Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir • Hacker News Board

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#261

Post by noahl » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 1:32 AM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #208

prg318 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a link to this assumption? I would really like to know.

I found these: * https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec#Mir_on_the_Free_Graphics_Dri... * https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec#Mir_on_HW_Supported_By_Close... we are in contact with GPU vendors and are working closely together with them to support Mir and to distill a reusable and unified EGL-centric driver model that further eases display server development in general and keeps cross-platform use-cases in mind. I hope the later…

My interpretation (and apologies if this is obvious to you) is that they will define certain interfaces between the driver and the outside world, and any manufacturer will be able to provide something (a library or a daemon, I guess) that implements those libraries.

When they say "cross-platform use-cases", I think it means they want to make it easy to build the Mir driver and Android driver from the same source tree - and quite possibly the Windows and OS X driver too. So hopefully they will have some quite general interfaces.

I think the ideal scenario is that the driver interface they define has a very general interface, and then there's a wrapper that turns that interface into an Android driver, another that turns it into a Wayland driver, another that turns it into an OS X driver, and so on. But I don't know if graphics drivers would accept the performance penalty of even a very thin wrapper.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#262

Post by ishbits » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 1:38 AM UTC

jlgreco wrote: post #38

raverbashing wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes The linux idiots have one glaring example: PulseAudio Throw away user experience, system stability, judicious use of CPU for what? It certainly improves certain details of the user experience, when it works correctly , also usually consuming more CPU than flash player

Am I the only person in the world who has never had anything but a pleasant experience with PulseAudio? The first time I noticed that I was using it, I had already been using it for a year...

PulseAudio is good now. It was a different story for me back in 2007/2008 though.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#263

Post by shmerl » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 1:41 AM UTC

noahl wrote: post #261

shmerl wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found these: * https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec#Mir_on_the_Free_Graphics_Dri... * https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec#Mir_on_HW_Supported_By_Close... we are in contact with GPU vendors and are working closely together with them to support Mir and to distill a reusable and unified EGL-centric driver model that further eases display server development in general and keeps cross-platform use-cases in mind. I hope the later…

My interpretation (and apologies if this is obvious to you) is that they will define certain interfaces between the driver and the outside world, and any manufacturer will be able to provide something (a library or a daemon, I guess) that implements those libraries. When they say "cross-platform use-cases", I think it means they want to make it easy to build the Mir driver and Android driver from the same source tree…

I see all this as a huge waste of effort, unnecessary complications and increasing confusion. The main drive behind this seems to be desire of Canonical to control the development (they can't do that with Wayland), rather than any valid technical reason. Quite disappointing.

Here is what Wayland / X.org / Mesa developers have to say on this:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTMxN...

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#264

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 2:11 AM UTC

oneweekwonder wrote: post #123

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.

Why didn't the Android team make the GNU/Linux stuff work on Android; Because it is a lot of work? Why should another company then spend resources to do that work. I don't understand what you mean with your second statement. But that might just be because I'm dead tired. But I can not stop myself from reading and typing!!1

Funny thing is that Debian is already at Google Play.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#265

Post by stephen_g » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 2:15 AM UTC

kunai wrote: post #6

I suppose it's time to switch to Fedora, now, even though I've been holding out for as long as humanly possible. This just pushes me over the edge.

I did that ages ago when the Unity mess happened. Fedora is actually really nice, and working perfectly on my machines.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#266

Post by TheCowboy » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 2:24 AM UTC

AnthonBerg wrote: post #200

hollerith wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

am curious how Ubuntu broke things in Debian. were Debian maintainers too ready to accept changes from Ubuntu?

Ah! Oops! I meant break things FROM debian, as in got code from Debian and broke it in Ubuntu, or didn't pull fixes from Debian into Ubuntu for years. My apologies! I'm not a native English speaker :( and sometimes I think I am smarter than I am :)

What did they break?

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#267

Post by ElliotH » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 2:31 AM UTC

Competition is good.

Ubuntu seems to have their reasons not to want to use Wayland. Maybe Mir is awesome. Then I can move to it. If it's not so awesome then like Unity and Upstart I can ignore it.

Seems to me the enemy here is the old fashioned clunky X server. Good. Two armies fighting the same target at least eliminates that target before they start fighting each other.

Besides, if they both end up having support in all the major toolkits and they both have an X server fallback, then we should be able to meet in the middle somewhere eventually.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#268

Post by stephen_g » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 2:32 AM UTC

shurcooL wrote: post #194

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…

As long as what Ubuntu is creating is open source and easily adopted by others (if it's good), what's the problem?

The 'if it's good' part is the problem... Canonical don't exactly have a good record of creating well-engineered software...

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#269

Post by hollerith » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 2:33 AM UTC

jlgreco wrote: post #247

achiang wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep putting up strawmen. Show me the desktop Linux equivalent of Android, not Cyanogenmod. It doesn't exist - and you can measure that failure with any number of metrics. If Ubuntu can achieve that type of success and protect the freedom of users with the GPL (instead of the permissive BSD model for hardware makers) then we will have accomplished something in the world.

You have missed the point. Show me the Android equivalent of Debian. Show me an Android project, with all of the unskilled users that come with it, that is anywhere near as organized as the Debian Project. Show me that legions of unskilled users have allowed this Android project to achieve hardware compatibility at all comparable to what Debian achieves on the desktop. Such a project does not exist . I assert that it…

>Idiot users are toxic; anything that touches them rots.

implying Firefox and Chrome will rot.

Re: Ubuntu will switch from X window server to Mir

#270

Post by stephen_g » Tue, Mar 05, 2013, 2:39 AM UTC

VLM wrote: post #209

No one has made the obvious comparison in the comments to ipv4 vs ipv6? The main issue with "yet another graphics protocol" is islanding. Right now all my "linux" boxes are more or less intercompatible. I can ssh -X whatever mythtv-setup and get the config GUI from a server that doesn't even have a monitor (not even sure if it has a graphics card?) Now I / we will inevitably have three little not too compatible islan…

What comparison to IPv4 vs IPv6? There are very few parallels...

I guess you could say that X and Wayland are like IPv4 and IPv6, where we strive for total migration to the new, better protocol, but in the meantime you can have a dual-stack setup with both that works fine. But it's not like anyone is coming in with a competitor to IPv6, so the analogy completely breaks down...