Bad NIH, good NIH

Have you heard about windows program called "putty"? You can ssh with it to remote server with no video adapter and run X11 apps over it. How? Using X server for Windows. You can do similar things with OS X, it has its own X server. There're also X11 implementations for Android.

Yes, people need and want X server for Windows, Mac OS and Android. And they have it.

> What people want is remote applications, and they'll get those with Wayland via a VNC-like protocol. Which, by the way, works way better than X for today's applications.

You don't need Wayland to use VNC, you know that? Also, Wayland is about direct client-side hardware use, you'll get some problems when you try using it on a server with no graphical hardware.

So, you have Xorg (works always, supports X11 forwarding, VNC, xpra, NX), and you have Wayland (works sometimes, theoretically supports VNC). I don't see a reason to choose Wayland in this case, do you?

> 2. It doesn't run everywhere. Android doesn't use it, Firefox OS doesn't, Tizen doesn't, Mac OS X and iOS don't, nobody right in their mind uses it except as a compatibility crutch.

It does run everywhere. It can be run on Android (and it was done since first androids), there're X11 implementations for iOS, and it's included in Mac OS X. Also it's used by Maemo/Meego.

> 3. That will come for Wayland as well, it's just a matter of time.

Wayland design makes me think it won't. What makes you think it will? Let's take an example: directfb. It's well known, was created 12 years ago (!) and still does not have those good tools.

> 4. You can run any desktop environment on Wayland too, and you can combine any Wayland compositor with any desktop, provided it offers the needed functionality (which obviously applies on X11 as well)

Theories again? Please, run Compiz on Wayland. At least run IceWM on Wayland. Have you ever used Wayland/Weston yourself?

> 5. The toolkits that matter will soon support Wayland (or already do)

I guess you have not seen how it looks. Try it. Anyway, all toolkits already support X11. Name one reason why they should bother supporting Wayland?

> 6. The Wayland protocol is stable

You obviously have no idea what's "stable". "Stable" means that I can release program today and it will continue to work. "Stable" means good for long term commercial use.

X11 is stable. It always was. Now Wayland has v1 protocol for a few months and you can't be sure that tomorrow there won't be Wayland v2 with completely different protocol. Bear in mind that currently you can't use Wayland protocol without compositor extensions. And a few existing compositors have them different. Wayland is unstable itself and it's trying to shake Xorg by constantly attacking it ("it can't be worse than X11"). This is bad for the entire Linux community.

> and X applications are supported via XWayland.

You haven't ever used it, have you? Try using RebeccaBlackOS LiveCD. When you notice that your X11 programs don't start any more try debugging that.

> That's why many of the X.org developers themselves (including Keith Packard, Kristian Høgsberg, Daniel Stone) support Wayland. Now please don't try to tell me that you know better than them what a future-proof graphics stack looks like...

Oh, that's the biggest mystery for me. Initially I thought that Wayland was just a proof-of-concept, like "Look, Linux has such a powerful graphical stack that I can easily create a simple window system". Then I thought that Wayland could be a test of new ideas before including them into Xorg. But Wayland is still promoted as being better than Xorg, and I don't see who it's supposed to be good for.

It just was not possible to do something like Wayland before. So I understand that it's fun for smart hackers to dig though something new, something that have never been done. But for now Wayland looks like a personal toy for its developers, that brings no benefits to anybody else.