KDE developers want to support Wayland window manager

The developers of the KDE desktop environment want to gradually support the Wayland window manager. In 2012, according to the new plans, the KDE interface should run on the presumed successor to X.org Server.

The Wayland project is far from complete, but according to the developers, it should eventually provide a solution for a number of weaknesses of the X.org Server window manager, such as the slow development of X11 and an outdated architecture that allows, among other things, advanced composing capabilities are lacking. Ubuntu developer Canonical and Fedora, among others, have pledged support for the Wayland display server in future Linux releases, while Intel is considering adopting Wayland for Touch UX 1.3.

KDE can now be added to that list: at the Desktop Summit in Berlin, KDE developer Martin Gräßlin indicated that they also want to use the Wayland Display Server, so reports Phoronix. This should be done step by step: a working group called the ‘KWin Lighthouse project’ will adapt the KDE code for the lightweight Wayland. In the summer of 2012, the planned KDE 4.9 release should run on the new window manager. In the subsequent period, the main focus must be on the stability of the environment.

Gräßlin warned Wayland developers not to make the same mistakes that were made when the audio demon PulseAudio was introduced to the Linux platform just years ago. Due to a large number of bugs that were solved with difficulty, PulseAudio caused headaches for many users. Furthermore, we still have to wait for sufficient driver support from, among others, Nvidia and ATI to make the OpenGL-based window manager usable.