carbon-wayland

hhh · 2024-08-17 04:27:23

johnraff wrote:

Right now I'm thinking we should make BL Carbon X11-based by default, but offer an addon package that will enable an optional Wayland session for those who want it. I think that should be doable if other devs are onboard.
But Trixie release is probably still a year off, and things might change before then.
As for Nitrogen - yes we might possibly switch to Wayland by default with X11 as an option, but it's way too early to predict IMO.

I wouldn't even worry about Wayland for the carbon release. Keep it as a side project, the key is to get carbon out soon after trixie. A BL Wayland desktop will certainly happen after we've launched carbon, but it's not the goal.

As to BL's Wayland future, @malm with labwc and the stuff @micko01 (and myself and others) have been experimenting with seems very promising for nitrogen.

johnraff · 2024-08-17 05:14:27

hhh wrote:

johnraff wrote:
Right now I'm thinking we should make BL Carbon X11-based by default, but offer an addon package that will enable an optional Wayland session for those who want it. I think that should be doable if other devs are onboard.
But Trixie release is probably still a year off, and things might change before then.
As for Nitrogen - yes we might possibly switch to Wayland by default with X11 as an option, but it's way too early to predict IMO.
I wouldn't even worry about Wayland for the carbon release. Keep it as a side project, the key is to get carbon out soon after trixie.

Definitely agreed on that. We mustn't allow the Wayland option to be a stumbling block in getting a nice Carbon released. But it would also be good to try not to put things in there that are going to make the Wayland shift more difficult in the future.

As to BL's Wayland future, @malm with labwc and the stuff @micko01 (and myself and others) have been experimenting with seems very promising for nitrogen.

Yes indeed, very promising.

micko01 · 2024-08-17 07:29:35

My 2 cents.

I'd be happy if a carbon-wayland derivative is both a meta package option and a netinstall option.

The meta package will be for the curious and the netinstall for the enthusiast.

Of course as I've said all along, a half-baked wayland solution is not acceptable. OOTB it should be on parity with the X11 version. Of course there will be some issues with installing 3rd party packages (those not included in default offerings) but I expect those will become less and less over time, and we more or less have a year before debian release Trixie/debian-13. And of course any wayland offering needn't be ready when the X11 version of carbon is ready.

I'm happy to keep maintaining my repo on github for as long as that takes, which I expect will be unnecessary by the time of forky/nitrogen (3 years?).

hhh · 2024-08-17 15:11:12

Just saw that Fedora is planning to make their next ISO release GNOME/Wayland without X11 support...

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/ … ationMedia
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-WS … -Only-ISOs

DeepDayze · 2024-08-17 15:16:16

hhh wrote:

Just saw that Fedora is planning to make their next ISO release GNOME/Wayland without X11 support...
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/ … ationMedia
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-WS … -Only-ISOs

I am sure Fedora will still be keeping around the Xorg packages for legacy s/w and just a dnf install away however for the time being.

DeepDayze · 2024-08-17 15:20:53

johnraff wrote:

hhh wrote:
johnraff wrote:
Right now I'm thinking we should make BL Carbon X11-based by default, but offer an addon package that will enable an optional Wayland session for those who want it. I think that should be doable if other devs are onboard.
But Trixie release is probably still a year off, and things might change before then.
As for Nitrogen - yes we might possibly switch to Wayland by default with X11 as an option, but it's way too early to predict IMO.
I wouldn't even worry about Wayland for the carbon release. Keep it as a side project, the key is to get carbon out soon after trixie.
Definitely agreed on that. We mustn't allow the Wayland option to be a stumbling block in getting a nice Carbon released. But it would also be good to try not to put things in there that are going to make the Wayland shift more difficult in the future.
As to BL's Wayland future, @malm with labwc and the stuff @micko01 (and myself and others) have been experimenting with seems very promising for nitrogen.
Yes indeed, very promising.

Wayland can coexist alongside X11 I am sure, and just be selectable from LightDM as just another session (if LightDM can support Wayland sessions) so there definitely no need to hold up Carbon just for Wayland.

Last edited by DeepDayze (2024-08-17 15:21:26)

johnraff · 2024-08-18 03:17:58

DeepDayze wrote:

Wayland can coexist alongside X11 I am sure, and just be selectable from LightDM as just another session (if LightDM can support Wayland sessions) so there definitely no need to hold up Carbon just for Wayland.

LightDM launching Wayland sessions (while running on X or xwayland) is already supposed to work, though for me, testing on a VM, it's kind of flaky. Sometimes needs a reboot, and the cursor can be unpredictable; on Micko's laptop it doesn't work at all...

But I noticed recently that while the last LightDM release was 2 years ago, development is continuing, so when I have time I plan to build it from the latest git commit and see if its handling of Wayland has improved. I'd rather continue with LightDM if possible - even with its bugs, it offers a lot more than the other more basic login software I've played with so far.

johnraff · 2024-08-19 07:36:49

micko01 wrote:

I'd be happy if a carbon-wayland derivative is both a meta package option and a netinstall option.

At first I was thinking that netinstall would be the easiest route, but it now looks to me that for the time being - ie Carbon - to offer a completely standalone Wayland session alongside the regular X11 version might be difficult until we've put more of the puzzle pieces in place. A plugin Wayland session for an existing X11 setup something like the "bolt-on" @malm suggested here means an additional bunsen-configs-wbase to install together with bunsen-configs, not as an alternative package. That now looks to me as if it might be the easiest way to go.

A netinstall should also be doable, but I'd rather not devote too much time into that development branch right now. Of course anyone else (@micko01?) can easily fork the netinstall repo and make their own Wayland version for testing, that users can try out.

Of course as I've said all along, a half-baked wayland solution is not acceptable. OOTB it should be on parity with the X11 version.

OK here we might disagree, depending on what you mean by "half-baked". At this stage of BL - and Wayland - development I don't think it will be possible to offer a full-featured Wayland version of BL. Just in the short time I've been playing with Wayland I've run into various annoyances that will need to be fixed by upstream developers, or else call for more home-produced software than is realistic. I think @malm's vision of a basic test-bench install is what we can reasonably aim for.

EDIT: suggested roadmap posted last month: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 23#p136223

Of course there will be some issues with installing 3rd party packages (those not included in default offerings) but I expect those will become less and less over time, and we more or less have a year before debian release Trixie/debian-13.

This is true.

And of course any wayland offering needn't be ready when the X11 version of carbon is ready.

I'd like to offer the simple Wayland addon at the same time we release Carbon. An extra "salespoint".

---
About third-party software, or even BL in-house builds, I think these we should avoid as much as possible, because of the extra maintainance responsibility:

Backports of apps in Sid that will eventually arrive in Debian Stable - OK as long as there aren't too many.
Builds from GitHub that will probably arrive in Debian eventually - possible, with some thought...
Forks of Debian packages to fix some bug - we have done this eg with xfce4-package-manager, but let's avoid it as much as possible.
Cool packages that are currently not expected to arrive in Debian - let's be very very cautious about these.

Last edited by johnraff (2024-08-20 06:32:49)

DeepDayze · 2024-08-19 18:52:07

@johnraff you meant the special BL build of the xfce4-power-manager (for that special case of its icon). For special cases like that one only would BL devs patch a standard debian package to fix some distro localized issue.

Last edited by DeepDayze (2024-08-19 18:52:39)

johnraff · 2024-08-20 06:04:29

^Yes, and let's keep cases like that down to an absolute minimum.

I'm still hoping that some day an upgrade of xfce4-power-manager will make the patch unnecessary, but DE devs seem to be moving away from system trays so it's probably not going to happen.

johnraff · 2024-08-20 06:31:37

Re: how Wayland will join Carbon - does this roadmap sketched out last month still look reasonable?
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 23#p136223

hhh · 2024-08-20 06:36:37

PackRat wrote:

Looks like a sound plan.

I agree. And a year to tweak it.

#81 2024-08-17 04:27:23

Re: carbon-wayland

#82 2024-08-17 05:14:27

Re: carbon-wayland

#83 2024-08-17 07:29:35

Re: carbon-wayland

#84 2024-08-17 15:11:12

Re: carbon-wayland

#85 2024-08-17 15:16:16

Re: carbon-wayland

#86 2024-08-17 15:20:53

Re: carbon-wayland

#87 2024-08-18 03:17:58

Re: carbon-wayland

#88 2024-08-19 07:36:49

Re: carbon-wayland

#89 2024-08-19 18:52:07

Re: carbon-wayland

#90 2024-08-20 06:04:29

Re: carbon-wayland

#91 2024-08-20 06:31:37

Re: carbon-wayland

#92 2024-08-20 06:36:37

Re: carbon-wayland

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