The Xorg server/client architecture allows for network transparency which means it is possible to start x-clients on a remote machine and display the GUI on the local machine (i.e. via x-forwarding by using ssh).
Will Wayland have the same or a similar way of allowing to display the GUIs of applications on a different system than they are running?
Will this feature be required to be there, before any steps are taken to replace Xorg with Wayland on Ubuntu systems?
My understanding is that X will be able to run on top of Wayland as a client. See the diagrams at the bottom of http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html for example.
They only mention this in terms of being able to share input devices with X for backwards compatibility, but I presume it means that it will be possible to communicate with the X server over a remote connection even though it is running on Wayland.
I do not know of any graphical application that I cannot launch over an ssh session. I, and probably everyone I know professionally use this everyday. Not just at work, but at home too. Compiz and other cool effects are a luxury. Network transparency for every single graphical application I might install is a requirement. RDP or VNC are unacceptable substitutes.
All I can see on this topic is comments like "don't worry about it because...[insert words that make me worry here].
What I want is for someone developing Wayland to publicly say "don't worry about it because "network transparency is a top priority for us." They know we want to hear that but they won't come out and say it without hedging.
According to http://mmol-6453.livejournal.com/253081.html network transparency is on the list of things to do, it's just on the bottom of that list. If what is said there is true, we will eventually be able to connect graphically to another machine and run applications, but not immediately, and probably BEFORE X is dropped. I hope this is true, because like others here, I consider this to be a prime advantage to an X based system than others, such as Windows.
The correct answer is: "Network transparency is outside of the scope of the Wayland protocol".
A full explanation is provided in this FAQ but a brief summary might be: "the aim of the Wayland is to define a small protocol, trying hard to stay away from the biggest error of X: doing and mandating too much (X even had a print server in it!!!). With this concept in mind there's no outstanding reason to add network transparency in the Wayland protocol. That can be done in a standalone API and its server / client. Nothing in the Wayland protocol is against network transparency."
One thing worth mentioning is that current X implementations are not network transparent anymore, as Daniel Stone explains in this video (which you should really see if you're interested in the argument and if you want to have some good --nerdy-- laugh).
Wayland's ability to run X nested means that it will be possible to support most situations of network transparency and similar features. Also I read that this functionality may be replaced with a better method (if I can find the link again I will provide it).
No Wayland is less ambitious that Xorg and won't have network transparency.
Quoting from Mark Shuttleworth blog:
ref: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551
As a personal opinion I don't think that network transparency of graphic "server" is a feature needed for a desktop computer, it's is a feature that best match the tiny_client / big_workstation architecture.
While network transparency is outside the scope of wayland, there is nothing preventing compositors to implement network transparancy, or even a project, like waypipe to build remote rendering server on top of Wayland for compositors to use