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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

#161
from Wayland creator Kristian Høgsberg:

" things they claim wayland/weston input can't be extended to support:

"... adjusting and extending X's input model is difficult and supporting features like input event batching and compression, motion event prediction together with associated power-saving strategies or flexible synchronization schemes for aligning input event delivery and rendering operations is (too) complex."

is already implemented and working in weston today..."

https://plus.google.com/100409717163242445476/posts

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#162
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't take the driver situation into consideration and it seems that Ubuntu is contacting closed source manufactures to allow driver support for mir. I like your scenario because I believe a interesting element is that Valve is trying to port most of its Steam games to Ubuntu and they do have muscle with Nvidia and AMD. And with the rumours that the steambox called Piston would be based on Ubuntu. So in my opinion…

I don't consider Ubuntu usurping the focus of game development and drivers a good thing. And notion like "using Mir - good for you, not using Mir - too bad, no drivers" doesn't sound good as well. Ubuntu is already quite isolationist. This will only make matters worse.

Why would you say Ubuntu is taking game or driver development by force or illegally? As far as I can tell there is no other competition in this space, so it is actually very open and its not like Ubuntu is not willing to share.

I agree with the notion, but we still need to see if it will play out that way. For now its only on the table, with a lot of other cards we are not even aware of.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#163
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't consider Ubuntu usurping the focus of game development and drivers a good thing. And notion like "using Mir - good for you, not using Mir - too bad, no drivers" doesn't sound good as well. Ubuntu is already quite isolationist. This will only make matters worse.

Why would you say Ubuntu is taking game or driver development by force or illegally? As far as I can tell there is no other competition in this space, so it is actually very open and its not like Ubuntu is not willing to share. I agree with the notion, but we still need to see if it will play out that way. For now its only on the table, with a lot of other cards we are not even aware of.

I didn't say anything about "illegally". It's all open - "do what you want". It's the question whether it benefits the global Linux community, or creates unnecessary internal competition / fragmentation and spreading of resources.

Competition for drivers can start (if they won't be compatible), look at Android targeted hardware and see how sick it is now (it's SurfaceFlinger only, try getting Wayland drivers and good luck with that). We don't need the same story repeated with Mir.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#164

Wtf? "We don't like Wayland because of ... reasons, let's build our own stack from scratch!"

I got the same feeling. They decided to address their decision not to base off of Wayland, but all I read was a convincing reason to fork off of what Wayland is doing. I wish they would have given the real reason for their decision, right now it just smells like NIH.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#165
post #34
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not Debian?

Debian stable tends to be too stable for my tastes; Fedora is much more bleeding edge. It's just a matter of preference, really.

I have ran unstable for 10+ years. The only problems I have ever had were graphics related and required downgrading to an older version of an X11 library. Debian unstable has never put me in a position where I could have lost data.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#166

While I agree with most of you who says they are worried by this development, I understand and welcome this direction Ubuntu is taking, almost making their own, not flavor but unique OS. Which is what people said HP should have done. It is frustrating being open source advocate, if software you use is somewhat inferior to what is available on other platforms, just try to use firefox on ubuntu and compare that to osx…

"It is frustrating being open source advocate, if software you use is somewhat inferior to what is available on other platforms, just try to use firefox on ubuntu and compare that to osx or windows."

What do you find wrong with Firefox on Ubuntu exactly? I'm not challenging just interested. I use Win7/IE9 and Ubuntu1204/Firefox 19 most days.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#167
post #160
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It looks like both Wayland and Mir are supposed to use KMS drivers.

Let's hope.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#168
post #127
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…

In terms of user interface have those standards delivered? I remember fonts being really screwed up for a long time. Longer that it should have been. Just getting anti-aliased fonts was major deal. Then graphics drivers are a mess. I blame manufacturers of devices here. But still treating it as a black box I just see that is inferior. I know Linus flipped of NVidia but at the same time is a chicken and egg problem. W…

Yes. I shall follow with interest and run Ubuntu if my hardware allows. CentOS and Debian are there as lifeboats if needed.

Choice is good!

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#170
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"you can set up PulseAudio for LAN audio streaming with padevchooser (GUI)." Yes, and? I understand this is a useful feature for some people, but I'm just interested in listening to music and PA does not me allow to do that without frequent crashes and bugs I don't care about the features of a car if it stops working at random. And yes, this has happened on every distro I tried since PA started being bundled. Every s…

Bugs can be fixed. Pulse is newer than Alsa and more complex, you should expect bugs. If you don't have a problem with the implementation details of PA (software mixing, optional software equalizing, networked audio, stateful audio adaption to devices) then just report the bugs and make it better. Don't whine and try to fragment the Linux space any worse than it already is, especially with Mir's announcement.

The real question is why did you need something newer in the first place ? Are years of bugs, misconfigurations, random crashes worth the minimal improvement end-users will get in the end (when everything finally works for everyone) ?

Yes, pulseaudio has all sorts of awesome esoteric features. You can stream sound transparently from a linux box to a windows one. That's kind of useless if it brings down your computer.

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