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According to people in the know[1], X is severely bloated in terms of CPU usage, interface complexity, and useless code. X spends a lot of time performing useless actions, such as drawing a gray rectangle even when it knows that part of the screen is going to be rewritten by something useful. Going full-Wayland is bound to be lighter on the system. But traditional X clients run within XWayland. I don't know if XWayland offers anything more than compatibility, but going forward, as more and more toolkits and window managers wean themselves off X, "weaker" computers will have more resources to spend on doing useful stuff.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44




Funny, i have no trouble running X on a "weak" computer. What was bogging it down was never X, but KDE or Gnome. Going for a lighter DE, or stripping down to just a WM, greatly improves performance.

Frankly, the very thought that X is bloated seem insane, given that it originated in a time when servers had less resources to go on than many smartphones today.

No, what is "bloated" is the DE thinking that everything has to happen via the OGL pathway.

This makes X "bloated" in that it sits to a side and takes certain commands, while most of the UI work happens outside X.


> i have no trouble running X on a "weak" computer.

Well, obviously, your "weak" computer is powerful enough to handle X. Remember that not all computers are desktops, laptops, or phones. We have Linux running on industrial PLC's, CNC machines, and so many other things that are not thought of as "computers". There are buyers of these at even extremely low price-points, so it's not uncommon to host everything on one processor.

> Frankly, the very thought that X is bloated seem insane

Quit the empty snark. Have you actually compared X and VNC for remote access? Try running Firefox from a remote desktop. To understand what's going on, watch the talk I linked to in my previous comment.


Yeah i have seen it, and it was a whole lot of preaching to the choir and snark.

As for running a GUI on a PLC, wtf?

Then again, i should not be surprised. Wayland and the rest seems to have come out of the nuttier side of Nokia's Maemo project.


> As for running a GUI on a PLC, wtf?

Seriously? You find this[2] surprising?

People have real needs, and they are working on solutions, be it Wayland, Mir, Freon, running GUI on a PLC, or whatever else. I get that you don't have these needs, but can't you even understand that other people do? Have you compared X and VNC yet?

[2] http://www.omega.com/pptst/EZSerTouchPLC.html


A 32-bit variant of the 68000? Heh, didn't think that lineage was still around.

That said, i can't say i see what Wayland will bring to it thats not already satisfied by the Linux framebuffer.


Wayland gives you a formal system for efficiently drawing multiple windows and roles. A framebuffer is only usable by one process for its UI.

Also: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=x_waylan...




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