This document discusses Gnome on Wayland. It provides an overview of Wayland as a new window server that is intended to replace X and is being adopted by desktop environments like Gnome, KDE, and Enlightenment. It notes that Wayland is currently experimental in Gnome but may be fully implemented by March 2014. It also outlines some of the architectural differences between X and Wayland like the removal of the rendering API in Wayland.

1. Gnome on Wayland
At a Glance
Seong-ho Cho
Gnome Korea

2. Wayland?

3. Wayland?

4. Wayland?
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New-generation window server replacement for X window server
New display ground for Enlightenment, GNOME and KDE
Compositor protocol to talk to a client
Supports more powerful display method
Doesn’t have rendering API
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“every frame is perfect, by which I mean that applications will be able to
control the rendering enough that we'll never see tearing, lag, redrawing
or flicker.” - by Kristian Høgsberg

5. History of Wayland
• Started at 2008 as a spare-time independent project by
Kristian Høgsberg from RedHat
• Became a freedesktop.org project in October 2010
• It was tried as a GSoC project in 2011, but wasn’t
successful
• Quite recently, Nvidia releases graphic driver which
supports EGL API.
– Nvidia graphic card can fully support wayland

6. Current Status
• Almost fully adopted in Enlightenment E18
• Experimentally (and partially) adopted in
GNOME 3.10
• Still pre-alpha release in KDE
• Included in Qt 5
– has some bug such as “Fail to compile” … :S

7. Why Wayland We Should Use?
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Communication problem within X system
Need to make more brilliant user experience interface
Trend-shifting from desktop to mobile devices
X protocol is too old (developed in three decades ago)
Hard to apply new method onto the environment
based on X display server

8. Would You Remember?

9. X Server Architecture
GNOME
GNOME
KDE
KDE
Xfce
Xfce
E17,18
E17,18
X.Org Server
X.Org Server
XOrg-Evdev
XOrg-Evdev
drivers
drivers
XOrg-Input
XOrg-Input
drivers
drivers
Kernel Drivers
Xscreen
Xscreen
Frame
Frame
Compiz
Compiz
Plasma
Plasma
Xorg-Video
Xorg-Video
drivers
drivers
Proprietary
Proprietary
drivers
drivers
Final
Final
Frame
Frame
EGL
EGL
Gnome
Gnome
Shell
Shell
Compositor
Compositor
DRI
DRI

10. X Server Architecture (Simp.)

11. Wayland Architecture
Desktop Widget
Desktop Widget
Gnome
Gnome
Shell
Shell
KDE
KDE
KWin
KWin
Applications
Applications
Enlight.
Enlight.
DR18
DR18
GTK+
GTK+
Qt
Qt
OpenGL (EGL/GLES)
Wayland-server
Wayland-server
Weston Compositor
Weston Compositor
Kernel Modules
EFL
EFL
Direct
Direct
Rendered
Rendered
Frame
Frame
Final
Final
Frame
Frame

12. Wayland Architecture (Simp.)

13. Gnome on Wayland
• Now on experimental state (unstable)
• It may be completed to implement on Mar, 2014
(in a guess by release schedule)
• Components’ list and a relation within the system
will be almost totally changed due to this
– So, there can be some problem in a system-view
• But!

14. Gnome & Wayland
Architecture

15. X on Wayland Compatibility

16. Wayland Components
on the Gentoo System
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Packages
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dev-libs/wayland
dev-libs/weston
media-libs/mesa
x11-libs/gtk+
Some keywords should be added to …
– /etc/make.conf USE=“wayland wayland-compositor xwayland”
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I warn you
– Do not change OpenRC to systemd until you totally know
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what setting value can(not) be migrated
where value should be moved to
– Do not change latest Qt version 5 with “wayland” feature
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very unstable

17. Wayland on Ubuntu
• Install packages
– sudo apt-get install build-essential libtool makedepend xutilsdev bison flex x11-dev libx11-dev glproto-dev libglproto-dev
x11proto-gl-dev x11proto-dri2-dev libxext-dev libxdamage-dev
libxdamage-dev libxfixes-dev libx11-xcb-dev libxcb-glx0-dev
libxcb-dri2-0-dev libudev-dev libxcb-xfixes0-dev llvm-dev
• Follow instruction to build wayland
– http://wayland.freedesktop.org/building.html
• Making toolkits to work on wayland is “working state” due
to Gnome desktop environment

18. for the Other Issues...
• Wayland is in the test (research) progress for
variety type of system such as embedded
devices
• You can reach the time to use full featured
“very stable” desktop environment from Oct,
2014 (maybe?)

19. Conclusion
• Wayland is the brand new display server can replace X
server
• Wayland brings benefit for a performance to us by
combining both wayland-server and waylandcomposite part into the wayland server and by
supporting two or more frame buffer
• We don’t have to worry about disappearing X
– developers will sustain X environment for a more years for
a compatibility with legacy system

20. Making Wayland Contribution
• Git repo: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/wayland
• Mailing list:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/wayl
• IRC: #wayland on freenode
• Bugzilla:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/enter_bug.cgi?produ

21. Reference
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http://maps.google.com/
http://wayland.freedesktop.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(display_server_protocol)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System
https://phab.enlightenment.org/w/wayland/
https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.10/
https://www.tizen.org/sites/default/files/lfcs2012_barnes.pdf
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Wayland
http://www.slideshare.net/max_posedon/wayland-state-in-gentoo

22. Gnome Techtalk Event Note.
• You can download this slide from Gnome
Korea Blog (about 1 week or more later)
• WebKit presentation will be presented in a
1~2 month later by a guest speaker
• Gnome Techtalk Event for a next month will
be opened at Mid or Late November.

23. Thank you