Ubuntu moving towards Wayland

[Casey Dahlin]

On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 02:28:10PM -0500, Brian Wheeler wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-11-09 at 14:24 -0500, Casey Dahlin wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 02:14:32PM -0500, Brian Wheeler wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2010-11-09 at 14:05 -0500, Casey Dahlin wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 01:44:19PM -0500, Brian Wheeler wrote:
> > > > > 
> > > > > And where does that sit in the architecture? 
> > > > > 
> > > > > Looking over the architecture page (2nd figure) it looks like the only
> > > > > way to get the kind of network transparency that X has under Wayland is
> > > > > to put the network between the Wayland client and Wayland Compositor.
> > > > > Which would mean that the passing of events has to be networkable from
> > > > > the start.  If its put on top it ends up being the VNC model of doing
> > > > > things and that sucks in a big way.
> > > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > Basically you'd run an alternate compositor in your ssh session that
> > > > would read out the buffers, compress them, and send them over the
> > > > network instead of compositing them into a larger buffer and scanning
> > > > them out.
> > > > 
> > > > --CJD
> > > 
> > > That's an interesting solution.  If I logged into a remote machine would
> > > I have to run a separate compositor for every application or one per
> > > remote connection?  I suppose the compositor could be started
> > > automatically if the wayland libraries looked for an env setting (the
> > > same way X looks for DISPLAY).
> > 
> > When you did ssh --wayland, the remote ssh session daemon would start
> > that special compositor and inject its address into the environment so
> > things you launched under that session would use it. Then your ssh
> > client would start a proxy wayland client to recieve the compressed
> > buffers and create windows on your local wayland compositor.
> > 
> > Best part is, if you composited the buffers beforehand and then sent the
> > result as a giant window, you get VNC functionality, so you only need
> > one protocol for both.
> > 
> 
> I assume there would be a fallback method for older ssh clients?
> 

It would involve a bit more effort on the user's part (most of which
could be rolled into a script) but you could set up the final scenario
using present-day ssh assuming you had the wayland bits on both ends.

--CJD