Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

You can use the "only 10% of users use it" argument on so many features. That doesn't mean Linux shouldn't have it. That argument might fly with a commercial OS like Windows or Mac OS X, but some OS needs to provide a long tail of useful features for power users.

You also have to weigh the utility of features. It may be that 90% of Linux desktop users would rather have fancy composting and a "cube effect" when doing fast user switching[1], but shouldn't network transparency win because it actually does something useful?

[1] See "Is Wayland replacing the X Server?" on http://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html#heading_toc_j_4



Much as you can run X within Wayland there's absolutely no reason why it's shouldn't be possible to build networking above Wayland. Even better, there's room for competing implementations - one could implement a framework which ships some sort of serialized OpenGL commands (client-side hardware rendering), fully rasterized windows (relying on the server's video hardware), or abstract primitives (like X).

By providing a level of abstraction lower than that of X, Wayland provides a more flexible framework over which to implement whatever "long tail" of useful features the Linux community desires.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: