I'm typing this from a wayland session of the GNOME 3.14 beta (via Fedora 21 Branched). While there are still some serious bugs, I have to say I am very impressed. The synchronization problems and graphical glitches of X always made the Linux desktop feel second rate compared to Mac or Windows. With wayland, interactions with elements on the screen such as moving and resizing windows or dragging apps to the dash are perfectly in sync with the cursor. Not even Android has achieved this.
In addition, GNOME 3.14 is looking outstanding. With the latest design refinements, I find the interface significantly more attractive than OS X (before or after redesign). It's not quite there yet, but if the community can deliver a system with fully functional wayland, portable sandboxed app containers, and a stable development target, the Linux desktop truly will stand a chance against the proprietary competitors.
I've been using Linux for two decades and not experienced the graphical glitches you speak of. Moving and resizing windows? Nope. Some infuriating compiz bugs, sure.
Each time I've attempted to use Linux as my main OS it's always X11 that scares me off. Booting into console to edit xorg.conf gets tiring after a while, spending hundreds of dollars for graphics card that has more stable drivers, the general ancient 90's feel. I've tried it multiple times, but gave up each time.
Question if I may since you seem familiar with gnome. I use 3.12 and really enjoy it, but gnome shell (or mutter, or the js engine) seems to leak memory pretty badly. That is, if I mouse to the top left hot corner, then escape, I see its RSS increase, as probably expected. However, it increases each time I do this. I can get it to 500mb by doing nothing more than going into and out of the dash for a few minutes. In real use, after an eight hour day I see it anywhere from 700m to 1g rss. Any idea what's happening behind the scenes, or if this still happens in 3.14?
There seems to be a lot of limitations here. It is odd, sandboxing just the graphics stack. It isn't true sandboxing so all the benefits of sandboxing are not gained, but a lot of the disadvantages still come with it.
It sounds like something as simple as a keyboard macro manager would not be doable, nor would the Windows utility AutoHotKey.
I'd also hate to try and write UI test automation for Wayland apps. It seems like they've pretty much ruled that out all together.
Heck what about services that do browser test renders? Would those be possible?
And not allowing plug ins is just foolish. "I'm sorry, we dictate that you must divide your application up this way." Flash, for years, drove innovation on the web, billions of dollars of value were created by Flash, trying to say "That won't be allowed to happen again because I say so" is hubris of the worst sorts.
Since Wayland is a redesign of the graphics stack it looks like they decided to redesign it in a secure way rather than waiting for some system-wide security architecture to be designed. GNOME is working on full sandboxing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8219309
It sounds like something as simple as a keyboard macro manager would not be doable...
That's doable in the compositor/window manager.
I'd also hate to try and write UI test automation for Wayland apps.
AutoHotKey-like behavior is already severely limited on X (can't send to non-active windows, same with XTEST). That is, if you want to use it for macros. For UI test automation it's fine I guess.
ui automation will have to be there, as accessibility toolkits require it (that's how atk works). it's just going to require an additional wayland interface.
There is also ongoing work to figure out how best to support taking screenshots of the whole desktop. Users expect the feature, but it has major security implications. If an application can take a screenshot unattended, it can also use that capability to record username/password combinations and other sensitive data. The straightforward solution is to force screenshot capture to require a user to verify the action; that would at least allow the user to detect if an unauthorized screenshot attempt is made.
I know how this will come across, but .. sounds like UAC?
There was never anything wrong with the idea of UAC; the problem was the implementation. When the feature was first introduced so many Windows programs did things that caused UAC pop-ups that it because nothing more than an annoying click-through that no one paid attention to. It became nothing more than a default "okay."
I don't know... we've generally used suid binaries for this in the past? I suppose the display server will run as root, so the sane approach is to add a screenshot api, possibly writing the screenshot to a file/folder/socket with special permissions? ("special" because the gist here seems to be a wish to limit capabilities more finely than traditional unix user/group/others -- after all the user has access to the whole desktop (say with a digital camera) -- so the goal here is apparently to limit which applications can access other applications. At any rate, root should be able to read all process' memory, so taking a screenshot shouldn't be a problem... (I'm not saying take a screenshot by reading video memory, just that the level of access is equivalent).
Could another approach be to allow applications to flag a graphical element as secure and it will be excluded from any attempt by another process to read the screen? Don't even allow the superuser to take screenshots of passwords, credit cards, etc. They'll just show up as a black box.
An application can do all kinds of shit, can't it? It could probably replace your Browsers icon with an icon that starts a custom version of your Browser which uploads everything you type to some server.
yeah, something like that. I guess it'd be cool if you could just whitelist applications to do stuff, and have others pop out when requiring the permission.
Lack of global keybindings would keep me off wayland for a long time. At this point I am completely dependent on my keybinds in fluxbox for doing everything from resizing windows to opening programs. If I can't specify real defaults that stupid programs cannot interfere with it will be useless.
No, Wayland only makes it difficult for individual applications to define global keybindings - so, for example, a global Ctrl-Space to play/pause your music player would need some extra plumbing to be implemented. Your WM owns (well, is, in Wayland) the display server, so it can define whatever keybindings it wants.
So, this is a "Wayland back-end for Blender". Does that mean it renders real-time to a window in wayland? I'd think what most would want is a front-end for Wayland? What am I missing?
Writers (including the author of Wayland's home page) get enthusiastic about Gnome and KDE ports to Wayland, but what Wayland really needs is a port of either Firefox or Chrome/Chromium, and I've seen very little progress on that score.
Really? Chromium already has a fairly functional Wayland port [0] and Firefox just needs to upgrade to GTK 3, which is (admittedly optimistically) targeted for 32 [1].
[+] [-] jmhain|11 years ago|reply
In addition, GNOME 3.14 is looking outstanding. With the latest design refinements, I find the interface significantly more attractive than OS X (before or after redesign). It's not quite there yet, but if the community can deliver a system with fully functional wayland, portable sandboxed app containers, and a stable development target, the Linux desktop truly will stand a chance against the proprietary competitors.
[+] [-] Jasper_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pippy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] axaxs|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] com2kid|11 years ago|reply
It sounds like something as simple as a keyboard macro manager would not be doable, nor would the Windows utility AutoHotKey.
I'd also hate to try and write UI test automation for Wayland apps. It seems like they've pretty much ruled that out all together.
Heck what about services that do browser test renders? Would those be possible?
And not allowing plug ins is just foolish. "I'm sorry, we dictate that you must divide your application up this way." Flash, for years, drove innovation on the web, billions of dollars of value were created by Flash, trying to say "That won't be allowed to happen again because I say so" is hubris of the worst sorts.
[+] [-] wmf|11 years ago|reply
Since Wayland is a redesign of the graphics stack it looks like they decided to redesign it in a secure way rather than waiting for some system-wide security architecture to be designed. GNOME is working on full sandboxing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8219309
It sounds like something as simple as a keyboard macro manager would not be doable...
That's doable in the compositor/window manager.
I'd also hate to try and write UI test automation for Wayland apps.
That's possible either through accessibility interfaces ( https://developer.gnome.org/accessibility-devel-guide/stable... ) or the compositor/window manager. Note that many OS X "haxies" also use the accessibility API.
Heck what about services that do browser test renders?
That should be no problem using either a modified browser or modified compositor.
[+] [-] stelonix|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] audidude|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darklajid|11 years ago|reply
I know how this will come across, but .. sounds like UAC?
[+] [-] adestefan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e12e|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whoopdedo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aroman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] catern|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itry|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dethstar|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperion2010|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] catern|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] based2|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e12e|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hollerith|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmhain|11 years ago|reply
[0] https://01.org/ozone-wayland/blogs/tiagovignatti/2013/chromi...
[1] http://worldofgnome.org/optimistic-target-for-firefox-gtk3-i...
EDIT: Now running the GTK 3 Firefox port in a GNOME Wayland session, and it's working great!
[+] [-] catern|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spain|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wirrbel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aruggirello|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kremlin|11 years ago|reply
Is it not a bit ironic that this source of information about display technologies (among other things) uses tables for page layout?
[+] [-] dredmorbius|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] renox|11 years ago|reply