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by belorn 4757 days ago
> From what I understand, modern X applications run remotely are just painting a region of bytes to be shot over the wire anyway.

No, that's incorrect. X server sends high level commands over the network and let the client render the requests. VNC on other hand work exactly as you describe, by simply copying the servers image buffer (a region of bytes), compresses it, and sends it over to be painted on the client's screen.

My general approval of X method rather then the VNC approach mostly comes down to performance (less traffic, smother rendering) and style. Its the same reason why I like the concepts of vector graphic over pixel formats.

But if Wayland is designed to not have any high level commands (like "create a window"), and thus only push buffers of pixels between server and client, I guess that is that then. Anything beyond copying the image buffer would then be in conflict with Waylands core design.
2 comments
fmoralesc 4757 days ago
> X server sends high level commands over the network and let the client render the requests.

AFAIK, that's not true most of the time nowadays, since most toolkits don't use X drawing primitives.

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lazyjones 4756 days ago
The X way of doing window updates became impractical with common graphics-heavy applications like web browsers. I could already feel this in the mid-90's when opening a browser window on a 19" NCD X-Terminal took several seconds over 10mbit/s Ethernet (noticeable because most other X client applications at that time used drawing primitives and appeared instantly).

For modern applications (graphics- and video-heavy), VNC/RFB seems like a much more suitable protocol, although I haven't really kept up with the latest X extensions that probably cover some of these applications.

Personally, I liked the X architecture more (despite X's inherent complexity) and expected it to become more popular with cloud-hosted applications etc., but as applications and GUI toolkits evolved in an unsuitable way (i.e. not using X's primitives), it's probably time to let go. Or to build a proper GUI toolkit first...

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