[R-sig-Debian] X11 --> Wayland under Ubuntu WAS: Re: [R] RGL crashes

[Alex Mandel]

On 12/09/2010 04:02 AM, Rainer M Krug wrote:
> On 12/09/2010 12:53 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>> On 09/12/2010 5:52 AM, Matthew Dowle wrote:
>>> Weyland is the project to remove X11 from Linux.
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland_(display_server)
>>>
>>> Ubuntu chiefs have said they support Weyland and aim to include it
>>> in the next release (April 2011 == version 11.04 == Natty Narwhal).
>>>
>>> Fedora developers apparenly said that they are likely to adopt
>>> Weyland too.
>>>
>>> I don't know if packages in R such as rgl would need changing to
>>> work with Weyland, or perhaps R itself, if at all. However it seems
>>> that Linux is moving away from X11.
> 
>> If X11 calls aren't supported in Wayland, then rgl won't work there. The
>> Wayland people will need to write a replacement for the glx interface to
>> OpenGL, and an rgl user will need to write the code to use this in rgl
>> (i.e. equivalents of the x11gui.* and x11lib.* files in the rgl
>> sources).  rgl is designed to work on multiple systems (currently
>> Windows, Cocoa in OSX, and X11), but it's not trivial to implement a new
>> one.
> 
> While we are at X11 and Wayland - are there any other aspects of R which
> would need to be rewritten or adapted? I guess, a new graphic device
> might be necessary?
> 
> It might be an important exercise to find this out as it will be
> relevant for all the Ubuntu users in the medium future (probably earlier?)
> 
> I send this to the r-sig-debian as well, as it might be more relevant where.
> 
> Rainer

My reading of the article on ArsTechnica about this topic is that X will
still be available in a somewhat similar way to how X is available on
Mac OS X. Also the phase in for switching to Wayland on Ubuntu is ~ 4
years as a incremental project in each release before making it the default.

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/11/linux-beyond-x-shuttleworth-contemplates-wayland.ars


Thanks,
Alex