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Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

wiki.ubuntu.com

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Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#271

Post by LukeShu »

zanny wrote: post #233
LukeShu wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skimming the article, Canonical has some legitimate criticisms of Wayland, and are working on something that doesn't have those problems. Yay, this would be good! Except that it's by Canonical, and as you said, "Canonical never delivers". (That wasn't a quote from you, it was an iteration of "OP (never) delivers")

What I said was that when Canonical does deliver, they let the delivery wither and die without support because they are spread like a teaspoon of mayo thin on their footlong distro sandwich. See: Upstart, Compiz, Software Center.

We agree, I just called that not delivering.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#272

Post by gillianseed »

Retric wrote: post #227
HerraBRE wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Placating the tech crowd by giving away fragments of low level code is really just marketing and a way to retain talent that would otherwise refuse to work for them. It's not as if their users can actually use any of that stuff to change how their macs work (without switching to a different OS or browser).

WebKit for one has fairly wide adoption outside of pure Mac OS X. As for the rest of it, just because something is open source don't expect many people to use it.

Yes but then it's also being developed by far more companies than Apple.

For 2012 Google submitted roughly twice as much code to Webkit as Apple (which came second), apart from them we have smaller yet notable contributors like RIM and Nokia (7% and 5% respectively).

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#274

Post by gillianseed »

shmerl wrote: post #120
oneweekwonder wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article, and I'm sorry if this seems condescending, I would truly love to have a conversation about this, but I believe your question is to vague: * The input event handling partly recreates the X semantics and is thus likely to expose similar problems to the ones we described in the introductory section. * The shell integration parts of the protocol are considered privileged from our perspective and we'd ra…

What worries me is fragmentation of drivers. It can be a very serious problem. Possible scenario: Nvidia wait for broader Wayland adoption to release their driver for Wayland. Comes along Canonical and drops Mir on our heads. Nvidia scratch their heads and say - forget Wayland. Not sure if they'll say forget Mir as well - they have better things to do than to deal with this mess, but all this doesn't sound good alrea…

I don't think so. The reason we've had Nvidia and AMD support on Linux for so long is because of the large 3d/sfx and of 'gpu accelerated number crunching presence' Linux has.

The end user Linux desktop market has never really been on their radar, perhaps that will change somewhat with the advent of Steam, but really I expect that unless the aforementioned markets adopt Wayland or Mir (with the latter being most unlikely imo) then NVidia and AMD won't target them with proprietary driver support.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#275

Post by mistercow »

acabal wrote: post #33

Maybe this is a good idea, I don't know about X/Wayland enough to say. But it worries me that Ubuntu is increasingly striking out on its own. What I like about the GNU/Linux ecosystem is that a lot of distros share a lot of common underpinnings, and everyone benefits from a large community fixing bugs and improving those underpinnings. It's also less knowledge to have to keep in your head for system administration st…

>But it worries me that Ubuntu is increasingly striking out on its own.

It's a little distressing, I agree, but on the other hand, are you ever really "out on your own" when you have a big user base and your code is GPL?

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#276

Post by gillianseed »

zanny wrote: post #122
zobzu wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's basically 2 ways for them right now: 1) Make the GNU/Linux stuff work on Android. That's what Tizen does, AFAIK. It's a lot of work. Advantage: everything works with it, and it's well understood. 2) Glue stuff up to work with whatever Android does. That's what they're aiming for. Advantage: less work.

Yet in the end, you pull the entire Linux FOSS community towards whatever whimsy Google is going on at any given time. If they suddenly redid the graphics API and threw out their current binary blob batch, the FOSS space would have to get back up and try again after getting the rug pulled out from under them. I don't see it as good if Google can lead FOSS desktop development around by a leash.

Are you saying that Canonical is the 'entire Linux FOSS community' ???

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#277

Post by Retric »

gillianseed wrote: post #272
Retric wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebKit for one has fairly wide adoption outside of pure Mac OS X. As for the rest of it, just because something is open source don't expect many people to use it.

Yes but then it's also being developed by far more companies than Apple. For 2012 Google submitted roughly twice as much code to Webkit as Apple (which came second), apart from them we have smaller yet notable contributors like RIM and Nokia (7% and 5% respectively).

Let's not forget that reduced maintenance costs are often touted as a reason to opensource code in the first place. And when you consider it was developed by Apple and so presumably fit there needs well when released it as working code, it's not surprising that adapting it to new use cases involves more work than maintaining it.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#278

Post by tedks »

tzs wrote: post #259
tedks wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Apple buy CUPS specifically so that they could keep parts of it proprietary? They're definitely only funneling money into LLVM so they can drop their dependencies on GCC, which will probably have a net harmful effect on the free software culture.

> They're definitely only funneling money into LLVM so they can drop their dependencies on GCC Definitely and only? How did you determine this?

It's sort of obvious? I can't see any other reason Apple would have for it, other than making compilers researchers have slightly easier lives. It'd certainly make sense after they were forced to open source the frontend for Objective-C.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#279

Post by Karunamon »

vidarh wrote: post #134
csense wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally dropped Ubuntu for Linux Mint. I've heard a lot of people say they hate Unity. It's not hard data, but it's anecdotal evidence that there's a substantial set of people that really hate it.

Personally I love it. I had planned on installing a tiling window manager, but after 10 minutes with Unity I decided to stick with it. It's the first Linux GUI I've found ok since Enlightenment 0.16, and the first time since I left the Amiga behind I've had an environment I'd say I'm happy with. And most people I've heard who have used Unity love it. The only people I hear complaining are typically people who expect…

>The only people I hear complaining are typically people who expect the Linux desktop to remain static and unchanging the way it was when they first used it.

Or who are stuck on older hardware (why was 2d retired, again?)...

Or who think it's utterly silly you have to write a INI (.desktop) file to put arbitrary links in the "dock"..

Or who think that the interface wastes a lot of space...

You've went and generalized a lot of people with legitimate complaints about that DE. Kind of like Ubuntu's developers do.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#280

Post by sandGorgon »

hazov wrote: post #64

For those that are curious this is a good diagram by Alison Chaiken about the two major ways of the architecture of Linux graphics: http://she-devel.com/Linux_Android_Graphics_Stacks.svg I believe Mir will just be a custom tailored SurfaceFlinger, I just do not understand why Canonical will not use SurfaceFlinger. EDIT: Maybe because SurfaceFlinger is built with OpenGLES in mind? I don't really know.

I have this question as well. Especially since they have already done so much work around Android for Ubuntu touch, why not simply build, what will essentially be desktop Android with a Unity Shell.
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