Proof-of-Concept Port of XBMC to SDL 2.0 and Wayland

hypnosec wrote in with news that XBMC has experimental Wayland support now. Even better, it's implemented by porting XBMC to SDL 2.0, something that will become important as SDL 1.2 development officially ended and SDL 2.0 should be out in the wild in the not-too-distant-future. The code is only a few days old and has a few serious limitations (input is broken and a bug in weston with threaded clients causes rendering hangs) , but it seems like a pretty good start. The port should also bring SDL 2.0 support to the X11 backend.

"Proof of Concept"

[timeOday]

This is a "proof of concept" in the same way that turning over a shovelful of dirt is a proof of concept for digging a basement. The "concept" isn't at issue; it's all the gruntwork and polish that would be required to make it good enough to displace what's already out there and working. With software, the first few function points appear to solve the crux of the problem, but unfortunately the vast majority of function points still remain and each is just as time-consuming, yet less rewarding, than the first few.

A good idea

[Eravnrekaree]

It is always a good idea to use a platform independant library to make porting between different platforms easier. Now that it is working on Wayland, one hopes that Ubuntus plans to fracture the Linux ecosystem can be averted. One thing that people need to remember about the situation situation with Canonicals arrogant plan to attempt a coup d'etat of the Linux graphics stack, is that unlike the window manager where choice is a good thing, having a lot of competing window systems is NOT a good thing. Lets imagine that Canonical announced that it would start using its own kernel, and that this Kernel would not support POSIX, but its own proprietary API. Now Linux applications would not be able to easily run on Ubuntu, and applications for Ubuntu would not be able to easily run on Linux. Having a bunch of incompatible window systems is as bad as that. The Window System is basically the kernel for GUI applications. Basically Canonicals Mir announcement is pretty much does the same, applications must talk to the Window system, so the Window system is as important as the kernel for application cross compatibility between OSs. Canonical is fracturing the Linux ecosystem and trying to greedily and arrogantly grab control of the Linux graphics stack and basically one of the most critical parts of the Linux ecosystem. Canonical's behaviour is outrageous and the Linux community should not tolerate this.

I think now is the time for other Linux Distros to commit to Wayland, leaving Canonical isolated.

We also need to start a petition to get Canonical to commit to wayland and stop trying to develop its own window system.

I also think that Wayland should be made a part of the Linux Standards Base. Perhaps the rights to use of the Linux trademark for companies such as Canonical who blatantly ignore Linux standards should be revoked.