Ubuntu / Unity Going With Wayland Rather Than X

[oz]

It looks like there are more big changes on the way for Ubuntu users:

The next major transition for Unity will be to deliver it on Wayland, the OpenGL-based display management system.

Mark Shuttleworth Blog Archive Unity on Wayland

[elija]

It's starting to feel like Mark Shuttleworth is personally out to undermine all my hard earned knowledge!

[arinlares]

Does anybody remember the days when Fedora was bleeding edge, and Ubuntu was delightfully outdated? I've only been following Linux for two or three years, and I can.

I don't like the idea of an openGL based display system at the moment, but if drivers improve like Mr. Shuttleworth seems to think and hopes to help, I look forward to whichever release this will first be used in.

[MikeTbob]

Man! What a filthy nasty mess this is going to be when it hits the Internets and people start having problems with it. Anyone got a howto for Wayland?
Wayland (display server) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Also, I noticed Wayland is not GPL software, it's under an MIT License, which is GPL compatible. I learn something new everyday.
MIT License - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[MikeTbob]

A related link.
Is Canonical’s Unity Move Divisive? | Linux Magazine

[Etna]

The fact that Canonical sees the need to make this kind of disruptive changes in order to get non-Linux desktop users comfortable on an alternative OS should be a very clear sign of just what is wrong with the linux ecosystem.

developers are not interested or are very hostile in creating 'new' things for Linux. Because of this, current applications, frameworks and standards are still primitively ancient, where developers only care about adding a little feature here and there to ensure that their ecosystem does not become obsolete. they are too scared to reinvent the wheel and break something even if it has the potential to be a game changer.

as much as i dislike Ubuntu as a distro, i can see where Shuttleworth is going with this. even a dummy can understand by now that in order to bring up the 'desktop experience' on a Linux distro up to par to offer a compelling alternative from the likes of Windows and OS X requires more than just enhancements and improvements to X and Gnome/KDE. It requires someting totally new, and you need someone with the kind of balls (for the lack of a better word) to make himself an emeny of current implementations to make that 'new' thing.

On a sidenote, I'm very interested to find out how the proprietary display drivers from ATI and Nvidia will install in Wayland, or if a user is required to switch back to X if such drivers are installed.

[MASONTX]

In the linux mag article Tbob cites, the author doesn't think Unity is ready for the desk top yet. I don't know much about Wayland, but can the same be said for it? What does the community think?

[MikeTbob]

I think Wayland is too new for anyone here to have an opinion. No one has seen it yet or really even know what it does exactly.

[reed9]

I'd wager this will prove to be one of the more prescient moves on Shuttleworth's part. It's seemed to me since about the time I learned what X server even was that there was room and a need for an alternative to X. This move seems pretty exciting to me, though I think it will be a rough transition. The open source drivers aren't yet up to the task. But again, it's betting on a bright future for linux and the open source graphics stack.

That said, from what I've seen of Unity (or GNOME 3.0 for that matter), I have absolutely no interest in using it. This move will probably ensure that I never use Ubuntu again, at least on a traditional computer/laptop.

[rokytnji]

Just another Link

Will window managers need to be rewritten for Wayland?

Yes. Canonical is investing in making Unity work on Wayland. It is expected that other window managers will be written for Wayland, and perhaps existing WMs will be ported to it in time, as well.

Will applications need to be rewritten or modified to work on Wayland?

Yes, due to the technical design differences of Wayland compared with X11, changes need to be made to client applications. In some cases, a simple recompilation using Wayland-enabled GTK+/Qt will be enough; in other cases minor changes are needed; in a few cases where extensive X11 functionality is used directly in the app, it will necessitate more extensive porting work.

Guess it is not going to be the Ubuntu your Daddy knew.