RT-Thread Operating System Kernel has Announced Its Support for Weston!
Weston is an implementation of the Wayland window display protocol. Wayland is a graphics processing protocol that provides high performance and direct rendering, making it more efficient than traditional methods. It is currently used by mainstream Linux distribution desktop systems such as Ubuntu and Fedora to synthesize multiple windows for display.
Wayland is divided into clients and servers (servers are also called Compositors). Unlike the old X11 method, the client is responsible for completing all rendering tasks. After receiving the input signal, the client calculates the area to be rendered by itself and allocates space in memory. The drawn image is then stored in the buffer and notifies Wayland’s compositor. The compositor is responsible for receiving all client requests, efficiently synthesizing the image buffer, and then sending the result to the renderer for rendering. This new method greatly reduces the interaction and data transmission between the client and the server, thereby improving rendering efficiency.
Weston is a reference implementation of Wayland and can be regarded as a simple graphical multi-window desktop system. However, the implementation of Weston itself is not simple. It has multi-client management based on socket communication (monitored through epoll), which is basically managed in fd mode and operated (including various fd modes derived from eventfd, timerfd, signalfd, etc.), and there is also a bottom layer DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) docking. Therefore, from the system docking point of view, if it is a non-Linux system, it will take a lot of effort.
RT-Thread is an open-source real-time operating system and with a deep understanding of embedded devices and a keen sense of judgment for the future development of hardware chips. In 2020, RT-Thread released the RT-Thread Smart hybrid microkernel operating system, which was fully integrated into the RT-Thread open-source mainline in the RT-Thread v5.0 version in 2022. This has truly realized a way of running kernel code on multiple platforms, from small MCU microprocessors to intelligent hardware for IoT scenarios and MPU microcontrollers for high-computational complex fields.
Now, based on the RT-Thread Smart system, prebuilt versions are automatically built and updated every day at midnight. These prebuilt versions can be run directly on QEMU’s arm/aarch64, and riscv64 simulation platforms. Additionally, support for the Weston multi-window desktop has also been added.
Obtain the Smart Prebuilt Version and Get Started
As RT-Thread Smart is updated frequently, we generate corresponding prebuilt collection packages on a daily basis. These pre-built collection packages integrate related functions to create a collection package that can be run in the QEMU simulation environment. This ensures that everyone can use the latest smart kernel. You can download the prebuilt version here:
● aarch64 version
(Corresponding link: https://download-redirect.rt-thread.org/download/rt-smart/prebuilt/qemu-virt64-aarch64_latest.tar.gz)
Please note that the prebuilt version downloaded here only contains the Smart kernel and file mirroring, and the QEMU simulator itself needs to be downloaded separately. RT-Thread’s porting of QEMU has covered the virtio paravirtualization driver, but a higher version of QEMU is required. QEMU 7.1.0 is recommended. For Windows/Linux users, we have prepared download links:
● Windows: https://qemu.eu/w64/2023/
● Linux: Please compile from source code.
In addition to Weston, prebuilt also supports more user-space applications, such as:
● BusyBox, a software suite that provides several Unix utilities in a single executable file;
● MicroPython, a lightweight Python implementation;
● Lua, a small scripting language;
● OpenCV, an open-source computer vision and machine learning library.
More features are waiting for you to explore.
To further optimize the user experience, we will continue to enrich the functionality of the prebuilt collection. Comment to let us know if you are interested in joining the RT-Thread on the Weston Program!
