Wayland's Weston Gets A FreeRDP-Based Compositor

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Wayland's Weston Gets A FreeRDP-Based Compositor

There's now a Wayland compositor that's based upon FreeRDP, the open-source implementation of Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTMxNjE

[Rexilion]

Question(s)!

This is a Weston back-end. So this has to be implemented for every compositor over and over again?

It's a back-end. So, it's not clear to me if this allows me to take control of a session that is already running on a local display through another back-end. I checked the makefile, and it says the following:

$(x11_backend) \
$(drm_backend) \
$(wayland_backend) \
$(headless_backend) \
$(fbdev_backend)

How does that make any sense? Is Weston capable of running on DRM or X11 directly??

Furthermore, it was mentioned (link!) that the main developer was working on this. Is this for Wayland itself??

[giselher]

Question(s)!

This is a Weston back-end. So this has to be implemented for every compositor over and over again?

It's a back-end. So, it's not clear to me if this allows me to take control of a session that is already running on a local display through another back-end. I checked the makefile, and it says the following:

$(x11_backend) \
$(drm_backend) \
$(wayland_backend) \
$(headless_backend) \
$(fbdev_backend)

How does that make any sense? Is Weston capable of running on DRM or X11 directly??

Furthermore, it was mentioned (link!) that the main developer was working on this. Is this for Wayland itself??

If you write a new wayland compositor from scratch, then yes you have to reimplement it again. But I will not make any assumption about the future development of wayland compositors and how they share their code. That said I like to see something like a base compositor or library. Weston has a plugin interface and the developers are testing some stuff about the plugin interface, but I don't really know how far they have come.

Weston is able to run as x11 client with the x11_backend (like XNest or Xephyr) and it is also able to run on a tty with the drm or fbdev backend. The headless backend is just for testing and debugging the wayland code independent of the backend (the functions are just stubs). They wayland backend lets you run a wayland compositor as wayland client/window (also like XNest).

[przemoli]

Wayland - protocol
Weston - implementation of Wayland protocol

So Weston gained another back-end. Now it can work on fbdev or drm or on FreeRDP. Nice.

Still Wayland as protocol do not specify HOW things should be implemented but WHAT is required.

So any other Wayland server can do without any dependency on FreeRDP.

[roland]

If this leads to smooth remote GUIs then that is absolutely awesome.

I second Rexilion's question though, can it be used to connect to existing sessions, new ones / ones started specifically for RDP, or both?

[runeks]

If this leads to smooth remote GUIs then that is absolutely awesome.

I second Rexilion's question though, can it be used to connect to existing sessions, new ones / ones started specifically for RDP, or both?

I presume the module is loaded when you start weston, and then weston listens for incoming RDP connections and allows RDP clients to control the session over RDP.

[elanthis]

Since you can nest Wayland compositors... anRDP "client" can be started and run I ER any other compositor. Similar-ish to how you can use any text shell, since sshd handles the networking, not the shell itself.

[renox]

Question(s)!

This is a Weston back-end. So this has to be implemented for every compositor over and over again?

The answer to this is: it depends, if the other compositor is able to use Wayland as its back-end (Weston can do this) then you can nest/stack them..

[Ericg]

Question(s)!

This is a Weston back-end. So this has to be implemented for every compositor over and over again?

Is this for Wayland itself??

1) Yes until we get a library that can just supply all possible backends (probably a good idea for someone to write) to any wayland compositor that wants it... until then, every compositor has to implement this on their own.

2) Its for Weston, which is the reference / example compositor that is in the Wayland repository that is actually fairly usable to show people how to write a wayland compositor and what you should do style / implementation wise.

[Nobu]

The answer to this is: it depends, if the other compositor is able to use Wayland as its back-end (Weston can do this) then you can nest/stack them..

In other words, you could launch [RDP_Compositor] and have your desktop compositor run underneath it, and/or run your desktop compositor and have [RDP_Compositor] run under it. Or, your desktop compositor could be [RDP_Compositor].

(1) would be weird...not sure how it would work. Sort of like remoting multiple desktops, I guess. (2) would be like running a single app remotely, or running multiple apps in a virtual desktop remotely. (3) would, obviously, remote your whole desktop.

remote -- not just an adjective anymore, now it's verbing.