desktop usage and it brings with it so many quirks from 20-year-old design decisions.

True. Keith Packard himself, probably the most important developer of the X Window System over the last 20 years, sees X at it's end of life: LPC: Life after X

I'm looking forward to this revolution ...

[markfiend]

I rather think the characterisation as a "hobbyist plaything" is a little harsh.

I'm also less than 100% convinced that the mouse will disappear. I certainly can't envisage widespread replacement of the mouse with touch-screens on desktop PCs, especially in a business environment. The monitor/keyboard/mouse paradigm will IMO persist indefinitely in the workplace.

I also remain somewhat wary of Shuttleworth's long-term aims and goals for Ubuntu.

Having said all that, you guys have done a lot to dispel my initial doubts about Wayland.

[Greg-NZ]

Like many others, I'm also concerned about Canonical's adoption of Unity and plans to abandon the X-server.

I tried the Unity desktop on my Ubuntu (10.04) machine a couple of days ago. It hardly worked at all and promptly broke a number of my Gnome functions. These fortunately returned when I got rid of Unity, but this doesn't augur well. And how will those large enterprises that have adopted Ubuntu react if they find that the new desktop is going to look and act very differently? Canonical will need to be very careful here not to alienate its users.

With regard to X, however, if Canonical is prepared to sponsor work on a replacement for X, then perhaps this will benefit everyone long term.

In any case, it's great that Linux Mint now has a Debian edition (LMDE), which I've been using for a day or two. It means that Mint is no longer tied to Ubuntu, if that distro goes off in directions that some of us are unhappy with. The Debian edition seems great, especially given that it hasn't yet received a lot of attention.