LXer: Two Features Wayland Will Have That X Doesn't
 

Published at LXer:

While the discussion surrounding the Wayland Display Server and Canonical's plans to deploy Ubuntu atop Wayland continue to be ongoing within our forums (here, here, and here) and elsewhere, some new technical capabilities and plans for Wayland have been discussed. Here's two features that Wayland is set to have that is not currently supported by the X.Org Server.

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So if Ubuntu drops X in favor of this 'Wayland' thingume, I suppose they will essentially port all the software the needs X to Wayland? All the major software from GNOME to Firefox, is only built for X. Are the team from Ubuntu simply going to do all this by themselves or what? :scratch:

I realize that X has become perhaps more complex, but the dilemma here is that every single major piece of software is built for X, so what kind of DE/WM will run under 'Wayland'? Will the 'devs' at Ubuntu come up with their own WM/DE from scratch?

I guess the big question is this: Is moving away from X practical?

If Red Hat were planning to do this I'd find it believable, but I'm not sure Canonical would manage to pull this off.

Of course not, so then what; does Canonical plan to run both Wayland and X? Two display servers at once?

The Wayland site seems to claim (from my understanding of it after a brief look) that Wayland can run as an X client, and X can run as a Wayland client. So immediate porting of a tonne of stuff should not be necessary. However, I too question how Ubuntu plans to integrate this Wayland thing, or both things, in an Ubuntu any time soon..

There was another similar LXer article yesterday about this Wayland + Ubuntu. One valid point, was that X was designed in another era of computing, and with different goals in mind. But, one thing in particular that was mentioned in that article, is that X was designed with "network transparency in mind" -- and they didn't make explicitly clear where wayland falls in this area. I got the impression that it was not a significant consideration for the Wayland/Ubuntu combination. If it falls flat, there may be a lot of work yet to make Wayland capable of doing everything we still need X to do, with an eye on transparency.

Definitely potential here for a big change down the road, for the GNU/Linux display system. But it won't be tomorrow.