Linux graphics system Wayland sees first real release
Via: @timsamoff
Wayland, the next-generation Linux graphics system designed to replace X11, has had its first real release: The Wayland library implements a protocol by means of which graphical applications can communicate with a compositor. The 0.85 release of the Weston reference compositor has also been released with Wayland; together, applications' graphics are rendered onto the display. Unlike X, Wayland provides no API for graphical primitives such as drawing lines, text and so forth. Instead, graphical applications – clients in the language of X and Wayland – use libraries such as Cairo or write directly via OpenGL. The popular Linux toolkits GTK and Qt already have Wayland support, in principle making it easy for GNOME and KDE applications to display using Wayland. Wayland was to be used in later versions of MeeGo to provide a cleaner architecture for single-user, one-display devices.