Whatever happened to Wayland?

[Rahul Sundaram]

On 10/22/2012 01:31 AM, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> On 10/21/2012 09:59 AM, Christopher Svanefalk wrote:
>> What would be some key benefits of replacing X with Wayland?
>
> http://lwn.net/Articles/517375/
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(display_server_protocol)
>
> Wayland lacks a lot of features that exist in X.org, currently.  I think
> the idea that X11 can't be fixed, as presented in the first link, is
> overstated.

Short version: X11 can certainly be fixed.  The fix is called Wayland.

Longer version:  The problem inherent to any real fix at the protocol 
level would involve breaking backward compatibility and we have seen a 
large amount effort go into maintaining that compatibility through a 
patchwork of extensions that has pushed forward X far beyond its 
original limitations.  However that comes at a very significant cost in 
terms of code complexity and people willing to work on X have dwindled 
down partly because of this c.f Google SoC and Xorg.

Wayland was started by a major Xorg developer and has the support of 
several other Xorg developers because it doesn't throw away and restart 
everything from scratch. It uses infrastructure built over a number of 
years including KMS, DRI2 and so on.  With the advent of xwayland, 
compatibility concerns are addressed as well.  Having said that, there 
are likely to be teething issues and transition is going to be very slow 
and incremental.  The ability to run X apps will have to be retained 
pretty much forever anyway.

Rahul