Vote: making wayland=on default

[Johannes Lundberg]

On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 4:08 PM, Chris H <portmaster at bsdforge.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Dec 2017 09:20:20 +0000 "Johannes Lundberg" <johalun0 at gmail.com>
> said
>
>> Hi
>>
>> I want to suggest that we enable wayland by default. In current state
>> having some parts of wayland in ports is basically useless the
>> end-users themselves re-build gtk30 and mesa-libs with wayland
>> enabled.
>>
>> libwayland-egl.so from mesa-libs and the extra libraries and headers
>> from gtk30 adds like a few KB, a drop in the ocean compared to xorg
>> packages. (might be something more that I missed)
>>
>> Personally I see no reason not to make it default on, even with
>> flavors coming up. For any Desktop user (as well as embedded devices
>> like IVI-systems and whatnot), Wayland is the future. There's no
>> escaping that.
>>
>> Wayland has been quite usable on FreeBSD for over a year now but
>> access to it is limited due to the extra efforts required to use it.
>>
>> If we are to compare with the other guys, several Linux distros are
>> already switching to wayland-based compositors as default window
>> server.
>>
>> What do you think?
>
> IMHO it's (still) too early. Too much other X(org) related work
> still being completed. In fact, I just built a new dev box to
> track 12 (CURRENT), and this was the first time I was not required
> to pre generate a config file for Xorg. I was only required to
> inform /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/nvidia-driver.conf that
> the driver was "nvidia", not "nv". Everything work(s|ed) famously.
> A real treat. I'm also a bit concerned about the progress (or lack
> there of) on network transparency.
> I (personally) could conceive it as a KERNEL OPTION, but would not
> want to see it in the Default kernel.
>
> Well, those are *my* thoughts. Because you asked. :-)
>
> --Chris
>

Thanks for your feedback!

Just to clarify, we're not talking about changing any defaults that
would impact or change users' choice of desktop. We only want to
enable Wayland compositors as an alternative to X (leaving X as is).

This does not break or modify anything existing. It does not force you
to do anything differently. It simply adds a couple of libraries that
you won't use unless you run Wayland stuff (if you install qt5/gtk30
and mesa-libs).

The reference to Linux making it default might have been unclear.
Since FreeBSD doesn't have a default desktop, it's hard to change. It
is and will continue to be up to the end user what they choose to use,
we only add more options :)

>>
>>
>> /Johannes
>
>
>