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The Real Story Behind Wayland and X - Daniel Stone (linux.conf.au 2013)

Mladen Mijatov

91 subscribers • 1 video on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 14 people: 13 on Hacker News and 1 on Lobsters.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2013 to 2026.
  • Presented by Daniel Stone, X.Org and Wayland developer

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

103K views13 years ago14 recommendations

Systems programmingGraphics and audioLinuxRenderingOperating systems

Daniel Stone explains the history of the X Window System, its architectural limitations, and why Wayland was designed to replace it.

Please note, that I don't own this video. At the time servers hosting original file were overloaded so I re-uploaded for user's convenience. Original file was downloaded from: mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2013/ogv/The_real_story_be…

Why it's here

14 people recommend this

What people say. Widely recommended as the definitive and highly entertaining explanation of why X11 is obsolete and why Wayland is necessary.

calvinon Lobsters • Recommends

The Real Story Behind Wayland and X (2013)
19View on Lobsters

jmhainon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Facts about Wayland vs X”

Daniel Stone actually did a talk involving much of the same subject matter called "The Real Story behind Wayland and X". I'd recommend that over this article (which was partially written by the same guy). He's actually a really charismatic speaker. link to this video
View on Hacker News

jabiralion Hacker News • Recommends

On “Some Ugly Code Can Get Nvidia's Linux Driver Working with Accelerated XWayland”

I remember finding this video enlightening, a talk on the subject by someone who has worked on both X and Wayland: link to this video
View on Hacker News

DyslexicAtheiston Hacker News • Recommends

On “Wayland is not ready as a 1:1 compatible Xorg replacement just yet”

> when in fact the lead developers on Wayland are the actual Xorg maintainers. Daniel Stone0 incredibly funny and educational talk1 from 2013 could help many critics who missed the 3 decade long ongoing discussion of why X is bad . We've talked about this already in the mid 90ies (when there were no alternatives) and now 8 years after this popular linux.conf.au talk, people still having troubles understanding why X has always been a terrible tradeoff for both security and performance (well for literally everything). 0 link 1 The Real Story Behind Wayland and X link to this video edit: BUT X IS THE UNIX WAY! << so what is the 1 thing X does, and what is it doing well?
View on Hacker News

SXXon Hacker News • Recommends

On “I'm tired of this anti-Wayland horseshit”

Mandatory video to watch for all X fans: > Daniel Stone ~ The real story behind Wayland and X' link to this video
View on Hacker News

jerfon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir”

The Wayland people really sound like they know what they are talking about, based on decades of experience. See, for instance: link to this video Are these people designing a better answer to Wayland because it's really better, or because it always looks easy when you don't intimately understand the problem space? I honestly don't know, but it's a question I'd like answered before I get excited.
View on Hacker News

runekson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir”

Here's a good video explaining some of X's problems: link to this video Long story short: the X11 protocol (which Xorg/X is an implementation of) was created in 1980, and was made for drawing stuff like this: link The important distinction between X and any modern display server is that nowadays we separate compositor (that which composites application content into what you see on the display) and toolkit (that which draws text boxes, buttons, progress bars etc.) into two. X was designed to do both these things. This isn't practical for several reasons. So far people have worked around this issue, but many feel it's time to stop working around it (since the X codebase is a complete mess due to this "…
View on Hacker News

forgottenpasson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Xwayland”

…cation, and then switch back and forth to wayland to use every other program. It would be nice if there was a X server that worked as a wayland client and could put the X-only application on your wayland desktop. That's Xwayland. * For a better explanation on ditching X, and what Wayland is: see this talk from one of the X dudes working on Wayland link to this video…
View on Hacker News

lomnakkuson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Fedora 25: With Wayland, Linux has never been easier (or more handsome)”

…ll never go back to wanting in any type of server process. The trade-off between bandwidth and latency has changed fundamentally in basically all areas of computing, but especially anything to do with graphics. 1 Alright, there might be a few bits and bobs that are missing, but nothing major as witnessed by the very article under discussion. 2 link to this video…
View on Hacker News

lvillanion Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ubuntu 16.04 Unity 8 current state [video]”

"X isn't network transparent anymore" according to Daniel Stone (longtime X.org and Wayland developer): link to this video If you use X11 forwarding with any application that uses a modern toolkit (Gtk+ 3, Qt 5, maybe also Gtk+ 2 and Qt 4) you are just pushing uncompressed pixmaps over the wire, as a bad substitute for VNC/RDP/etc. Xpra adds image compression on top, AFAIK, so it should be slightly better. The entire video ( link to this video ) provides a good overview as to why people that have been working on X11 for many many years decided to start Wayland.
View on Hacker News

emersionon Hacker News • Recommends

On “The X.Org Server Is Abandonware?”

This talk "The Real Story Behind Wayland and X" by Daniel Stone (a longtime X developer) may debunk some misconceptions in this thread: link to this video
View on Hacker News

indoleringon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Wayland is not ready as a 1:1 compatible Xorg replacement just yet”

…being stuck with an insecure, buggy, and visually glitchy mess forever. > Red Hat doesn't believe in the Linux ecosystem I have my qualms with Red Hat too, but my point was that Wayland was created by Xorg developers because they tried and failed to make X11 competitive. Seriously, just go watch this XFree86/Xorg/Wayland developer's talk 1. 1: link to this video…
View on Hacker News

big-and-smallon Hacker News • Recommends

On “KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support”

> I live in a cave and am not a system programmer -- what's so wrong with X11 so people need to replace it with something else instead of improving it? This 12 years old video explains it better than anything I ever seen: link to this video
View on Hacker News

nickelproon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years”

Don't take it from me, Daniel Stone has a whole talk on the motivation for Wayland: link to this video Broadly, the X Server has a bunch of capabilities which are irrelevant. The modern model is really Window <-> Compositor based, and the X Server protocol is just a pointless middle man in that exchange.
View on Hacker News

slackaon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ubuntu: One OS, one interface, all devices”

…stake they made was shipping Unity half-baked. Yes, it can get unresponsive on low-end hardware. But much of this comes from poor 3D driver support under Linux, and bloated, slow, and outdated X2 and compiz. The sooner those two die, the sooner we can have a responsive modern 3D accelerated compositing window managers under Linux. 1 link 2 link to this video…
View on Hacker News

pdkl95on Hacker News • Mentions

On “Gnome Developers Re-Implement Middle-Click Paste”

> href Seen it, and seen the talk1. > we don't really "use" X these days GTK+ and QT do not use a lot of X, as they render all their widgets with (e.g.) libcairo.so and libpango-1.0.so that only treat X as a framebuffer. Unfortunately, projecting your own usage habits onto others is an easy trap to fall into. For example, one minor data point, from my desktop system - I use the built-in font server: $ rdb -q | grep 'URxvt.*font' URxvt*font: -xos4-terminus-medium-r-normal--14-140-72-72-c-80-iso10646-1 Why? Because it's (MUCH) faster to draw, doesn't slow down even remotely, and after is much clearer to read on the screen than the blurry mess2 that pango/etc gives you. /// that said ///…
View on Hacker News