The layer can also be used by other compositors

Aug 27, 2015 03:17 GMT  ·  By

Joel Leclerc, an independent Ubuntu developer, known for various apps, hacks, tweaks, tips, and tutorials for the Ubuntu Linux operating system, has posted an interesting article on his blog about the proposal of a non-windowing display server.

The non-windowing display server proposed by Joel Leclerc is, in fact, a layer that could be used by the Wayland compositor Weston or similar software to handle display-related things, such as changing the video mode or drawing pixels on the screen. He thinks that a non-windowing display server will provide more flexibility and power to the Linux kernel-based operating system on which it is installed.

"My idea is to create a display server that doesn’t handle windowing," says Joel Leclerc. "It handles display-related things, such as drawing pixels on the screen, changing video mode, etc. Wayland compositors and other programs that require direct access to the screen could then use this server and trust that the server will take care of everything display-related for them."

Attached, you can see the proposed graphics stack, which shows us how the new non-windowing display server should work and how it simplifies things on a GNU/Linux distribution. However, it remains to be seen if Joel Leclerc or any other skilled developer will begin coding this little experiment and create the real thing. Stay tuned for more news on the matter.