Re: Xorg vs Wayland (and MIR?) - future for NetBSD X ?

[David Holland <dholland-tech%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Tue, Dec 27, 2016 at 03:41:44PM -0700, Swift Griggs wrote:
 > Is NetBSD going to play with Wayland? 'Cause X.org seems to be in a bit
 > shaky and captured by Linux-droids.

I don't know. But all that stuff is shaky and linuxish.

 > XDMCP

...you use XDMCP? Anyone uses XDMCP, other than to run some vintage X
terminals they found in a skip? Or do you mean "remote X display
access"?

 > * Is KMS "just a hack" we support or is it a future X11 direction TNF
 >   embraces?

KMS is best thought of as "the linux world finally figures out what
everyone else knew by around 1990", that is, you should have device
drivers for graphics same as for other hardware, and framebuffer
devices exposed to userland that don't require reimplementing drivers
in every application (read: X server) wanting to use the framebuffer.

Except they apparently don't have it right yet, because the drmkms2
Xorg binary is still setuid root.

There were some historical reasons that XFree86 ended up using the
MS-DOS model for hardware and drivers, but it was wrong then anyway
and there just wasn't a critical mass of people who knew better. As I
recall the mindset in the Linux world at the time was that the only
alternative to putting all the hardware stuff in the XFree86 binary
was to put the entire X server in the kernel. The idea of a different
lower-level interface in between there was apparently too much to
process. :-|

 >   Doesn't Linux do things in kernel-land that we either can't or
 >   won't do in NetBSD? I'm thinking of all the stuff provided by
 >   ./sys/miscfs/procfs/procfs_linux.c and sys/compat/linux*. Doesn't that
 >   mean we are forever going to be worried more about making sure we
 >   properly ape Linux rather than making anything novel ?

Maybe. The problem is: if we venture off in a different direction,
that's signing up for a hell of a lot of work. It's probably a bad
idea unless upstream and linux go off in a completely unacceptable
direction. Until then it's probably better to dissuade them from doing
so. That is: if we (for whatever "we") acquire enough of a stake in
*their* project, then project politics won't let them blow us off.

On the flip side I do feel like a lot of what we get for graphics is
crap with an extra order of bleck. If we had infinite resources for
development we'd probably do well to design our own thing. Same as if
we had inifnite resources for development we'd do well to move Gnome
and KDE to the bit bucket and do that right as well. Unfortunately, we
don't.

 > * How do weird X11 framebuffer code for off-the-wall platforms get built?
 >   I'm thinking of things like Amiga's with RetinaZ3 boards. How is it that
 >   these wizards-in-caves can be coaxed out for that, but for x86 we have
 >   to beg for a seat at the table with Linux and Microsoft? I'm just
 >   ignorant of these dynamics. I'm assuming it's because those older
 >   framebuffers are more simplistic or better documented.

Yes. Also, there aren't as many of those older non-x86 framebuffers.
There's a lot of radeon and nvidia models. (And intelgraphics, and
other x86 things before them.)

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost