Hi, Well, just as I expected, people are very interested in this bold move by Canonical. Let me throw in some tech details (as I interpret it), so that we can make better judgment.
On Nov 13, 11:44 pm, Saji Nediyanchath <saj...@gmail.com> wrote: > What I understood from the decision is that Xserver is > something like a legacy software, it had not been designed for graphics > intensive applications. That assessment seems to be same as Shuttleworth's. The original X- server was not written keeping in mind the minimum GPU/graphics- acceleration capabilities that we have today - even in smart phones. Also unexpected was the rise of standards like OpenGL and DirectX. Xserver was later retrofitted to work with them, but became unmanageable over time when software like Compiz was written. > And due to that the programmers lose their precious > time writing unnecessarily long code to overcome that. Application programmers rarely write code that directly interact with X-server. Rather, it is the job of the gui-toolkit (gtk/qt) and window-manager (metacity/kwin/compiz) to do that. We program the application to interact with toolkit and window-manager, and they talk to the x-server. So, as long as the gui-toolkit and window-managers are modified to work with Wayland, there will be absolutely no difference in the way we program or the way even old gui applications work. > And hopefully that decision comes up with some good results in time for Ubuntu > 11.04. I believe that Canonical, backed up by the Ubuntu community can > surely succeed in this. I don't know about that. Shuttleworth gave a time-line of about 4 years for that! On Nov 13, 2:36 pm, "ranjith.saj...@gmail.com" <ranjith.saj...@gmail.com> wrote: > I support Canonical for This move. Wayland with X-tunneling will be good. I doubt that Wayland can do display tunneling - though I share your sentiment (I want display tunneling as well!). First of all, Wayland is not another implementation of X-server. It is a completely different display server. In case of X-server, the application/toolkit talks to the server using network protocols. These messages can be routed over the network, and you get X-tunneling - application in one system and display in another. But in case of Wayland, the server and the app/toolkit communicates through GPU shared memory buffer. There is a block of RAM (the buffer) in the video card that the server and the application shares. When the app wants and update of screen, it directly manipulates the buffer and notifies the server. The server just reads the buffer and updates the screen. Wayland uses a Linux kernel feature known as 'direct rendering' to do this. This essentially means that the app and server should be on the same machine to share the buffer. Theoretically, it is possible to separate the display and app into 2 machines. You just need to create identical buffers in both machines. Whenever the app modifies its buffer, some program should copy these changes and send it to the display machine over the network. There, another program should receive the changes and implement it on the Wayland server's copy buffer. However, this introduces coherence problem - you need to avoid a situation where the 2 buffers are different (similar to cache coherence - if your subject is computer science). This method is no different and no better than techniques already in use - like VNC or Windows RDP. Frankly, with Wayland, true display-tunneling would be lost forever. On Nov 13, 8:19 pm, rakesh kr <rakeshkausthub...@gmail.com> wrote: > Yes i also agree with that Mandriva is many times better than ubuntu > i wonder why people become followers of ubuntu.? I really fail to understand why Ubuntu attract such ill-will over such bold moves. Eventually, Ubuntu experiments end up as upstream standards (like pulse-audio and libnotify). What I find is a 'purist' culture (no offense intended) that opposes anything that changes traditional GNU/Linux. The fact is that Wayland is as open-source as X- server - it is even hosted by freedesktop.org. Normal users wont perceive any change due to the switch, if not a better user experience. The installation will be smaller, snappier and cleaner. Infact, the Wayland server was first introduced in the Mobile OS - Meego by Intel and Nokia (and may be Android too). The difference is that Meego and Android are considered as new OSs -even though they use GNU and Linux. Ubuntu is only considered as another GNU/Linux distribution. And GNU/Linux distros need a bold change like this if they are ever going to survive. The only ones to loose with Wayland are those who use X-tunneling for a living. Infact, very few of us have used it for anything other than satisfying our curiosity. Regards, Gokul Das -- "Freedom is the only law". 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