wayland screen locker and security in general

[Michal Suchanek]

2011/4/5 Kristian Høgsberg <krh at bitplanet.net>:
> On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 5:59 AM, Michal Suchanek <hramrach at centrum.cz> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> what is the plan for screensave/screenlocker support in wayland?
>>
>> The support in X is a fail in several ways.
>
> It sure is.  The plan for Wayland is that the lock screen is just part
> of the compositor.  There are no problems with detecting idle or other
> applications having grabs this way, and the compositor completely
> controls what goes on the screen so you don't have other applications
> raising their window over the screensaver.  There doesn't even have to
> be a screensaver window, the compositor can just paint a black screen.
>
> It is of course possible to define a plugin or an out-of-process (fork
> a special Wayland client and give it a special surface to render to,
> similar to your second option below) mechanism for rendering fun
> screensavers.
>

IMHO having anything that requires somewhat uncommon functionality as
part of the compositor is lame. The same if a new plugin is required
for any new function somebody comes up with.

Eventually there should be multiple compositors to choose from and
they should *not* each include everything and the kitchen sink.

Thanks

Michal