OSNews:

OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/25107/X_Org_Server_1_11_Released Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Fri, 24 May 2013 00:43:25 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487363 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487363 Thom, I'm not complaining, but I'm just curious why this release merits a mention in particular. Any reason? Sun, 28 Aug 2011 20:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cmchittom) Comments RE: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487365 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487365 It was submitted?

I don't follow X development, but if someone submits it, why not mention it once in a while? Sun, 28 Aug 2011 21:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments RE: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487366 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487366 Maybe its the last interesting release, before every distro is switching to wayland :-D Sun, 28 Aug 2011 21:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (churlish_Helmut) Comments RE[2]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487368 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487368

It was submitted?

Fair enough! Sun, 28 Aug 2011 21:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cmchittom) Comments RE[2]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487376 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487376

Maybe its the last interesting release, before every distro is switching to wayland :-D

I hope so, I really want to see Wayland being adopted already. Sun, 28 Aug 2011 22:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (diegoviola) Comments RE[3]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487377 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487377 Phoronix (who do follow X development) had an article about the current state of Wayland in Ubuntu not long ago. Short version: it's useless in its current state.

I'm sure it will come along sooner or later, though. Sun, 28 Aug 2011 23:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (No it isnt) Comments RE[4]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487380 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487380

Phoronix (who do follow X development) had an article about the current state of Wayland in Ubuntu not long ago. Short version: it's useless in its current state.

I'm sure it will come along sooner or later, though.

I've been following Wayland very closely and I don't think it's useless. Sure it's not usable right now but I also think it's far from being useless. I mean, most open source drivers already work with it (nouveau, intel, radeon).

Xorg can run as a Wayland client. GTK+ 3 and Qt 4.8/5.0 also has native Wayland support. KWin is currently being refactored to have Wayland support.

We only need window managers to be ported to Wayland now, so we can start using it.Edited 2011-08-28 23:43 UTC Sun, 28 Aug 2011 23:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (diegoviola) Comments RE[3]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487383 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487383

"Maybe its the last interesting release, before every distro is switching to wayland :-D

I hope so, I really want to see Wayland being adopted already. "

Doubt it. Got a feeling Wayland is going to be as much of a mess as Gnome 3.Edited 2011-08-29 00:10 UTC Mon, 29 Aug 2011 00:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Yoko_T) Comments RE[4]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487385 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487385

"[q]Maybe its the last interesting release, before every distro is switching to wayland :-D

I hope so, I really want to see Wayland being adopted already. "

Doubt it. Got a feeling Wayland is going to be as much of a mess as Gnome 3. [/q]

A mess for people like you who are afraid of change maybe.

Those people who want a modern and smooth desktop welcome and see Wayland as a great thing, me included.Edited 2011-08-29 00:40 UTC Mon, 29 Aug 2011 00:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (diegoviola) Comments Comment by neticspace http://www.osnews.com/thread?487399 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487399 Dumb question. What happened to XFree86? Mon, 29 Aug 2011 02:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (neticspace) Comments RE: Comment by neticspace http://www.osnews.com/thread?487402 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487402 They mucked with the license. Nobody likes that. Mon, 29 Aug 2011 03:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Brynet) Comments RE: Comment by neticspace http://www.osnews.com/thread?487407 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487407 Little bit more information, from Wikipedia:

"In February 2004, with version 4.4.0, The XFree86 Project adopted a license change that the Free Software Foundation considered GPL incompatible. Most Linux distributions found the potential legal issues unacceptable and moved to a fork from before the license change. The first fork was the abortive Xouvert, but X.Org Server soon became dominant. Most XFree86 developers, who were already annoyed at other issues in the project, also moved to X.Org. The last CVS commit was February 2009.

[snip]

2004: Licensing controversy
Versions of XFree86 up to and including some release candidates for 4.4.0 were under the MIT License, a permissive, non-copyleft free software license. XFree86 4.4 was released in February 2004 with a change to the license: the addition of a credit clause, similar to that in the original BSD license, but broader in scope. Many projects relying on XFree86 found the new license unacceptable, and the Free Software Foundation considers it incompatible with the version 2 of the GNU General Public License, though compatible with version 3. The XFree86 Project states that the license is "as GPL compatible as any and all previous versions were", but does not mention which version or versions of the GPL this is valid for.

Some projects made releases (notably OpenBSD 3.5 and 3.6, and Debian 3.1 "Sarge") based on XFree86 version 4.4 RC2, the last version under the old license. Most operating systems incorporating XFree86 (including later versions of OpenBSD and Debian) migrated to the X.Org Server." Mon, 29 Aug 2011 03:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (steampoweredlawn) Comments binary drivers http://www.osnews.com/thread?487412 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487412 This will probably break binary drivers for no reason. Mon, 29 Aug 2011 04:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Gooberslot) Comments RE[5]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487413 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487413 We really need nvidia to make a Wayland driver. Mon, 29 Aug 2011 04:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (shmerl) Comments RE[4]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487414 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487414 Wayland is a composting display server. Not sure what does Gnome's mess have to do with it? Mon, 29 Aug 2011 04:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (shmerl) Comments RE: binary drivers http://www.osnews.com/thread?487416 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487416 ABI compatibility should not be set in stone.

If that means vendors have to recompile their drivers, so be it. Mon, 29 Aug 2011 05:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Brynet) Comments RE[2]: binary drivers http://www.osnews.com/thread?487417 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487417 Breaking compatibility for what is essentially a bugfix is just stupid IMO. Mon, 29 Aug 2011 05:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Gooberslot) Comments RE[6]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487423 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487423

We really need nvidia to make a Wayland driver.

AFAIK, Wayland depends on kernel modesetting (KMS) and on graphics memory management in the kernel.

Kernel developers will not allow binary code to be included in the kernel, as it violates the license (the exception allowed is for binary blobs that are firmware to be loaded into hardware, such as for wireless adaptors, which is not part of the kernel itself).

nVidia's binary blob graphics driver gets around this by nVidia writing an open source kernel loadable module wrapper, which interfaces to the kernel, and also to the binary blob. A two-way bridge, if you like.

Anyway, for now, nVidia cannot make a proprietary closed-source Wayland driver, because it won't be accepted by the Linux kernel developers to to have KMS and a graphics memory manager as open source and part of the kernel when the main piece of the driver is a loadable module and a binary blob. AFAIK this just won't work.

Nvidia have said they have no plans to make a Wayland driver.Edited 2011-08-29 07:09 UTC Mon, 29 Aug 2011 07:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (lemur2) Comments RE[7]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487424 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487424

"We really need nvidia to make a Wayland driver.

AFAIK, Wayland depends on kernel modesetting (KMS) and on graphics memory management in the kernel.

Kernel developers will not allow binary code to be included in the kernel, as it violates the license (the exception allowed is for binary blobs that are firmware to be loaded into hardware, such as for wireless adaptors, which is not part of the kernel itself).

nVidia's binary blob graphics driver gets around this by nVidia writing an open source kernel loadable module wrapper, which interfaces to the kernel, and also to the binary blob. A two-way bridge, if you like.

Anyway, for now, nVidia cannot make a proprietary closed-source Wayland driver, because it won't be accepted by the Linux kernel developers to to have KMS and a graphics memory manager as open source and part of the kernel when the main piece of the driver is a loadable module and a binary blob. AFAIK this just won't work.

Nvidia have said they have no plans to make a Wayland driver. "

I read a developer on #wayland have said that Wayland doesn't really require KMS. Mon, 29 Aug 2011 07:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (diegoviola) Comments RE[3]: binary drivers http://www.osnews.com/thread?487425 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487425

Breaking compatibility for what is essentially a bugfix is just stupid IMO.

Accepting obscured code which can bring down your whole product, without having any insight into what is in it or how it works, and consequently having no ability to fix it if your users complain, is just stupid IMO. Mon, 29 Aug 2011 07:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (lemur2) Comments RE[8]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487426 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487426

I read a developer on #wayland have said that Wayland doesn't really require KMS.

However, there's still the very popular proprietary drivers from AMD and NVIDIA that are not compatible with Wayland due to the lack of kernel mode-setting (KMS) and Graphics Execution Manager (GEM) buffer support

PS: Note that the open source drivers from Xorg for AMD/ATI GPUs are part of the Linux kernel, do support KMS and GEM, and hence will work with Wayland.Edited 2011-08-29 07:24 UTC Mon, 29 Aug 2011 07:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (lemur2) Comments RE[5]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487427 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487427 Then we simply have different conceptions of usability. Not being usable is exactly what I mean by 'useless'. Mon, 29 Aug 2011 07:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (No it isnt) Comments RE[9]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487428 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487428

" I read a developer on #wayland have said that Wayland doesn't really require KMS.

AFAIK it did have that dependency to start with, I don't know what the status is now.

Nevertheless, AFAIK, nVidia have no plans to support Wayland, and the Linux kernel developers have no plans to accomodate unfixable binary blobs from nvidia as part of the kernel.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODc2Mg

NVIDIA Says It Has No Plans To Support Wayland

However, there's still the very popular proprietary drivers from AMD and NVIDIA that are not compatible with Wayland due to the lack of kernel mode-setting (KMS) and Graphics Execution Manager (GEM) buffer support

PS: Note that the open source drivers from Xorg for AMD/ATI GPUs are part of the Linux kernel, do support KMS and GEM, and hence will work with Wayland. "

My opinion is that they will eventually have to support it. If they want to remain relevant on Linux at least. As the whole Linux ecosystem is moving to Wayland as we speak. Mon, 29 Aug 2011 07:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (diegoviola) Comments RE[5]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487430 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487430 Duplicated reply, removed.Edited 2011-08-29 08:12 UTC Mon, 29 Aug 2011 08:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sdeber) Comments RE[5]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487431 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487431 Hehe. Again, people are NOT afraid of changes in general. People are only afraid of BAD changes, e.g. from working to unemployment, from live to death, from being healthy to having heartattack. Mon, 29 Aug 2011 08:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sdeber) Comments RE[6]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487435 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487435

Hehe. Again, people are NOT afraid of changes in general. People are only afraid of BAD changes, e.g. from working to unemployment, from live to death, from being healthy to having heartattack.

I agree with you on that. Fear is a natural thing, and I have my own fears too (which are not related to Wayland at all).

But if we look at Wayland, it seems to be a good thing, a more simple architecture, clean code base, direct access to the compositor, ability for clients to control the rendering themselves enough that we never see tearing, flicker, lag, or redrawing problems.

Why fear this or call it a "mess"? it's not like we are going backwards. To me, staying forever with X is going backwards and a mess.Edited 2011-08-29 08:39 UTC Mon, 29 Aug 2011 08:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (diegoviola) Comments RE: binary drivers http://www.osnews.com/thread?487441 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487441 People, who explicitly want Linux desktop (me included) can make an effort to get OSS supported hardware and with inevitable standardization of basic video HW (with the arrival of GPU enabled CPUs like SNB, IVB and LLiano) that should be trivial.
For others Linux PC desktop has long been irrelevant anyway. By the time Wayland becomes ubiquitous, not much people would miss nvidia PC linux support. At the same time nvidia will fully support their mobile chips on linux where it actually makes any impact. Mon, 29 Aug 2011 09:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dsmogor) Comments Wayland... http://www.osnews.com/thread?487445 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487445 What a way to go off topic, "Oh, but Wayland is coming and it's going to make everything better!" I'm not impressed, what impresses me is how versatile X is. Going with Wayland will remove some of that versatility.

Network transparency is truly useful. Sure not to the majority of users out there, but then the majority of users feel that X.Org's performance is good enough.

I'm under that category, besides, if you try out a Gnome 2 distro like Debian Squeeze, or Scientific Linux on some Core 2 processor (not even the current generation, or even less than that) you can feel how snappy it is compared to Windows 7. This is even without any compositing window manager.

Why would we drop all the driver compatibility just to get some more speed? I also understand Wayland is supposed to be cleaner, but X.Org has helped a lot by moving to a more modular way of doing things.

Either way, I see Wayland as a "well we want improvements, but we don't want to help the project that is out there 'cause we want to write our own!" mentality.

This mentality can be good, but really isn't when you're talking about something that is to most things as important as the kernel itself. Actually at this point in time, the kernel is even less important than X, since we have alternatives to the Linux kernel. Mon, 29 Aug 2011 12:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (leech) Comments RE[7]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487452 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487452

To me, staying forever with X is going backwards and a mess.

X—and I cannot emphasize this enough—X works. Does it work optimally for all cases? Of course not. But for nearly all uses, it's fine. The only "going backwards" would be switching to Wayland before it works in at least as many places as X. Or, to put it another way, that would be PulseAudio come again. Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cmchittom) Comments RE[8]: But, why? http://www.osnews.com/thread?487506 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487506

"To me, staying forever with X is going backwards and a mess.

Xâ"and I cannot emphasize this enoughâ"X works. Does it work optimally for all cases? Of course not. But for nearly all uses, it's fine. The only "going backwards" would be switching to Wayland before it works in at least as many places as X. Or, to put it another way, that would be PulseAudio come again. "

It wont be PulseAudio all over again. And I'm sure the transition will be well made, most of the Wayland developers are also X developers, so no need to worry about it. Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (diegoviola) Comments RE: Wayland... http://www.osnews.com/thread?487509 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487509

What a way to go off topic, "Oh, but Wayland is coming and it's going to make everything better!" I'm not impressed, what impresses me is how versatile X is. Going with Wayland will remove some of that versatility.

Network transparency is truly useful. Sure not to the majority of users out there, but then the majority of users feel that X.Org's performance is good enough.

I'm under that category, besides, if you try out a Gnome 2 distro like Debian Squeeze, or Scientific Linux on some Core 2 processor (not even the current generation, or even less than that) you can feel how snappy it is compared to Windows 7. This is even without any compositing window manager.

Why would we drop all the driver compatibility just to get some more speed? I also understand Wayland is supposed to be cleaner, but X.Org has helped a lot by moving to a more modular way of doing things.

Either way, I see Wayland as a "well we want improvements, but we don't want to help the project that is out there 'cause we want to write our own!" mentality.

This mentality can be good, but really isn't when you're talking about something that is to most things as important as the kernel itself. Actually at this point in time, the kernel is even less important than X, since we have alternatives to the Linux kernel.

Wayland is not really duplicating or dropping any work. Check this from their FAQ:

Why duplicate all this work?

Wayland is not really duplicating much work. Where possible, Wayland reuses existing drivers and infrastructure. One of the reasons this project is feasible at all, is that Wayland reuses the DRI drivers, the kernel side GEM scheduler and kernel mode setting. Wayland doesn't have to compete with other projects for drivers and driver developers, it lives within the X.org, mesa and drm community and benefits from all the hardware enablement and driver development happening there.

http://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html

Wayland basically takes everything that works from Xorg and throws away what doesn't, it does also use existing kernel components and it simplifies the architecture for better performance and removing latency. Network transparency hasn't been defined yet, but I'm sure it will be there. I heard somebody was working on that on #wayland.Edited 2011-08-29 19:45 UTC Mon, 29 Aug 2011 19:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (diegoviola) Comments RE[2]: Wayland... http://www.osnews.com/thread?487593 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487593 There was a GSOC to add network transparency to Wayland: it failed.
This doesn't mean that network transparency is impossible to add to Wayland, just that it isn't simple.

BTW, I disagree with you (and quoting the Wayland FAQ is quite useless): Wayland re-invent a lot of things which wouldn't have been necessary if the 'GPU-memory sharing' had been added as an option in X12 (X12=X11 removing all the obsolete options+GPU memory sharing option) instead of a separate project. Tue, 30 Aug 2011 09:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (renox) Comments RE: Wayland... http://www.osnews.com/thread?487617 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487617

Network transparency is truly useful. Sure not to the majority of users out there, but then the majority of users feel that X.Org's performance is good enough.

Would people please shut up about network transparency. Yes, it is useful...

but network transparency as handled by X11 is really antiquated. None of the toolkits draw with X11 any more so the way things should be handled these days is that the toolkits should handle remote drawing.

Either way you can run x within wayland for all the applications that are not ported (much like Xquartz).

I'm under that category, besides, if you try out a Gnome 2 distro like Debian Squeeze, or Scientific Linux on some Core 2 processor (not even the current generation, or even less than that) you can feel how snappy it is compared to Windows 7. This is even without any compositing window manager.

I suggest you spin up that cpu with a heavy load and then check out the amazing snappiness. the thing here is that without compositing you're using the cpu for graphics, which is far more inefficient than using the gpu. Compositing isn't supposed to make things "snappier" just improve the experience (like not spinning up the cpu when drag gin windows etc).

Why would we drop all the driver compatibility just to get some more speed? I also understand Wayland is supposed to be cleaner, but X.Org has helped a lot by moving to a more modular way of doing things.

Either way, I see Wayland as a "well we want improvements, but we don't want to help the project that is out there 'cause we want to write our own!" mentality.

that isn't really an accurate characterization of the project. It is more like
"I wonder what I can do without being encumbered by X". Then everyone else jumping up and considering it a replacement instead of a research project (I imagine the excitement is due to people being fed up with all the craftiness found in X).

This mentality can be good, but really isn't when you're talking about something that is to most things as important as the kernel itself. Actually at this point in time, the kernel is even less important than X, since we have alternatives to the Linux kernel.

For one thing the Kernel is a lot younger than X. It also has far more developers and a structure that allows it to stay in continual development. X has very few developers and it's architecture frightens a lot of people away (there isn't much influx of new developers). If a more maintainable modern display server is used then chances are that new features are added more quickly and more developers join, two things that are the biggest weakness in X. Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (_txf_) Comments RE[4]: binary drivers http://www.osnews.com/thread?487744 http://www.osnews.com/thread?487744

...and consequently having no ability to fix it if your users complain, is just stupid IMO.

You really live in a naive world, don't you? Wed, 31 Aug 2011 03:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Slambert666) Comments