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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.'"
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 are duplicating the KDE 4.0 roll out plan?? *ducks*
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.
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."
From the Wayland FAQ
https://groups.google.com/group/wayland-display-server/web/frequently-askeds-questions
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
Apps usually don't talk directly to X11. The GUI toolkit does. If Ubuntu can get QT and GTK+ ported to Wayland (which has already been underway for a while) then most apps are merely a recompile (plus some minor tweaking) away from being native Wayland apps. Kinda like how many GTK+ or QT apps have fully functional windows versions because those toolkits were ported to Windows.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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
Are there any Wayland native apps yet?
There doesn't need to be. Just provide an X server on top of the Wayland graphics engine, and continue to use your old X apps. This allows for an easy transition to Wayland for those apps that would benefit from it.
Furthermore, if you implement said support down at the toolkit level (ie, Gtk and Qt), the apps needn't even realize they're running over Wayland.
Apps usually don't talk directly to X11. The GUI toolkit does. If Ubuntu can get QT and GTK+ ported to Wayland (which has already been underway for a while) then most apps are merely a recompile (plus some minor tweaking) away from being native Wayland apps.
You don't even need to recompile. Those apps are dynamically linked to their respective toolkit libraries. So long as the libraries maintain ABI compatibility, they can implement a new rendering subsystem, and the apps would never know.
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!
Confusing? X is the server, and handles connections to it telling it what to display. Like httpd (apache) is a server and handles a Web client telling it what Web page to send down the pipe. People weren't confused running the Tetrinet server, seeing the clients connect to them and output images to the screen; but they're confused running the X server, seeing the clients connect?
It is confusing because while it makes sense from point of view of the X protocol, from the point of view of the user, the "server" appears to be the client and the "client" appears to be the server. If I connect to server and request an image - in the http protocol, I connect to a server(apache), and it shows content on the client(browser). However if I am doing the same thing using X, it appears as if I connect to server(remote system), and request to show an image, and it shows content on client(my display or X-Server). What is actually happening is that the remote server's program is the client that requests to display things on the server - but that is not what the user sees. Thus the confusion of so many people, which is understandable as it is not the most logical thing unless you understand the X protocol.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
That's an interesting opinion.
Perhaps it's rooted in a confusion in the use of "Operating System," or perhaps from your misunderstanding of what an OS is in general, or how the OS and UI interact. Surely, one can roll the UI into the "OS," but particularly in this case, the underlying mechanics aren't changing (there's still a GNU kernel in there), but the discussed changes are in layers between, which can be replaced if you don't like the changes.
The flexibility you chide is a strength not a weakness. When users are faced with Linux distros, they aren't experiencing the Linux OS, but the desktop interface atop the OS. When approaching a PC running Linux, they're faced often with Gnome or KDE or one of the others, probably tweaked with their distro's defaults or the previous user's preferences or tinkerings.
Further, except for us nuts-and-bolts users, few users even get into the UI they're presented with (beyond changing the background or adding widgets) after they've figured out how the launching mechanism works. Most of them are familiar and concerned with the applications they run (word processor, web browser, e-mail client). Those, for the most part, don't change when the underlying desktop changes (that is, switching from Gnome to KDE) any more than they do when applying different themes (colors, borders, fonts).
If you've ever written GUI software, you'd know that your fear-based misrepresentation (or perhaps another misunderstanding) of this is also unwarranted. Few people write application software directly to the UI (Gnome/KDE/etc), or even to the graphics layer beneath that (X/Wayland/whatever), but instead use an abstraction layer (QT, for example), for exactly the reason of removing the concern of which desktop UI it sits atop.
Underneath all of that, the OS, in this case GNU Linux, is the same.
End the FUD
You seriously changed from free software to payware, from the open space of Ubuntu to the walled garden of Apple, from getting updates every 6 months to having to buy updates every so many years, from having full control over your machine and software to being beholden to Apple's CEO's every whim?
Amazing... just... amazing.
May I suggest renting a computer after that Apple machine has bitten the dust? That way you have even less control over your machine while you pay even more. It must sound like data heaven to you.
--frank[at]unternet.org