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Intel rejection of Ubuntu’s Mir patch forces Canonical to go own way

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Re: Intel rejection of Ubuntu’s Mir patch forces Canonical to go own way

#11

Post by lelandbatey »

achat wrote: post #6
lelandbatey wrote: post #3

I'm confused. I've seen this a bunch of times, and I don't understand why Canonical submitted a patch to a video driver to "support" their Xmir window server. Why does a video driver need to have code in it to support a window server? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? Isn't the window server supposed to work on top of the video driver (and all the other hardware drivers)? What's going on?

While developing some application, did you ever feel that your SDK is lacking some feature which would make your app development much easier? So think the video driver as library and the windowing system as an application using video driver library.

Yep. However, if you're trying to replicate something that's already built on top of an existing piece of software using the existing API's, I'd assume you wouldn't have to patch the platform just to build on top of it.

However, as tinco explained[0], it seems that there is no "standard graphics api" for linux, and the "link" between window servers and graphics drivers is hard coded. So you do in fact have to patch the video driver to provide support for a new window server (on Linux at least).

Re: Intel rejection of Ubuntu’s Mir patch forces Canonical to go own way

#12

Post by lelandbatey »

tinco wrote: post #7
lelandbatey wrote: post #3

I'm confused. I've seen this a bunch of times, and I don't understand why Canonical submitted a patch to a video driver to "support" their Xmir window server. Why does a video driver need to have code in it to support a window server? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? Isn't the window server supposed to work on top of the video driver (and all the other hardware drivers)? What's going on?

On Linux it is actually the window server that provides the interface between applications and the video driver. Linux does not have a standard graphics driver interface like Windows does, at the moment is sort of defined by X, and since Wayland and Mir aim to replace X, the interface will be replaced too. This means that every driver needs to interface with each of the window managers. I would agree that is a silly…

Ok, that makes more sense (or at least explains why). I'm puzzled that there hasn't ever been anything done to make this less of a tangly mess; it seems like it'd be a huge step towards making linux a better platform to iron something like this out. However, that's probably just wishful thinking, as I have no idea what it'd take technically or politically to make that happen.

Re: Intel rejection of Ubuntu’s Mir patch forces Canonical to go own way

#13

Post by tinco »

gaius wrote: post #2

Watch Linux video go the way of Linux audio... Intel are 100% in the right to make a stand.

It won't be like Linux audio, because all Linux audio drivers are open source. If Intel can't get AMD and NVidia to support Wayland, and Canonical spoke the truth when they said that AMD and NVidia will support Mir, then what reason will people have to use Wayland? It will only work with Intel cards.

Intel is actively making a stand against Open Source. I know that's unlike them, but their stance just makes no sense from a free software perspective.

When you look at it from the perspective of Canonical enabling AMD and NVidia to cooperate with introducing a new graphics driver interface, a shadowy doubt is cast over Intel's motivations.

Re: Intel rejection of Ubuntu’s Mir patch forces Canonical to go own way

#14

Post by jmillikin »

gaius wrote: post #2

Watch Linux video go the way of Linux audio... Intel are 100% in the right to make a stand.

I wish Linux video would go the way of Linux audio.

Linux audio just works. There's a single userspace API (PulseAudio), a single kernel driver API (ALSA), and all the old nastiness of the '90s (ESD, aRts, OSS) is dead and gone.

In contrast, getting video to work properly involves figuring out what hardware you're running (nVidia? ATI/AMD? Intel? misc other?), then hunting down the drivers, installing them, rebooting, hoping the hardware gets detected correctly, and so on until the user gives up and settles for a half-broken system. I consider myself fairly skilled with Linux stuff, and I still can't figure out how to get my desktop to have both kernel modesetting and accelerated OpenGL at the same time.

Re: Intel rejection of Ubuntu’s Mir patch forces Canonical to go own way

#15

Post by tinco »

lelandbatey wrote: post #12
tinco wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Linux it is actually the window server that provides the interface between applications and the video driver. Linux does not have a standard graphics driver interface like Windows does, at the moment is sort of defined by X, and since Wayland and Mir aim to replace X, the interface will be replaced too. This means that every driver needs to interface with each of the window managers. I would agree that is a silly…

Ok, that makes more sense (or at least explains why). I'm puzzled that there hasn't ever been anything done to make this less of a tangly mess; it seems like it'd be a huge step towards making linux a better platform to iron something like this out. However, that's probably just wishful thinking, as I have no idea what it'd take technically or politically to make that happen.

There have actually been many tries, Wayland being the most recent of them and now Mir. But because the earlier ones relied too much on the old X code, they were not succesful, and Wayland has not yet secured support from the graphics cards manufacturers (except Intel). Mir is promised to change all that, but we will have to see.

Re: Intel rejection of Ubuntu’s Mir patch forces Canonical to go own way

#16

Post by tinco »

ihsw wrote: post #8
lelandbatey wrote: post #3

I'm confused. I've seen this a bunch of times, and I don't understand why Canonical submitted a patch to a video driver to "support" their Xmir window server. Why does a video driver need to have code in it to support a window server? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? Isn't the window server supposed to work on top of the video driver (and all the other hardware drivers)? What's going on?

Beyond that, it may be because Mir is GPLv3 licensed and Wayland is MIT licensed. Just a hunch.

Oh I didn't even know that. That's a great reason to prefer Wayland over Mir or Mir over Wayland. I'm a bit torn now..

Re: Intel rejection of Ubuntu’s Mir patch forces Canonical to go own way

#17

Post by ealexhudson »

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #9

> Intel customers who use Ubuntu will not see any regressions as we will simply continue to support XMir in the Intel driver as part of Ubuntu. This is an issue only if you wish to use XMir outside of Ubuntu. Ubuntu controls their own ecosystem so they can just patch/compile/repackage their distribution as needed, like they do for many other packages (i.e. Mesa, xf86-video-ati, and xf86-video-nouveau). The core issue…

In all likelihood, few other distros will be interested in shipping XMir. Pushing upstream is usually a better thing to do because it helps reduce the maintenance burden - you're not maintaining a patchset.

Intel's decision is basically saying they don't want any of the burden of helping maintain (X)Mir. Canonical/Ubuntu make a rod for their own back every time they settle on these Ubuntu-only solutions imho.

Re: Intel rejection of Ubuntu’s Mir patch forces Canonical to go own way

#18

Post by WestCoastJustin »

ealexhudson wrote: post #17
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #9

> Intel customers who use Ubuntu will not see any regressions as we will simply continue to support XMir in the Intel driver as part of Ubuntu. This is an issue only if you wish to use XMir outside of Ubuntu. Ubuntu controls their own ecosystem so they can just patch/compile/repackage their distribution as needed, like they do for many other packages (i.e. Mesa, xf86-video-ati, and xf86-video-nouveau). The core issue…

In all likelihood, few other distros will be interested in shipping XMir. Pushing upstream is usually a better thing to do because it helps reduce the maintenance burden - you're not maintaining a patchset. Intel's decision is basically saying they don't want any of the burden of helping maintain (X)Mir. Canonical/Ubuntu make a rod for their own back every time they settle on these Ubuntu-only solutions imho.

I don't really see why Ubuntu is getting bent out of shape about this. Maybe this is just a media/blogger generated grudge. Many very popular open source packages are maintained out of stream before getting pushed upstream. DRBD [1] was a very popular package which, after years of patches, finally got accepted into the kernel. I think there is a burden of proof required before asking someone to maintain your patch set upstream.

[1] http://www.drbd.org/

Re: Intel rejection of Ubuntu’s Mir patch forces Canonical to go own way

#19

Post by jmillikin »

tinco wrote: post #7
lelandbatey wrote: post #3

I'm confused. I've seen this a bunch of times, and I don't understand why Canonical submitted a patch to a video driver to "support" their Xmir window server. Why does a video driver need to have code in it to support a window server? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? Isn't the window server supposed to work on top of the video driver (and all the other hardware drivers)? What's going on?

On Linux it is actually the window server that provides the interface between applications and the video driver. Linux does not have a standard graphics driver interface like Windows does, at the moment is sort of defined by X, and since Wayland and Mir aim to replace X, the interface will be replaced too. This means that every driver needs to interface with each of the window managers. I would agree that is a silly…

  > On Linux it is actually the window server that provides
  > the interface between applications and the video driver.
This hasn't been true for a long, long time. Modern Linux applications directly call into the graphics driver, either through OpenGL or an intermediate library such as Clutter.

  > This means that every driver needs to interface with
  > each of the window managers.
This is also not true. Window managers are driver-independent, and you can easily write your own window manager without any knowledge of the underlying hardware. You might mean "display server" instead of "window manager", but there's only one display server used in Linux, and that is X11.

X11 was designed in an era before standardized graphics or input APIs, so it doesn't use OpenGL. As a result, it needs its own set of drivers for nearly everything (keyboards, mice, graphics, overlays). That's why Linux graphics drivers need to have special X11 support.

Wayland and Mir are an attempt to replace X11 with a much thinner layer, handling only the bare necessities of getting the driver and user application together so they can talk OpenGL together.

Re: Intel rejection of Ubuntu’s Mir patch forces Canonical to go own way

#20

Post by toyg »

tinco wrote: post #13
gaius wrote: post #2

Watch Linux video go the way of Linux audio... Intel are 100% in the right to make a stand.

It won't be like Linux audio, because all Linux audio drivers are open source. If Intel can't get AMD and NVidia to support Wayland, and Canonical spoke the truth when they said that AMD and NVidia will support Mir, then what reason will people have to use Wayland? It will only work with Intel cards. Intel is actively making a stand against Open Source. I know that's unlike them, but their stance just makes no sense…

Well, what is stopping NVidia and AMD from cooperating on Wayland right now?

When you look at it from this perspective, a shadowy doubt is cast over Canonical's motivations.

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