"We have no plans to support Wayland."

[borsook]

I don't blame nvidia for this, it's only to expected that they'll start working on Wayland compatibility only after it's widely used. So while a transitional, open drivers only period is to be expected it does bring some problems:
-terrible power management in all open drivers,
-poor 3d support
-no decent GUI configuration

Maybe all this will bring more attention to open drivers and if resources follow it might actually help speed their development up...

[pingufunkybeat]

-terrible power management in all open drivers,

This is a bit harsh. Dynamic PM is a bit glitchy, but profiles work great on ATI cards.

-poor 3d support

Agreed

-no decent GUI configuration

Can you give an example?

Most open drivers don't need any GUI configuration, and there are GUI xrandr frontends for changing resolution, configuring multi-head setups, and the like.

[LinuxID10T]

I hope they don't support Wayland... Ever. Did anyone ever hear of "If it ain't broke, then don't fix it."? Seriously, X has worked for 24 years and it has never been displaced for a reason. It is extendable, reliable, and networking. I use X's network transparency every day. I don't see why people wouldn't want this feature. More than anything, X needs X12, not Wayland. A serious overhaul, while retaining backward compatibility, is by far the best solution, in my opinion. Wayland has many, many fundamental flaws. First and foremost, what about the many people that still use X's network transparency? Second, what about the people that *can't* use compositing because their graphics card doesn't support it, or their CPU is far too slow? Third, forcing compositing will greatly degrade 3D performance, as shown in numerous Phoronix benchmarks. Fourth, what about the users of BSD, Solaris, OS X, and Windows (with Xming)? I just wish people would remember why we still have X 24 years later... Oh, actually, the first place issue is the drivers... What about all the older drivers, and the proprietary drivers, should we just leave them out in the cold?

[borsook]

This is a bit harsh. Dynamic PM is a bit glitchy, but profiles work great on ATI cards.

I'm not saying there is no great work done... but e.g. on my ATI HD3200 I get 20 minutes battery life more when I switch to ATI driver.

Can you give an example?

Most open drivers don't need any GUI configuration, and there are GUI xrandr frontends for changing resolution, configuring multi-head setups, and the like.

I mean things like 3d options (e.g. FSAA, Vsync), power settings etc.

[borsook]

I hope they don't support Wayland... Ever. Did anyone ever hear of "If it ain't broke, then don't fix it."? Seriously, X has worked for 24 years and it has never been displaced for a reason. It is extendable, reliable, and networking. I use X's network transparency every day. I don't see why people wouldn't want this feature. More than anything, X needs X12, not Wayland. A serious overhaul, while retaining backward compatibility, is by far the best solution, in my opinion. Wayland has many, many fundamental flaws. First and foremost, what about the many people that still use X's network transparency? Second, what about the people that *can't* use compositing because their graphics card doesn't support it, or their CPU is far too slow? Third, forcing compositing will greatly degrade 3D performance, as shown in numerous Phoronix benchmarks. Fourth, what about the users of BSD, Solaris, OS X, and Windows (with Xming)? I just wish people would remember why we still have X 24 years later... Oh, actually, the first place issue is the drivers... What about all the older drivers, and the proprietary drivers, should we just leave them out in the cold?

Just to answer some points:
-there's no serious work on 'x12' that's one of the reasons for wayland
-a lot functionality from x should and will become a part of wayland in the future, it's still at an early phase
-composting gives performance boost with some drivers, so it's not that simple
-even Nvidia TNT or Voodoo 3 support OpenGL... it's really really hard to find hardware without any openGL support on desktops... seriously what? Mach64?

[LinuxID10T]

Just to answer some points:
-there's no serious work on 'x12' that's one of the reasons for wayland
-a lot functionality from x should and will become a part of wayland in the future, it's still at an early phase
-composting gives performance boost with some drivers, so it's not that simple
-even Nvidia TNT or Voodoo 3 support OpenGL... it's really really hard to find hardware without any openGL support on desktops... seriously what? Mach64?

Despite having plenty of newer hardware, I still have my first laptop and many other old computers. My first laptop is from 1996 and has 16 mb of RAM. Despite this, using network transparency, it is plenty speedy and can even play video with X11's network transparency. I do know that *some* graphics cards will actually be faster with compositing, however, they would have to be pretty new, and the performance of the 3D will have to improve greatly for it to be of any effect. If anyone doesn't know and is reading this post, many newer graphics cards use 3D shaders for 2D rendering and dropped the 2D rendering unit. Also, I don't think you know just how slow a Nvidia TNT or Voodoo 3 is at desktop resolution using OpenGL... Not only that, but they don't even support the needed extensions. Perhaps this Wayland fiasco will kick the X.org devs into high gear to revamp X11...

[borsook]

Despite having plenty of newer hardware, I still have my first laptop and many other old computers. My first laptop is from 1996 and has 16 mb of RAM. Despite this, using network transparency, it is plenty speedy and can even play video with X11's network transparency. I do know that *some* graphics cards will actually be faster with compositing, however, they would have to be pretty new, and the performance of the 3D will have to improve greatly for it to be of any effect. If anyone doesn't know and is reading this post, many newer graphics cards use 3D shaders for 2D rendering and dropped the 2D rendering unit. Also, I don't think you know just how slow a Nvidia TNT or Voodoo 3 is at desktop resolution using OpenGL... Not only that, but they don't even support the needed extensions. Perhaps this Wayland fiasco will kick the X.org devs into high gear to revamp X11...

I'm not saying there is no 2d only hardware, I have one such computer in my basement I'm just saying that the number of such computers on the DESKTOP market is very, very slim and they will have absolutely no effect on anything. Your 16 mb RAM laptop does not run Ubuntu, be it with X or Wayland, so what's the problem? X will not die because Ubuntu chooses to use Wayland, there is going to be choice still. Oh, and btw - wayland's memory usage is smaller than X's...

[LinuxID10T]

I'm not saying there is no 2d only hardware, I have one such computer in my basement I'm just saying that the number of such computers on the DESKTOP market is very, very slim and they will have absolutely no effect on anything. Your 16 mb RAM laptop does not run Ubuntu, be it with X or Wayland, so what's the problem? X will not die because Ubuntu chooses to use Wayland, there is going to be choice still. Oh, and btw - wayland's memory usage is smaller than X's...

There really is no more dedicated 2D hardware in many new graphics chips... I know it doesn't run Ubuntu and I know it is a slim market for "desktop users..." However, many legacy enterprise applications still depend on X11's network transparency. BTW, it doesn't matter if X uses more memory than Wayland, Wayland doesn't have network transparency therefore it doesn't matter. The actual applications take up far more memory than either of the display servers do. Lastly, X may not die soon, but without support from Ubuntu, I think it will cause the development of display servers for UNIX-like OSes to fragment.

[borsook]

There really is no more dedicated 2D hardware in many new graphics chips... I know it doesn't run Ubuntu and I know it is a slim market for "desktop users..." However, many legacy enterprise applications still depend on X11's network transparency. BTW, it doesn't matter if X uses more memory than Wayland, Wayland doesn't have network transparency therefore it doesn't matter. The actual applications take up far more memory than either of the display servers do. Lastly, X may not die soon, but without support from Ubuntu, I think it will cause the development of display servers for UNIX-like OSes to fragment.

Is there any reason in the architecture preventing Wayland from having network transparency in the future? I honestly don't know, I never needed network transparency and never will. Wayland is not feature complete as of now, so maybe? Fragmentation can be bad (look at what happened to Compiz some time ago) but choice can be great and Wayland may really push forward development of drivers in so far a bit overlooked areas.

[Kano]

In theory it should be possible to add modesetting to nvidia/fglrx kernel modules and trigger that mode maybe using a module option. To support older x servers they will still need to support ums by default. kms look nice when it is working, definitely smoother than switching from vesa to X with text mode/splash screens but to be fair it is not much more than a tiny glich. There is no need to use wayland which might be interesting for devices with very low mem, but i don't know if the memory savings are worth the hassle. There are much bigger ram consumers, like the nvidia 260 series driver - when you want to use vdpau on systems with low memory you need very much swap space currently, you could not gain that amount while just using wayland. nvidia should better optimize the new driver for ram usage, would be better for all...