[gentoo-amd64] Re: Wayland and X-Window

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Frank Peters posted on Sat, 19 Oct 2013 13:01:33 -0400 as excerpted:

> Anyway, I would like to get started early with wayland.  Doing an
> "emerge -pv" for both wayland and weston (and also GTK+3 with wayland
> enabled) does not show any requirements that I do not already have or
> could easily accommodate, and I may install everything now just to see
> what's what.
> 
> I don't expect any definitive answer and I realize that I will have to
> do my own research, but would doing this simple emerge process with
> wayland/weston/gtk+3 provide, right now, a representative version of the
> final wayland/weston product? Or is the current Gentoo implementation
> just an incomplete step toward the final wayland?

As someone who is quite interested in wayland but has not yet bothered to 
try it myself...

AFAIK, wayland as a protocol is maturing nicely, and weston as a 
reference implementation compositing manager is developing as well.  
However, applications using them are and by definition must be a step 
behind, in ordered to avoid the chicken and the egg problem -- the 
libraries must be available and stable first, before apps can build on 
them.

AFAIK THAT is at present the weak bit -- the protocol is reasonably 
mature and the compositing manager is fast getting there, so you should 
have a fairly stable DEVELOPER/LIBRARY level representation.  But at the 
APP level, a lot of what's there is still stub or incomplete 
implementation/port, at various stages of functionality and completeness 
depending on the individual app you are trying at that moment.

So if your interest is say 40% or more developer level interest, it's 
probably worth doing today.  OTOH, if it's more than say 60% end user 
application level interest, unless you really do have the motivation to 
try it and the time to kill, you may not find much particularly 
interesting to play with at this point.

Meanwhile, while the intended audience is more the binary distro type 
than the gentooer type, for a quick spin, try the (kubuntu based) Rebecca 
Black LiveCD distro, as it ships as a pre-built image so there's no 
building to worry about, and has apps like (IIRC) chromium, etc, already 
ported/built/configured and runnable on wayland.

I'd suggest that as a good first step.  If you find it mature and 
interesting enough to bother further investigation, THEN go for the 
gentoo wayland build.  OTOH, if there's nothing interesting there to play 
with, you haven't wasted too much time building it just to find that out. 
=:^)

A quick google on rebecca black  wayland...

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22rebecca+black%22+wayland

Of course there's youtube videos listed there too, if you want an even 
more introductory first step. =:^)  Just be sure you're looking at 
something current, as one of the first videos in the results here is from 
the kubuntu 12.10 era and that's obviously going to be quite dated 
compared to current wayland/rbos.  But I see another from July, 2013, 
which isn't /too/ long ago -- that should hopefully do quite nicely in 
terms of pre-burn evaluation, even if it's not the /absolute/ latest.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman