

Wayland anti-FUD - VMG
http://ppaalanen.blogspot.de/2012/05/wayland-anti-fud.html

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rwmj
I like the way he says "possible network layer".

It's the lack of network transparency which is the problem. No one's
complaining about the overhead of it, because Wayland lacks this crucial
feature.

Edit: Other features lacking in Wayland: A close button which works,
consistent decoration across apps, efficient cut and paste, ... And things
which Wayland has that are basically bugs: windows which are rotated at non-90
degree angles.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Remember the Unix philosophy? Something about small, well defined components
doing a single thing well?

X violates it in every way possible. It has probably found a few ways of
violating it that are _not_ possible, and done it anyway. Wayland is a part of
moving back to the roots. It will lack at least 95% of all the features X has,
because they really, really shouldn't be implemented as a part of a huge,
monolithic system that has to run as root. Instead, all those features should
be their own libraries/daemons.

As such, Wayland will never understand networks the way X does. Which is good,
because it shouldn't. Wayland will never do anything put pass OGL handles
between processes, and do the last few stages of compositing, and forward
input. It actually has a well defined scope, unlike the amorphous blob that is
X.

Nothing stops you from implementing a network transport layer _above_ Wayland.
And somebody will. And since there is room for competing implementations, in
less than two years, there will be _better_ network display protocols than
what X does. When you split huge, monolithic things into smaller parts with
clearly defined interfaces between them, the parts themselves become easier to
make.

 _> Other features lacking in Wayland:_

 _\- A close button which works_

This is trivial. Just don't draw the close button with the application.
Personally, I want my "close program" in a static place on the screen, so
that's not a problem at all. If you want close buttons above windows, make the
window manager put a small box it owns in the upper corner.

 _\- consistent decoration across apps_

When is the last time you tried to run apps from different toolkits on the
same desktop? Notice that they look the same _because it's implemented in the
toolkit_? X doesn't have consistent decorations across apps, and hasn't had
them for a decade.

 _\- efficient cut and paste_

Why, oh why should that be part of the display server? Just why? Do you just
want to pile all the features in the system into one big ball? And as for
efficient, just how often do you cut and paste anyway?

Wayland lacks feature X is not a valid criticism against Wayland. Because that
does not mean that a system using Wayland lacks feature X. And the primary
feature of Wayland is that it implements as few features as possible.

~~~
jlgreco
Have there ever been any successful cases of a UNIX philosophy window system
which could be used to back up the _"really shouldn't be implemented as a part
of a huge, monolithic system"_ thing?

In most circumstances I'm totally cool with accepting the superiority of the
UNIX philosophy as an axiom, but I don't think I am in this particular case.

~~~
throwaway64
plan9's rio is very unixy, and quite "successful" at what it does.

~~~
jlgreco
I was thinking more along the lines of: do Windows or Mac OSX do it in a more
unix-y way than X?

When it comes to "GUI stuff" I am a consumer. I don't care about better
software engineering practices in my windowing system unless that means the
experience will be better for me. So far I am not seeing that offered by
Wayland, _nor_ am I seeing any real evidence that better engineering _would or
could_ offer me a better experience. If this were still 1995 and battling X
was still something I did then I'd be less inclined to ask for evidence, but
these days X is simply something I only know that I use because it _used to
be_ a hassle. I haven't had to know about it for years, which I think is the
way Windows and OSX work for their users.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
The advantages of a more unixy display system are all indirect. Right now,
working on that side is pretty arcane. Wayland will make it much simpler, so
that cool ideas and new innovations will get turned into reality faster.

The only direct advantage Wayland will bring is a flicker-free and tear-free
desktop.

~~~
jlgreco
I'm under the impression that flicker-free/tear-free are features that KVM
brings to Wayland and that X already has if you use KVM drivers. Is that not
the case?

~~~
hollerith
Do you really mean Kernel Virtual Machine or did you mean Kernel Mode Setting?

~~~
jlgreco
Ah sorry, KMS. Been working with KVM too much recently ;)

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pkmays
Whoa wait, we are really supposed to replace X with something that only works
on Linux? Way to give BSD guys the middle finger.

~~~
FooBarWidget
Or the BSD guys can implement the required infrastructure and bring their
kernels to the modern era, instead of requiring userspace programs to hack
around their lack of features. The only people giving the BSD guys the finger
is themselves.

~~~
rjsw
The problem is that the only documentation for the "required infrastructure"
is the Linux source itself which is constantly changing.

~~~
johntb86
I doubt that the BSD infrastructure has to match the Linux infrastructure
exactly for the Wayland protocol to work on it. Mostly what it has to do is
mode-setting in the kernel, enable sharing of graphics buffers between
processes, and allowing libkms and mesa to work on top of it. The exact kernel
api shouldn't matter for most applications.

