Wayland and Weston 1.0

[Jan Engelhardt]

On Tuesday 2012-10-23 01:26, Kristian Høgsberg wrote:

>Wayland and Weston 1.0.0 have been released!  
>
>Thanks and congrats to everybody involved for making this happen.
>We're entering a new, exciting and somewhat scary phase for Wayland.
>As of this 1.0.0 release, we're changing the development model and
>committing to the the protocol and client side API we have now.
>
>As I've said before, 1.0 doesn't mean we're done or that the protocol
>can't move forward.  What it means, is that we're confident that the
>protocol we have now covers the basic features and that we can build
>whatever new functionality we need with and on top of 1.0.

A few folks around me, and myself included, have pondered...

It would seem that wayland and its possible compositors all require 3D 
support, which may require, if no accelerating GPU is installed, 
the use of software rendering.

This however, it is feared, would unnecessarily consume computational 
power when doing purely "2D workloads", such as libreoffice - xterms - 
and simple web page browsing, especially in a scenario-idea I was shown 
that consists of a workstation with one graphic chip and a DisplayLink 
multiplexer, intended for use in a 4-people multi-seat setup.

That also prompted me to think about server consoles; these often have 
some lo-power chip, popular example is (last decade's) ATI Rage XL, the 
Intel GMA in Netbooks and NanoITX boards, and so on.

I would love to hear your thoughts about this.