I haven't tried it (because i do not really need network transparency and i'm using Xorg anyway) but supposedly this project[0] implements the Wayland protocol on top of Xorg in a way that integrates mostly seamlessly with X11-based desktops (instead of creating a window and running Wayland inside it as if it was a monitor isolated from the rest of the desktop).
It might be useful to be able to run Wayland applications remotely.
Waypipe can run Wayland applications remotely in a more modern fashion that doesn't suck ass on all but the fastest network links.
But this will be a useful stopgap for those who stubbornly cling to X11 (or are forced to, e.g. by NVIDIA hardware) as more and more useful software drops X support and goes Wayland-only.
> more and more useful software drops X support and goes Wayland-only.
I can't think of any such case, any example?
Besides even if X support is dropped by an application, 12to11 - or any other Wayland implementation that runs under X - will keep it working. It isn't like most programs use X directly anyway.
Well I believe there is foot. GTK devs ae planning to drop X11 support in gtk5 and they will start work on that after gnome 45 release so in a couple of years, all gnome apps
Foot was made with Wayland in mind and there are tons of alternative terminals anyway so i don't think its existence is going to inconvenience or even affect at all any Xorg users.
GTK5 might be more of an issue but so far programs barely use GTK4, let alone 5. I'm not sure GNOME applications are used much outside of GNOME. In either case i'd expect something 12to11 to work with those by then (if it doesn't already).
And TBH i'd expect there will be X compatible programs for a very long time to come.
Since GTK4, GTK is a dead framework. I don't even have it on my system. GNOME killed GTK, so I'm waiting for the community to finally fork GTK3 and make a compatibility layer for GTK2, because there are a lot of GTK2 applications.
Waypipe requires software rendering from any server that doesn't happen to have its own headless GPU. As long as Wayland doesn't deliver a remote rendering protocol, the best path forward seems to be shipping Javascript apps to a browser on the end user's machine (where his GPU will be available).
> Waypipe requires software rendering from any server that doesn't happen to have its own headless GPU.
X has to do that with DRI and client side rendering too, doesn't it?
> As long as Wayland doesn't deliver a remote rendering protocol, the best path forward seems to be shipping Javascript apps to a browser on the end user's machine (where his GPU will be available).
Why does that seem like the best path forward? Seems crazy. For incidental things, admin, etc., software rendering would be fine. The right path forward for a high performance application that needs to ship data to a client that can render it would be to transfer that data, not the drawing of it.
It was an architectural mistake to start bypassing GLX and depending on DRI at each app, and Wayland wants to cement that. That’s why we see so many webapps where we would have expected remote windows driven by a backend server; Javascript became the GPU-local end of a lot of opaque rendering protocols to fill the gap.
> It was an architectural mistake to start bypassing GLX and depending on DRI at each app,
1. Well I assert that it was not an architectural mistake. So that doesn't really move the conversation.
2. Whether or not it was a mistake, does not change how things are. So you can't really use that as a point against Wayland for X.
> and Wayland wants to cement that. That’s why we see so many webapps where we would have expected remote windows driven by a backend server; Javascript became the GPU-local end of a lot of opaque rendering protocols to fill the gap.
Client side has been driven overwhelmingly by Windows in the past decades though, so I don't see how that is the reason. The number of javascript apps caused by DRI in X must be approximately zero, and caused by Wayland exactly zero.
I imagine a man surrounded by the X11 books (which is how O'Reilly got it's start) strewn around a messy desk, 2 large monitors and a small desktop system beside them. On the floor, a Sun Enterprise E450 in its deskside enclosure.
It might be useful to be able to run Wayland applications remotely.
[0] https://sourceforge.net/projects/twelveto11/