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What are the advantages of Wayland?
The biggest advantage of X over Wayland is that X works over the network. X is network transparent, you can display the window, or with XDMCP a complete session, on a terminal while the actual program is running on another, usually more powerful machine.
Does gnome use Wayland by default?
GNOME, the default, runs GNOME Shell on Wayland. Thus, it is a customized form of GNOME Shell rather than a truly distinct mode. GNOME on Xorg runs GNOME Shell using Xorg.
What is a GLX?
GLX (initialism for “OpenGL Extension to the X Window System”) is an extension to the X Window System core protocol providing an interface between OpenGL and the X Window System as well as extensions to OpenGL itself. GLX distinguishes two “states”: indirect state and direct state.
Is it possible to run OpenGL without EGL?
No. You can run OpenGL without EGL. But is possible to have EGL implementation capable to create desktop OpenGL context. That’s because EGL’s eglBindAPI (int api) allows EGL_OPENGL_API, EGL_OPENGL_ES_API, or EGL_OPENVG_API.
Why is Wayland using EGL instead of GLX?
It is inherently tied to the X11 protocol – if the client application uses X11 protocol, it can use GLX as well. If it uses wayland protocol, it cannot. EGL was developed as its replacement, to allow sharing of such data more generally. Modern X11 servers allow clients to use EGL instead of GLX as well.
Why does Weston use OpenGL ES for rendering?
Weston uses OpenGL ES for rendering – this is mainly dictated by the fact that the current libGL implementations still link to some X-related libraries, and Weston creators wanted to keep it pure wayland – this is a reference implementation after all.
The current test clients use either Cairo software rendering, Cairo on OpenGL or hardware-accelerated OpenGL directly. Additionally, media frameworks can share their buffers directly with the server. As long as you have a userspace driver library that will let you render into a shareable buffer, you’re good to go.