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Ubuntu Dumps X For Unity On Wayland

Posted by Soulskill on from the no-longer-marks-the-spot dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Ubuntu will move away from the traditional X.org display environment to Wayland — a more modern alternative. The move means there is now little reason for GNOME developers to recommend Ubuntu as an operating system. Shuttleworth said, 'We're confident we’ll be able to retain the ability to run X applications in a compatibility mode, so this is not a transition that needs to reset the world of desktop free software. Nor is it a transition everyone needs to make at the same time: for the same reason we'll keep investing in the 2D experience on Ubuntu despite also believing that Unity, with all its GL dependencies, is the best interface for the desktop. We'll help GNOME and KDE with the transition, there's no reason for them not to be there on day one either.'"

24 of 640 comments (clear)

  1. No standards at all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    WTF

    > The move means there is now little reason for GNOME developers to recommend Ubuntu as an operating system.

    I'm getting sick of this crap "journalism". if you want to make a comment, add a comment. Don't add your opinion to the summary. Just report the facts. If you really have to, blog about your opinion and add a link to that blog, stating that it's your opinion.

    1. Re:No standards at all by jhigh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Since when is /. journalism??!

      --
      Social Engineering Expert: Because there is no patch for stupidity.
    2. Re:No standards at all by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm getting sick of this crap "journalism". if you want to make a comment, add a comment. Don't add your opinion to the summary. Just report the facts. If you really have to, blog about your opinion and add a link to that blog, stating that it's your opinion.

      You must be new here. The summary of an article is nearly always the *opinion* of whoever submitted it. The "news" part is in the original source to which the link(s) in the summary point (assuming the original source isn't itself just an opinion or troll). The summary IS the "blog" part, and it acts as the root of the entire discussion thread. That's the way it has always worked on this site, and it's not very hard to figure out.

    3. Re:No standards at all by Tharsman · · Score: 5, Informative

      Although I generally agree with this feeling, if you read TFA, you would find this quote:

      There’s now little reason for these GNOME developers to recommend Ubuntu as an operating system.

      So as you can see, it's not something the summary writter made up, he just pasted something that was already in TFA, with just one word changed by a short phrace to better fit the short summary context: "There's" with "The move means there is"

      If you want to insult the article itself, go for it, but at least in this one case, your insult of the summary is horrendously out of place.

    4. Re:No standards at all by jemtallon · · Score: 5, Informative

      From the article: "There’s now little reason for these GNOME developers to recommend Ubuntu as an operating system."

      So... slashdot did a good job?

    5. Re:No standards at all by chrb · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Indeed. The headline is alarmist - "Ubuntu Dumps X For Unity On Wayland" makes it sound like they just made a huge change without consulting anyone, but Shuttleworth does say they have consulted others, and he predicts that it will take a year to get the first images out, and 4 years or more to shift applications onto Wayland. Shuttleworth is talking about a long-term direction, and it doesn't seem to be a rash decision - Intel and Nokia both appear to be backing Wayland for mobile devices.

      Something like this was bound to happen after Google decided not to use X for Android. The Linux world would benefit greatly from a fast and lightweight display server that has a common codebase for mobile devices and desktops, and can be used as a backend for Android, Meego, KDE and Gnome.

  2. Ok great for beginners by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...but I still know a LOT of people who forward X over SSH, and there are still a lot of professors who are advising their students (at least in the engineering schools I have seen) to do the same. I guess this is one of those times that just saying, "I use Linux!" will not convey what people think.

    --
    Palm trees and 8
    1. Re:Ok great for beginners by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Because not all the applications people want to forward are written for Wayland; one that comes to mind is a VLSI tool from Cadence, which is proprietary software that is often encountered in EE curricula (for VLSI courses and whatnot), which I doubt will be updated to Wayland any time soon. People have come to rely on an X server, specifically, being available to them.

      --
      Palm trees and 8
    2. Re:Ok great for beginners by computational+super · · Score: 5, Insightful
      X is a part of any proper Unix.

      Proper Unix doesn't have any graphical display capabilities at all.

      Now get off my lawn.

      --
      Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
    3. Re:Ok great for beginners by dpilot · · Score: 5, Informative

      You mean like the fact that I need to use the same Cadence you're talking about as part of my day job, as well as a whole host of other X-based VLSI CAD applications. Every now and then I need to work from home, and X lets me do that. To be sure, sometimes I use VNC, but sometimes I run the X tools native on my home system, too. Different tasks call for different approaches.

      Leaving work out of it, sometimes I just like to run some GUI tools on my server, with the display exported back to my desktop. My server doesn't even have an X server installed.

      I strongly suspect that the people who pooh-pooh the networking capabilities of X never got used to using them.

      --
      The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
    4. Re:Ok great for beginners by RCGodward · · Score: 5, Funny

      X is absolutely required for Unix.
      uniX
      See?

    5. Re:Ok great for beginners by AaxelB · · Score: 5, Informative

      1. Linux is not Unix
      2. X is neither part of Unix nor required for it.

      Anything else you'd like to add to this discussion?

      Nice troll! You managed to choose a topic that is probably as complex and volatile as Kirk vs. Picard, but yet is not as familiar.

      Nah, it's pretty well known and accepted that Linux is not Unix. Linux is certainly and undeniably Unix-like, but it's not Unix.

      Not really complex. Not really volatile. Not a troll.

    6. Re:Ok great for beginners by camperdave · · Score: 5, Funny

      > You have no idea what you're talking about, do you?

      No. I just happen to do this for a living.

      Ah! A consultant.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  3. gnome developers what? by Lord+Ender · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The move means there is now little reason for GNOME developers to recommend Ubuntu as an operating system.

    I don't know a single person, not one, who makes his OS choice based on what "gnome developers" recommend. Why was this bit even added to the summary?

    --
    A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
  4. Wayland... by DaPhil · · Score: 5, Informative
    For anyone else wondering what Wayland is: "Wayland is a lightweight display server for the GNU/Linux desktop. Started by Kristian Høgsberg [...] the software's stated goal is "every frame is perfect, by which I mean that applications will be able to control the rendering enough that we'll never see tearing, lag, redrawing or flicker"" (Wikipedia)

    Here is the website and the wikipedia entry.

  5. Summary's BOGUS... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Uh... Guys... Wayland doesn't preclude X11. Think of X11 as a two part system. One's the rendering and compositing layer and the other is the network transport layer that makes it network transparent. Wayland's the driver backend guts. They've shown MULTIPLE X11 desktops being ran on top of Wayland.

    This isn't the thing that many make it out to be. SERIOUSLY.

    1. Re:Summary's BOGUS... by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's good to hear. All I care about is one thing: does "ssh -X" work correctly and transparently out of the box with all included apps. If so, no problem. If not, I'll switch distros.

  6. A bit sensationalist... by Scyth3 · · Score: 5, Informative

    They're slowing transitioning away from X to Wayland. They're not straight up "dumping" X. It'll be there for quite a few releases. http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/11/linux-beyond-x-shuttleworth-contemplates-wayland.ars

  7. Breathe Deep... by gti_guy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Calm down people. This isn't any different than Mac OS X using Cocoa for the desktop display and still having X11 available to run as another app. And yes (if you've never tried it), X tunneled through ssh works just fine on Mac OS X. It will be the same thing with the next release of Ubuntu. The sky is NOT falling.

  8. Re:A bit big for their britches? by somersault · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I remember a discussion a year or two ago here on Slashdot how X was badly in need of replacing. Sounds to me like Canonical have the right idea, and the impetus to make it happen.

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    which is totally what she said
  9. Re:A bit big for their britches? by mcrbids · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But you are missing the point. X is a protocol layed out long, long ago. And there are long standing issues with it that become glaring as we move forward. Long known issues such as 3D support.

    Are the advantages of the new server enough to outweigh the costs?

    Besides, when did Slashdot become a crowd that believes that there should only be one right way? Forks are GOOD for software evolution - it's how new ideas get tried out!

    Go Ubuntu for being brave enough to try to tackle the problems of X!

    --
    I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
  10. Wayland can host X by sd.fhasldff · · Score: 5, Informative

    Then it's a good thing Wayland can host X. It would require some (reportedly) minor adjustments to X, but it would be transparent to individual applications.

  11. Re:A bit big for their britches? by tjwhaynes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My only concern is that last time I looked Wayland wasn't ready for primetime, and the intent with Wayland wasn't to be a full replacement for X for most users.

    If Mark Shuttleworth was proposing Wayland for prime-time inclusion in Ubuntu 11.04 or even 11.10, I'd be concerned. But if you actually follow this news story to the original source at http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551 you would find this:

    Timeframes are difficult. I’m sure we could deliver *something* in six months, but I think a year is more realistic for the first images that will be widely useful in our community. I’d love to be proven conservative on that :-) but I suspect it’s more likely to err the other way. It might take four or more years to really move the ecosystem. Progress on Wayland itself is sufficient for me to be confident that no other initiative could outrun it, especially if we deliver things like Unity and uTouch with it. And also if we make an early public statement in support of the project. Which this is!

    So the first likely viewing of this would 11.10 and real integration into the entire stack is more likely in the 14.10/15.04 time frame.

    So this is a classic storm in a teacup right now. The reality is "promising project will be supported by major Linux player for future inclusion".

    Cheers,
    Toby Haynes

    --
    Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
  12. Re:And thus the curse of Open Source manifests its by russotto · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And thus the curse of Open Source manifests itself - Develop something to to the virge of usability and robustness...then BAM! "Fuggit" let's start again in a new direction and it will be "better" and spend more years in development wilderness.

    In the time X11 has been around, Apple has switched processor families twice and gone through two rewrites of the operating system (System 7 and OS X). Microsoft has gone from Windows 2 to Windows 3.1 (16 bit!) to Windows 95 to the NT based versions. Sun has gone from SunOS 4 to Solaris 2 and ceased to exist.

    And you think starting in a new direction is an Open Source curse?