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Preview of Ubuntu's Unity Interface
itwbennett writes "In late October we learned that starting with the next release (11.04), Ubuntu would use Unity instead of GNOME as its default desktop interface. Now we know a bit more about what that will (and won't) mean for users. The move to Unity doesn't mean that Ubuntu is abandoning GNOME. It also doesn't mean that users will be forced to use Unity; they'll still be able to revert to the old GNOME interface. What it does mean, mainly, is that users will be presented with a simple interface — probably too simple for nuts and bolts types. The more 'radical shift' will be switching Ubuntu's base graphics system from the X Window System to Wayland. There users can expect that it will take some time before things are in working order. 'In other words,' says Steven Vaughan-Nichols who reviewed Unity for ITworld, 'Wayland will be an option, and one that only people who don't mind having their desktops blow up on a regular basis should fool with, in Ubuntu 11.04. By Ubuntu 11.10, it will be workable, and come the spring release two years from now, Ubuntu 12.04, we should, if all goes well, see a stable Wayland-based Unity desktop.'"
Ubuntu has gone weird -- glad I switched back to Fedora earlier this year.
It's nice to have a desktop similar to my centos servers.
Text is useless. I want screenshots!
I'm sorry, how is this possibly a "preview" when there is not one screen shot? One link goes to an older /. article, the other goes to an all text article.
Can you please stop naming things that don't have photos like they do have photos?
They make big sweeping changes to a new technology that is not well tested or even finished, ala PulseAudio. It's for this reason it's always felt buggy to me. I honestly don't get the global appeal, Fedora is cutting edge and stable and just as easy to use, while something like Madrive is stable and easy to use. I guess the free CD promo really paid off.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
I read over the article (I know, I know), and there doesn't seem to be anything new here. It's just a retelling of the same information we got a few months ago, where's the new info?
If "weird" includes Ubuntu's adoption of Wayland, I have bad news: Fedora is also dumping X for Wayland (eventually).
probably too simple for nuts and bolts types.
If it has text-based configuration files and access to a command line, that's good enough for tinkering.
This might be the beginning of the end for Ubuntu as everyone leaves in droves for a more traditional and stable distribution.
Ubuntu has stability problems?
From what I've heard at least they'll wait until it's ready before they decide if they should make the switch or not.
If "weird" includes Ubuntu's adoption of Wayland, I have bad news: Fedora is also dumping X for Wayland (eventually)
Fedora? The base OS for RHEL server systems? Is going to dump X so server admins will no longer be able to run graphical admin programs remotely from their servers to their desktop without using some horrific kludge like VNC? Apps which will apparently require OpenGL to render, on servers which don't even have OpenGL drivers?
...shifting to brand new, undeveloped technology will produce a product that isn't entirely stable on the first release, but it should get more stable with time?
What would I do without such genius insight? Instead of generalizations, how about you dig into the meat of how it will affect users day to day in the normal workflow of them using their computers?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
They are duplicating the KDE 4.0 roll out plan?? *ducks*
Linux Mint has all the good plug ins and none of the weird stuff thats been happening ubuntu while
still being compatible with ubuntu. The window buttons are still on the right, the start button is
still on the bottom.
Linux Mint will still use GNOME for the forseeable future.
Interface? Bueller? Anyone?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
a preview without images ? sorry, but this article is a bit useless :-/
Where is the _real_ information ?
Isn't a Wayland a funded Red Hat project? It would look bad if Ubuntu got all the fame and glory for it while Fedora wasn't even using it.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Is it completely impossible to get something similar into Wayland? It doesn't do it right now, but if it get enough momentum I can't think that someone isn't going to add it.
X will still run fine, even under Wayland, so relax.
Is it completely impossible to get something similar into Wayland?
Every time I've seen someone ask the Wayland devs how they plan to support remote rendering, their response seems to be 'we don't. go away'.
X will still run fine, even under Wayland, so relax.
Sigh, we're not talking about running X and rendering on a Wayland desktop, we're talking about running Wayland apps and rendering on a remote desktop, the way you currently can with X. The biggest single advantage of X over Windows, which the Wayland developers seem quite happy to throw away in the quest for 'The Shiny'.
Given a choice between fancier compositing effects and being able to run any program on any machine while rendering on any other machine, I'll take the latter any day.
Its not a Red Hat project, the guy works for red hat but hes doing it on his own time. So say the faq at least.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Ubuntu was working towards a so-called "10 second" boot. What happened to that? They give up? *MAYBE*, if I'm in a generous mood, they quickened boot by 30'ish percent during their efforts. But it still takes like 40'ish second or more until a usable desktop. That's a long way off from their stated goal. People seem to have forgotten about this.
What are you talking about? Do YOU even know what it is?
Remote rendering in X is here NOW and has been for 20+ years!!!
Hello! Just set the DISPLAY environment variable.
Why must we keep dumbing down so many Linux distros? We already have other OSs like that.
Gnome kept getting simplified, but that wasn't enough... now we're going to pick an even more simplified thing? What's with this line of thinking? I'm afraid the chaos caused by the switch is going to take that 1% Linux desktop penetration and turn it into a whopping 0.5%. It's going to alienate the very non-techie users they're trying to woo.
OK, there is still KDE which isn't so dumbed down, but that isn't the main focus of most distros and feels more and more like the red headed stepchild desktop env.
is not 100% even today. I get hit by font problems (start emacs get nothing but little boxes) a couple of
times a year.
So far every quasi-mainstream article about "the future of Ubuntu" has been far off base and simply leads to people who know nothing debating with people who know little. I'll wait for Ubuntu/Canonical to announce things thanks.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Best of luck. Promoting Linux on the desktop is good, but I'm tired of broken packages pushed out as stable (latest kate in Ubuntu locks up on file open) and I highly value graphical network transparency. It's back to Debian for me.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
> Given a choice between fancier compositing effects and being able to run any program on any machine while rendering on any other machine, I'll take the latter any day.
Yeah me too - I use this all the time just on my little home network of 3 PCs - but it's just like Linux vs Windows: we're too small a segment for anyone to care about. We're destined to lose, because form is more important than function to most people.
The Unity namespace is already occupied by http://www.unity3d.com/ a great game engine for iOS and android and support multitouch and so on. Canonical is just going to make it a PITA for one or both sets of developers searching for "unity opengl" "unity GUI" "unity multitouch" "unity android."
Its not a Red Hat project, the guy works for red hat but hes doing it on his own time. So say the faq at least.
Smells like a management issue at Red Hat.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Wait, seriously? They're replacing X Windows with something which doesn't support remote displays?
WTF??? Is that true? That makes no sense whatsoever ... one of the best things about X is being able to have display from multiple sources.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If "weird" includes Ubuntu's adoption of Wayland, I have bad news: Fedora is also dumping X for Wayland (eventually).
If only because Fedora and now Ubuntu are producing desktops for the corporate world instead of the traditional geek users.
Lightweight.
Limited.
Locked-dowm.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Are there any Wayland native apps yet? Without those, all you have is a pretty interface and nothing to do with it. Sure, you can provide backwards compatibility by running an X server on top of Wayland, but then what was the point of dumping X.org?
The X11R6 protocol has been around for a long time, because it's good at what it does. By dumping the X protocol along with the X.org server they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I went there looking for a horrible car analogy and they delivered.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
RELAX? Here's what Wikipedia says:
"As of 2010[update], Wayland only works with open source drivers for Intel, AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, and Nvidia currently has no plans to support it in their proprietary drivers.[7]"
That makes it useless. Open source drivers are not useful for serious 3D work on Linux. If Wayland isn't supported by the vendor's drivers, that's going to be one MASSIVE clusterfuck.
That's not even mentioning the loss of remote display ability like we have had in Unix for 25 years or so!
I'm unimpressed even as a long time Linux and Ubuntu user. In fact, I'd say it sucks.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
From the Wayland FAQ
https://groups.google.com/group/wayland-display-server/web/frequently-askeds-questions
Pulseaudio has a piss-poor implementation. To this date I've not found one (not a single one!) hardware setup where it worked as well as Alsa or OSS.
Sound quality is crap. Hardware capable of more than two channels (for instance subwoofers, also in laptops) gets more or less permanently ruined, so even other OS'es can't get it right anymore.
The developers need to be ashamed of letting it out in the wild. Ubuntu needs to be ashamed for including it as default.
Man, the hours upon hours I've lost on Pulseaudio. Insanity. You defending it would be hilarious if it wasn't so utter tragic.
They should rename it, and I don't mean a variation on Ubuntu like Kubuntu.
X is much maligned but it still beats the pants off of everything else in this respect.
Copying MacOS is NOT the way to go here. It's horrific. It is the single worst OS in terms of remote desktops.
Even Windows has kind of come around to the Unix way of doing things. ...breaking what doesn't need fixing because they're taking Lemming FUD far too seriously.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You do realize that Windows doesn't support X11 (at least it's apps won't act as clients - there are servers) and many, many, MANY admins get by just fine with RDP right?
X11 isn't the absolutely only way to do remote access.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
By focusing on Unity (on Wayland or X) for Ubuntu, Canonical has essentially forked its own Linux distribution.
you arent missing much (what does that even mean???? They cant "fork" their own distro...).
Abandoning Gnome, replacing it with some cell phone type interface and on top of it dropping X???? Whoever runs the Ubuntu project needs their head checked.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
So if I use this unity 3d engine on ubuntu unity using VMware unity, do I get a trilogy?
You telling me I cant simply apt-get uninstall wayland?
Nvidia has no plans to support it because as of now, NO ONE USES IT. If by way of Ubuntu support it gains traction, Nvidia likely would indeed support it.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
If a corporate admin (as the GP suggested) gave you a regular user account with no su permissions, then of course you couldn't use apt-get.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I don't like it one bit. Why? I'll tell you:
Way to go, Ubuntu. Guess I'll have to get used to Debian.
Ubuntu puts up the testing, coding, and support. That's the difference. They say, "We want to do this. It's probably broken now. In a couple releases it'll be probably working. After that it'll be standard." Fedora does that somewhat (rush in head-first to new versions), but on big technology switches they like to hang back a bit.
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Wayland developers include several lead X.org developers,[9] who feel that a cleaner new design and protocol is more maintainable for the future.[14] One of them has envisaged providing remote access to a Wayland application by either 'pixel-scraping' (as in VNC and SPICE) or getting it to send a "rendering command stream" across the network (like RDP).[15] It is anticipated that X11 applications will be supported by an X server running as an application on Wayland.
Hopefully they go the RDP-like route, which im my opinion is vastly superior over the way X11 does it.
With such gems in TFA as
By focusing on Unity (on Wayland or X) for Ubuntu, Canonical has essentially forked its own Linux distribution.
you arent missing much (what does that even mean???? They cant "fork" their own distro...).
Perhaps the author typed "borked" and the editor "corrected" it.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
what does that even mean???? They cant "fork" their own distro...)
Why not?
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Open source drivers are not useful for serious 3D work on Linux.
I'm currently doing serious 3D work with the Xorg Radeon driver with 4350 and 4850 cards (the former slow but fanless and quiet). The driver has been rock solid including suspend/resume. The only noticable regressions so far are lines not antialiased and bilinear filtering not working for mipmapping. These are in no way an obstacle to development work and I have every confidence these issues will be addressed in due course, and probably have already been addressed in upstream. Unlike the closed NVidia drivers I've used in the past, every one of which has had serious issues ranging from non working text console to black screen on reboot and many others. Never mind the inconvenience of having to build a new kernel wrapper on every kernel upgrade, and deal with NVidia's braindamaged driver installer.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
'Wayland will be an option, and one that only people who don't mind having their desktops blow up on a regular basis should fool with, in Ubuntu 11.04." Every time I upgrade or clean install Ubuntu something blows up. Why is this different? I now consider the blowing up part of the leaning experience.
And here I thought all the really important admin programs on RHEL were CLI or Web based.
The fact is that, yes, VNC is a horrific kludge so why is it required when several desktop users all want to have a meeting and view an app window at the same time? Why are we left with X11 or VNC as network choices, when both are very old and slow over the Internet?
The 2 big desktop OSes have supported efficient window sharing at the system level for years now.
Also, settings management on X11 implementations like x.org are a fiasco resulting in dark screens after system updates. There are myriad ways to describe and format a desired setup in the conf file, and none of the distro-specific display managers do a great job. X needs an API that will handle settings internally and provide a robust GUI display manager (though I suspect the likes of x.org have sworn off anything like that... writing a GUI app).
Ubuntu lets you choose too. If you want off the roller coaster and just want a stable system based on proven technology, install an LTS and wait for the next LTS. Easy.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
I don't care for Gnome too much, I think it's over-simplified for desktop use. Unity seems to go further in that direction, but I could see that being the "right" direction for small devices.
For getting work done, I'll continue to prefer KDE.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Who cares, it's the year of Linux on the desktop, not on the server. duh.
Well, one of the things about X is that is does it all the same way -- local, remote, it's treated the exact same way.
Heck, it will work over SSH if you set your DISPLAY variable correctly -- I distinctly recall bringing up windows from my home machine on my HP workstation at the office after I'd tunneled in. I've ran X windows across the continent.
If Wayland can't do that, then I fear it is losing a lot of really well-used and widespread functionality.
Say what you will about X, but it's "just worked" for a hell of a long time.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I read this as toolkits need to support it.
Use QT, do all your rendering inn QT canvases, QT adds support and all the sudden KDE has remote desktop as good as RDP.
It is a shame though, because I thought X + No Machine was a pretty good solution that was universal. X alone sucked bad in my experience and was often times worse than VNC (worked pretty good with admin apps though, where I would think it's most useful).
As long as they can get tool-kits and environments on board (I don't know really where it would go, but I would think tool-kits) it shouldn't be too big a problem to push remote rendering somewhere else. And it could be done at a higher level for more efficiency.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Haha, man, you can never resist the OS X jabs, pretty hilarious.
Anyway, X runs fine on OS X. Same with RDP, so you have the best of both worlds. RDP is much better for slow/high-latency connections, as X remoting is of course horribly inefficient. You would know this if you understood how the protocol works, but you don't.
Here's something else: you only need to run Wayland if you want to. If you still want to use X, then just run that. Choice, remember?
Its not a Red Hat project, the guy works for red hat but hes doing it on his own time. So say the faq at least.
He did work for redhat on DRI2 api/implementation (I don't think that was on his own time), now he works at Intel.
It doesn't "just work" so well if you're trying to access something over the Internet. The X11 protocol is ridiculously inefficient at transmitting over links that aren't LAN-based. That's why projects such as FreeNX and x2go exist. They trim off all the useless fat to make it usable over a WAN connection.
You basically start an X server inside wayland and are done with it.
You can run X on top of Wayland. See Wayland as cleaner division of what is in kernel, what is in local user space and what is remote. There is no need to glob all this into a single monolithic X binary. X will work just fine in wayland. It wont change anything except that you wont need to be root to start accepting x11 conection.
Personaly, i hope remote display is worked inside the ui toolkit instead. I would like something like gtkssh that open a ssh link and pipe thru the widget building command. This will fix the clinet/server relation to what peoples expect. Make it easyer to acess remote apps from many hosts securly. With that, a gtklib with "pipe" backend could be installed on servers. Puling configuration tool gui, directly from the server would make personal home server more accesible.
And how will ever be ready if no one uses it? Technology such as this has to be distributed wide like Ubuntu does it or it will never catch on and will remain in beta for decades.
Then dont use Wayland apps(if such thing exist) on Wayland desktop. Noting prevent you from building gtk, for example, with x11 backend and use it on your remote display and local wayland with x11 server.
No one write apps using the xlib(except for game that just setup gl context). The say way, no one will write apps using only wayland lib. The same toolkit will be used and you can build them to use what ever backend you wish to use.
See Wayland as a display backend and x11 as your application display front end. This will work as good as what you have today until something even better come to replace the networking layer.
I've had problems with ubuntu a couple years now. This has been common over a few different machines even using differnt graphic cards. The machine seemed prone to desktop lockups that require a hard reset, which I despise. I had pretty much given up trying to fix the problem when I discovered they install those fancy-schmancy desktop FX on machines even if you don't enable them. So after removing ALL TRACES of compiz, beryl and the ilk and installing the OPEN graphics driver for my ATi card I finally got a machine that was as stable as I remembered older versions like 6.10. It doesn't look quite as pretty and flashy, but at least I'm not having to hard reset my pc every day or two.
Hopefully they go the RDP-like route, which im my opinion is vastly superior over the way X11 does it.
But RDP sends a whole lot of stuff over the network when I just want one application. How can that be better?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
How will Wayland ever be able to run decently on nVidia cards? Nouveau is not a real option yet (it's not yet decent enough for anything beyond accelerating desktop compositing) and nVidia doesn't plan to support EGL on Linux. So how will Ubuntu fix that? I'm really curious about that.
And how does Wayland plan to implement Clipboard and Drag and Drop functionality? Haven't seen that anywhere in the tiny amount of code that Wayland currently is.
Replacing X is not a bad goal, but getting there is hard. Just writing some code that defers the hard part about graphics to a driver and omits all the rest doesn't cut it. Let's just wait and see where this thing goes.
http://www.moonlight3d.eu/
Also, settings management on X11 implementations like x.org are a fiasco resulting in dark screens after system updates.
Xorg is very good at autodetection nowadays. Next time, try just moving your Xorg.conf out of the way and starting X -- you may be pleasantly surprised... ;-)
Pirate Party UK
Ubuntu LTS isn't really all that stable. They recently upgraded the kernel in their so-called LTS and it broke power management on my Mom's laptop. She had no power-off button in the GUI. When I booted the previous kernel, the power-off button reappeared. I didn't think LTS was supposed to get changes that broke things.
Unity is already deployed on Maverick Meercat notebook edition, so why not review it instead of a "preview"?
Here's something else: you only need to run Wayland if you want to. If you still want to use X, then just run that. Choice, remember?
And how long will it be an option and not default? We all know the direction this is going. Eventually everyone will switch and wayland will eat up all the resources leaving the Xorg project, like Xfree before it, to die a slow death whether its still needed by people or not. Even if resources are provided to Xorg the interest will be with wayland and Xorg will still die a bit rot death being dropped by most oses/distros again like xfree86. Bling will win out and needed features X had for twenty years will have to be kludged in with mixed results and stability.
But the way windows does remote access to apps is a lame kludge-- folks settling on an inferior method due to ignorance isn't an argument in favor. Redhat and Ubuntu crowd seem to be populated by windows folks who think the broken windows way is THE way.
As long as these hordes of noobs don't destroy already existing stuff they can use whatever broken tech they want to, but hopefully this silliness doesn't catch on.
Just stay away from Debian and Slack, and nobody will get hurt.
Well in fact X11 is actually a pretty shoddy way to access remote apps, it does not scale very well, has a load ouf roundtripping which is absolutely evil on wan connections.
It was a good idea and its design itself was pretty good until ca 1990 or so, but modern uis are a different affair. I would not be surprised once wayland is established someone breaks out of X11 and does a total overhaul of the protocol or remotes Cairo.
I have never, not once, used X remotely, in the 10+ years I've been using Linux. I use Linux because, as a developer, there is no reasonable (free) alternative to the GNU tool set, console emulators, etc. available in Linux. But I have a single machine with a single monitor and I really don't need to run applications on other systems. I also use it on my Netbook because it's fast, functional, and virus free. In neither scenario do I have any need whatsoever for remotely running applications. So why have the overhead?
I would much prefer the smallest, most lightweight rendering layer possible, so that I get the maximum performance with the least CPU/GPU cycles. Running through API after API is silly 99% of the time. The problem is that with X I don't really have the option--it's always on. At least with X on top of Wayland I can run lean when I want to.
I can see where it would be useful in a server situation, but I would imagine no sane sysadmin would use Ubuntu in the server room. Ubuntu is a consumer distro that is targeting the home PC / netbook segment, which loves the shiny. For them, Wayland is a perfect fit.
But will all their applications still be able to run on X? It doesn't help me if I can run X, but all the applications I use cannot use it.
Honestly, I wouldn't mind replacing X with something better. But something which doesn't provide network transparency is not better. And yes, it's a feature I frequently use.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Won't work if you want to use proprietary drivers and/or have more than one monitor.
How can you forward individual app windows over an RDP interface? You can't. You have to get the WHOLE desktop, which is weak.
Instead, X11 forwarding allows individual windows to get forwarded, which is great if you're SSH'd into a machine the other side of the world and need to use one GUI app without having to set up a full blown RDP/VNC desktop on the machine.
I truly miss this feature when VPNing into work to use a Windows machine. I have to work inside this tiny RDP window. Annoying! (Yes, I know I can tell it to use a bigger RDP screen but then I will have huge amounts of screen updates to send back and forth, unlike a single X11 window).
If Wayland doesn't get the ability to display applications remotely then it's another sad step backwards for Linux. I'm not talking about a port of vnc server where the whole desktop is displayed on the remote machine, confined in it's own little window. I'm talking about the ability to display an individual application on a remote server as X does where it can then be moved around, resized, copy pasted and otherwise interacted with just the same as any locally running program.
By now, we should be seeing Unix/Linux getting the ability to remotely play sound as easily as X handles remote display, not an erosion of existing capability. It's seems like all the good development in Linux goes towards the very small embedded platforms or the very large clusters these days. What desktop development there is seems to be solely targeted at the 'I want a cheap, free, cut down version of windows with less decisions to make' crowd.
If it continues this way then what is a geek to use? Start a new distro based on a deprecated desktop? Or something more drastic. Start a new OS? I wonder if those Syllable guys would appreciate a remote display patch? I wonder how hard it would be? Sure these things are kind of fringe but wasn't GNU/Linux built by/for the geek fringe in the first place?
I'll second that!
Tell me about it. There is a Java app that runs on an old HP-UX server that I can output to my Ubuntu desktop. Oh man is that painful over the Internet. It's like "Click button, go get coffee. Click button, go get coffee."
-l
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Sigh, we're not talking about running X and rendering on a Wayland desktop, we're talking about running Wayland apps and rendering on a remote desktop, the way you currently can with X. The biggest single advantage of X over Windows, which the Wayland developers seem quite happy to throw away in the quest for 'The Shiny'.
Given a choice between fancier compositing effects and being able to run any program on any machine while rendering on any other machine, I'll take the latter any day.
Right, _you_ may take the latter any day, but I think Ubuntu's point is that most people will take the former. Certainly more so when you consider their target demographic and the direction they're taking the platform (tablets, netbooks, etc). It seems to me that they're aware that they're trading in some geek cred in exchange for more ubiquity and appeal to greater masses. Some of the more tech-centric, niche features of Ubuntu will certainly drop-off in exchange for visual appeal and ease-of-use to attract a greater audience.
I welcome the direction, especially considering that we geeks we still be able to easily switch to a more traditional desktop environment if we so choose.
Seamless Windows: Remote applications can run on a client machine that is served by a Remote Desktop connection. It uses virtual channel method, and available since RDP 5
Some of us are still sane, but have inherited it from others. 8^/
Give me another couple of months of twice-weekly kernel updates, mind you, and your assertion will be true once more....
I refuse to allow any X libraries on my server systems. If it can't be scripted in a console, it better have either a web interface or a decent set of RPCs.
I could think of nothing I would like better, however, than to log into my workstation through my netbook/smart phone/tablet and run apps remotely and securely. I'm not suggesting X is the way; I'm suggesting that assuming that this functionality wouldn't be useful will probably bite Wayland in the ass sooner rather than later.
Seriously - everything is networked now. Who in their right mind would create a desktop environment and deliberately discard one of the most compelling use cases?
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
I googled for some more information about wayland, but all i found out was that the head developer is called Susan and she favours wipe-clean clothing. No shortage of pictures, though.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
You telling me I cant simply apt-get uninstall wayland?
Yes:
$ apt-get uninstall wayland
E: Invalid operation uninstall
$
You can, however, 'apt-get remove wayland'
</smartass>
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
unity -10, wayland -100
Per the mailing list, they're working on the basics now like running anything, so it's a low priority. Their plan is to advertise the remote viewer's list of renderers options to the app (X, OpenGL, RDP), and pass messages between the toolkits & the remote viewer's renderer.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
How can you forward individual app windows over an RDP interface? You can't. You have to get the WHOLE desktop, which is weak.
The way to forward individual windows in RDP has been known for a while now. A no-hack way of doing the same has been supported since Win2008 (and a client update for XP). So it's not an issue with the basic approach nor technology.
Given a choice between fancier compositing effects and being able to run any program on any machine while rendering on any other machine, I'll take the latter any day.
Most would not, as the ability to do that in today's world is relevant only to a vanishingly small number of people (and only like to get smaller, as web apps continue to take over the world).
How can you forward individual app windows over an RDP interface? You can't.
Actually you can, it's just not supported without terminal server installed.
Instead, X11 forwarding allows individual windows to get forwarded, which is great if you're SSH'd into a machine the other side of the world and need to use one GUI app without having to set up a full blown RDP/VNC desktop on the machine.
Of course, it's pretty shit when your network link hiccups and the app closes, losing all state and any unsaved work. Standard X11 on anything except a high-speed local LAN is utter crap.
Ubuntu lets you choose too. If you want off the roller coaster and just want a stable system based on proven technology, install an LTS and wait for the next LTS. Easy.
"proven technology" like how they put PulseAudio into an LTS release before it had seen widespread testing and before it had been released in a non-LTS Ubuntu?
Penny - plain text accounting
I also seem to recall them including a beta version of Firefox in one of their LTS releases.
If all the major distributions have switched and X isn't even a common default then the kludged solutions are working pretty well. Either the solution has panned out or it has been rejected your building a contradictory future. UNIX is rather conservative.
Further Wayland itself can run an X server similar to Aqua Quartz.
What apps that need network transparency do you think will be Wayland only? Wayland can run an X server on top so what exactly are you picturing here?
Anyway, X runs fine on OS X.
No, it doesn't. It doesn't integrate well with the base system, and you have to put up with either OSX window management or running X fullscreen. One of the most marvellous features of X is that it allows people to choose their windowmanger. On OSX if you do that it is really terribly integrated.
The same will happen on Linux if wayland gets traction. It will be probably the worst thing to happen.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
"Outside the scope of Wayland" != "impossible to implement on top of Wayland"
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
They trim off all the useless fat
No, they don't. They cache things locally to reduce round trips and therefore cut down on latency. They are also strongly based on X11 and frankly blow RDP and VNC out of the water in terms of speed, responsiveness and general quality.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This doesn't mean that remote rendering won't be possible with Wayland, it just means that you will have to put a remote rendering server on top of Wayland.
Ah, that will lead to a lovely integrated experience where the user gets to choose their own window manager.
experimenting with new protocols is easier.
That is utter rot. On X11, you can bring up a GL enabled window in about 20 lines of code. Once that is done, you can experiemt with new protocols until you turn blue with no further inteference from X11.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
So if you don't like shiny why not just use the UNIX apps that have existed for several decades and work fine? What's the problem?
99% of normal desktop/notebook users disagree
the only people who would need that feature is some kind of thin client / citrix type scenario. Even many conventional server functions (e.g. LAMP stacks etc.) don't need it. And those people wouldn't be using ubuntu anyway (in fact its probably citrix or vmware,. I realise a lot of that stuff has linux backends but once again they're not likely to be using ubuntu)
considering ubuntu is aiming this at 'normal' end users I cannot see why everyone has their panties in a knot. If you don't like it use debian or whatever
Everything is networked but you have smarts on both sides. The X model assumed the client (what X calls the server) was dumb. The model what ended up winning was client / server not network transparent. Run the client app locally and pass the data back and forth.
Asides for "MOD PARENT UP" all I can do is agree.
If I see it working great but as far as I can tell from the article network transparency is one of the features that Wayland does NOT have. I haven't used the new interface so I clearly do not know but as I use Ubuntu at work it is something I am clearly concerned about.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Well, the Apple fanboys can't resist spreading bogus nonsense.
I was specifically addressing the "Wayland" way of doing things that ignores remote access in it's internal architecture for whatever reason. Being able to run X is nice and all. However, it's not going to do anything for any real Mac apps.
For that, you get to deal with VNC.
I don't need to "understand how the protocol works" to see how badly or how well these protocols run side by side.
I have a box that triple boots. So I get to see all of this firsthand.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I get what you're saying, but Wayland is more only replacing a piece X. The X pieces that support remote displays and the like would essentially become a Wayland client that X applications can link to and display all of their windows onto Wayland through. However, if you don't need the remote displays, Wayland could be nice. I would expect the major toolkits (GTK, Qt, etc.) to work out a way that they can speak to Wayland natively for displaying purposes, or they can work through an X server for times that remote displays and any other X feature would be necessary.
On Wayland's main website, they even say that the X server will still exist alongside of it, and that X server will even still be doing a good amount of the drawing. Wayland only takes the memory of what has been drawn and actually displays it. X is a much bigger beast than Wayland is intended to be, and most computers will likely end up with both running, but the X server they run will be significantly lighter than the current X servers.
ANY attempt to "replace X" that is not framed as a "better X" is ultimately folly. If the Wayland people had any intention of taking legacy use cases seriously, then they would have a less dismissive attitude toward them. As it is now, they seem intent on ignoring remote desktop use entirely.
This is something that should be BETTER and NOT DISRUPTIVE. Before anyone (especially distributors) take this sort of thing seriously there should be at least one working and compelling proof of concept.
As cheap as hardware is these days, this should be something that you or I could throw together and run side by side.
This is another "jump off the cliff like a Lemming" fools errand with no clear end user benefit (like .NET or PulseAudio).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Apps which will apparently require OpenGL to render, on servers which don't even have OpenGL drivers?
X11 forwarding actually uses the graphics processor of the host machine.
X11 tunnel (ssh -X) to a machine and do 'glxinfo'. (If you get an error, "export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1").
I'm using it to do some work on XBMC. The build process for OS X is a nightmare while the Linux process is easy.
VirtualBox AND VMWare both lack OpenGL acceleration (WTF guys). So instead I ssh to my internal machine, run the export command and then launch XBMC. It pops up in a window and runs rather fast. It won't do 1080p but plays normal movies just fine.
Hi, been a long while since we talked. You are sorting of ranting a bit here. I was asking for a specific.
In any case Wayland is meant to be disruptive. Wayland represents a rejection of many of the core ideas of X. Its not meant to be a better X than X, but rather create a better desktop with an X that isn't much worse. X users should experience a slight downgrade but direct to desktop apps would experience a massive upgrade. So in terms of not disruptive you are asking it do something it was never intended for.
In terms of this being too early for Ubuntu. You and I agree. Ubuntu is biting off a lot here:
1) Getting Unity fully working
2) Getting Wayland to replace X
3) Creating a Unity/Gnome fork of Gnome and maintaining it as Gnome moves in a different direction.
I think Shuttleworth is completely underestimating how much harder (2) and (3) will be than (1). Particularly since Gnome 3 is going to make this harder and harder over the next 5 years.
In terms of proof of concept I'd say X-Quartz. Where you have a windowing manager similar to Wayland (Aqua) running an X Server on top that offers good integration with other desktop apps. It works rather well.
What part of "Image gallery: Ubuntu's Unity interface" was difficult to read?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
In the second article.
First page, second paragraph.
What part of that was difficult to click on?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
No, they don't. They cache things locally to reduce round trips and therefore cut down on latency.
Bingo! Remote X11 doesn't suck because of excessive overhead, it sucks because it is extremely latency sensitive.
Lots of round-trips coupled with blocking on responses kills throughput. They actual bandwidth required is relatively low.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I believe that this was because the stable version of firefox had a security flaw at the time.
Besides, the browser WILL be upgraded multiple times during an LTS release due to inevitable security updates. The browser is NOT the OS, despite what microsoft may have you believe.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
The number of people who use remote X vs the total desktop population is exceedingly minimal.
If you want to you will no doubt be able to load an X11 shim much like OS X uses.
If you don't want to, you don't have to worry about remote exploits in X11 and the performance penalty and associated stumbling blocks in X11 development to have a shiny local desktop.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
X11 and its network transparency, if required, can be run under wayland. You will lose NOTHING.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
X11 apps don't integrate well with other X11 apps either, but that doesn't stop the steaming pile of shitware that most *nix users have on their desktops.
And I say that as someone who runs it.
Focus on a secure rendering subsystem and add remote connectivity stuff in non-privileged add ons.
Having X run as root and talking to the network is just asking for security problems to be found and exploited.
And before you say "well firewall it off", if you're not using the remote display capabilities of X then wtf are you whinging about the lack of X11 network support in wayland for?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
You can run RDP over SSH tunnel if you forward the appropriate port, too.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Huzzah, someone actually gets it.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
RDP may be a "lame kludge" but in my experience works faster/better over shitty wan links than X11.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Perhaps we are doing something very differently but my experiences are quite the opposite. I often run X applications through ssh tunnels and it tends to work very well and I can set up a tunnel and run an application in seconds. Though I have to admit I have not used RDP lately, when I was using it I remember it being so terrible I ended up setting up VNC (through the RDP connection) and switching to that.
There will be an X11 compatibility layer! All of my favorite programs that require X11 will still function flawlessly! Nobody ever heard of a compatibility layer that wasn't 100% perfect... all that stuff about Pulseaudio not handling ALSA games and WINE correctly was just FUD... NOT
There's lots of apps that don't even work when you're using remote desktop. Nothing fixes this, but FreeNX does fix X11 over shitty WAN links.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's LTS as long as you are fine with older versions of programs.
Wait, seriously? They're replacing X Windows with something which doesn't support remote displays?
Correction: They're replacing X with something which doesn't support remote displays yet. If it's stable and efficient, I'll take that now and worry about extra features later. Let's not put the cart before the horse.
WTF??? Is that true? That makes no sense whatsoever ... one of the best things about X is being able to have display from multiple sources.
It's only one of the best things because X is so crappy. Don't get me wrong, X was ahead of its time...when it came out in the '80s. It's long past time to try something new, which will finally fix the things X got wrong.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
"get by" does not equal "a good solution". I thought RDP was even slower than X over WANs?
Just so long as I do not have to resort to VNC again....
I can see where it would be useful in a server situation, but I would imagine no sane sysadmin would use Ubuntu in the server room.
I use Ubuntu in the server room. Our file servers, web servers and backup servers run Debian and our calculation machines run Ubuntu. Granted, I inherited the setup, but it seems to work quite adequately. Calculation servers are sometimes also used as desktops, whereas we all tend to avoid logging in to the other servers directly, preferring to ssh in. I often tunnel X over ssh on the servers because certain tools like synaptic are easier to use on my laptop than the text-based equivalents. Even so, I welcome the coming of Wayland and Unity because GNOME and X are too buggy, and I can always run an X server on top of Wayland for remote access purposes if necessary.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Anyway, X runs fine on OS X.
No, it doesn't. It doesn't integrate well with the base system, and you have to put up with either OSX window management or running X fullscreen.
Since Tiger OSX can and does run X fullscreen or rootless.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Wayland is not replacing all of X, it has nowhere near the scope X has. Essentially wayland is going to act like a version of 'screen' for the framebuffer. It doesn't draw or do anything.
The ability to have multiple X servers running on a single card is nice, and thusly why wayland should be tested and included. But getting rid of X is not on the cards for quite some time.
The basics of drawing have not changed in the last 20 years, only the hardware has, so why should the X protocol be dropped when it is still useful? Sure the implementation of X changes as the hardware does to suit the hardware better. But I fail to see any fundamental flaws with X that would require it's removal. Can you point to any?
Fedora? The base OS for RHEL server systems? Is going to dump X so server admins will no longer be able to run graphical admin programs remotely from their servers to their desktop without using some horrific kludge like VNC?
The big mistake here is assuming adopting wayland means dropping X. Wayland can function as a kind of 'screen' program for the multiplexing of display devices. So you can in fact run multiple X servers easily. Why nobody understands this is beyond me.
It's just another layer beneath X.
Every time I've seen someone ask the Wayland devs how they plan to support remote rendering, their response seems to be 'we don't. go away'.
And they are right, because what they are making is NOT an X replacement, it's more a layer beneath X, for the forseeable future most people will still be running X on top of wayland, because wayland does not provide it's own drawing api and other such things.
That's what backports and PPAs are for!
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Do people still bother with Linux desktops? How many more decades do they need to realise it's going nowhere?
I want wayland dead. I want ubuntu dead. If ubuntu make wayland default in a year, i get both wishes at once!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't care whether a piece of software is free, or developed for free in spare time--pushing out broken software as "stable" default software in a "stable" distribution is a broken model. That's what beta-testing and optional packages are for. I don't care if it takes a while longer to discover and fix the bugs--what's more important is that users of this "stable" distribution get truly stable software they can rely on. Not one user should ever have to spend time fixing regressions in major, fundamental functionality because some impatient developers wanted to use entire user bases as their guinea pigs and some foolish distributors went along with it. An upgrade should never, ever turn out to be a downgrade. There is no excuse for it.
It's stupidity like this that will push me back to Debian, even if it does take a little more work to maintain or set up.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Not to be posted toward anyone in particular, but being as this /. is about a change to Ubuntu, I'm sure there will be a plethora of posts regarding how inept they are at dealing with the changes or questioning why the change or etc. The real question is why bother ever complaining about something that was free. If you don't like it, you can always get your money back (credit +$0). If you really don't like the way a distribution is going or have a problem of stability or security of one thing verses another, then by all means do it yourself. If you want something the way you want it, then do so: LFS, Gentoo, or ArchLinux
Ok, I gotta ask: what's the big deal with the remote render thing? Why not just use VNC? Is there some big advantages I'm not aware of?
Any one which uses a GUI and which I want to run, for whatever reason, on a different computer than the one I'm sitting in front of.
Needing network transparency for display is not a feature of the app. It's a feature of the work environment.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Yeah, cause those are all using Gnome.
Everything is networked, but as long as you have latency there will be a need to perform rendering locally. The stuff that needs to be sent over the network (commands, data) is already handled by HTTP (or proprietary TCP/UDP protocols).
But I fail to see any fundamental flaws with X that would require it's removal. Can you point to any?
I don't know enough about the X architecture to speak to fundamental flaws, all I really know about is the user experience. On my laptop, killing X (whether by logging out or by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Backspace) randomly causes the screen to freeze with streaks on it and become completely unresponsive until rebooted, but only some of the time. On my work machine, switching to another virtual console to do text work and then back to the one running X causes the colors to invert, which is only fixed by killing the X session and starting a new one. It's also a pain in the ass to increase the resolution if it doesn't auto-detect your monitor, requiring at least three separate commands on the command line, all of which are long and involve redundant typing. Maybe these things have nothing to do with the X protocol and are simply implementation errors. I don't know, but I don't really care; I just want my graphics to work. If Wayland does a better job, I welcome it.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
-- Any one which uses a GUI and which I want to run, for whatever reason, on a different computer than the one I'm sitting in front of.
Maxwell, that's a tautology. You are essentially repeating the feature set of network transparency, the ability to run an arbitrary app remotely. Asking which ones are likely to be Wayland only (i.e. not run at the X level) that will need to be networked is an important practical question.
People are arguing that network transparency for all (or most) apps is a critical feature, your post is just reasserting it not providing even a single example for where a dual approach would be troublesome.
Users shouldn't have to know what backports or PPAs are.
By getting by just fine does that include tearing hair out in agony when programs either INEXPLICABLY don't work right under RDP (BASIS Database engine tools do this) or having 4 seconds of mouse lag when working remote?
While you are right that some sort of remote desktop will WORK, it's like having to drive around in an old broken down Chevy after owning Porsche for years, It'll still get you to your destination but damn does it suck.
Not unless they want to put a specific bleeding-edge app onto an older, more stable base distro.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
No, it's not a tautology. It's trying to make clear that the question is strictly meaningless. Network transparency of the display is not a feature for a specific app. There's no GUI app which I could say I never want to run remotely (with the obvious exception that there are apps which I don't intend to run at all, neither locally nor remotely).
OK, I'll give you some examples:
Note that I do not claim in any way completeness here. And no, those are not examples I just invented, those are examples of things I actually do or have done.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
X11 and its network transparency, if required, can be run under wayland. You will lose NOTHING.
Wayland doesn't make sense if all applications continue to be written for X. Therefore I expect applications written to support Wayland instead of X. Those applications will not work over the network. Without Wayland, those applications likely would have used X. Therefore I will lose those future applications.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
OK good examples. Lets use these:
Mathematica I'm familiar with. This is a client server application. The way you should run Mathematica remotely is to run the client locally and the kernel on another computer. For example in 1993 I did this a few times: Me (dumb X-term) -> client (same building SunOS) -> kernel (same campus, super computer). I don't see much reason to run Mathematica network transparent on a modern system capable of running the client. Further Mathematica is always going to have an X-client, I can't ever see it being Wayland only unless X has essentially died and Wayland is the standard for all Unixes which is a long way away. I'm hard pressed to see a Mathematica kernel server using a desktop OS, so even if the Ubuntu version doesn't have an X client... So I'm having trouble seeing the use case here, there just seem like too many bypasses.
In terms of editing. First off console editors still work, there is no reason you can't use VIM. Also again many editors will support X. If you can map displays you can map drives or files. If people are frequently working remotely on a system then it shouldn't be setup like a desktop, its a server.
As for sound in the same room.... you are then talking about a server which means the sound app should be client / server. Or at least use an X app, you don't need a particular app for this.
Is network transparency a nice feature, sure. I wasn't looking for completeness I am looking for one non niche example that applies to a desktop OS. In the days when Unix "desktops" supported multiple users on X-terms, a 4:1 ratio was standard, it makes sense. Today everyone has their own CPU, memory and disk on the system they are sitting in front of. There is no reason to have protocols that don't expect more from the client.
I bought an ATI card because I thought it was the nvidia card. I've had two different nvidia cards and an ati card, they all did it.
If you've locked up the machine how do you know it wasn't gfx related? My experience was after getting rid of the compositing shit the machine was much more stable. It can still lock up the desktoip hard, but when it does it's almost always because I'm watching (wait for it...) FLASH videos. The internets cannot replace that shit fast enough for me.
no, it was stated in the article x11 tunnelling featureset would still be available. The better question to ask is why your server admins rely on graphical admin programs.
Have a squat over at the hobo house.
The point is even with wayland you would still need something for a drawing api etc.
Essentially wayland will not solve the problems you encounter, since those can still be caused by whatever is doing the drawing, it just shifts the blame to elsewhere.
I still welcome it for a possible cleaner separation of duties (and X drivers having to do slightly less) but it will not solve any of the problems people in here think it will. As said it is not a replacement for X, it does not have that kind of scope.
Good to know. Being someone who doesn't understand graphics and probably never will, I just assumed it would replace all of X because that's what the original announcement seemed to say.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
It is what all the announcements seem to imply... rather stupid I think. But I guess implying that is easier than trying to explain it's actual goals which can be read on the projects main page.
Ubuntu has required 2 year old systems to perform a major update just to get a newer version of OpenOffice. The system sucks, stop pretending it doesn't.
Microsoft is moving to using video streams (H264?) in Server 2003, because it leads to much better performance at a slight quality hit. Think OnLive; gaming and video would work remotely without a hitch.