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Canonical Announces Mir: A New Display Server Not On X11 Or Wayland
An anonymous reader writes "On the Ubuntu Wiki is now the Mir specification, which is a next-generation display server not based on X11/X.Org or Wayland. Canonical is rolling their own display server for future releases of Ubuntu for form factors from mobile phones to the desktop. Mir is still in development but is said to support Android graphics drivers, open-source Linux graphics drivers, and they're pressuring hardware vendors with commercial closed-source drivers to support it too. They also said X11 apps will be compatible along with GTK3 and Qt/QML programs. Canonical isn't using X11 or Wayland with their future Unity desktop as they see many shortcomings from these existing and commonly used components."
Seriously? Can't leave it well enough alone? Can't even focus your energy on one replacement, you want to work on another too?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Seems like Unity lesson didn't teach Canonical anything. This will end badly too.
the OS formerly known as Ubuntu distribution of a GNU/Linux-OS -> Ubuntu-OS brought to you by Cannonical (fine print: May contain GPL-licensed third party applications such as the Linux kernel).
You are going to need it.
* and should you succede against all odds, we would all benefit.
Unless they can convince the wider Linux community to adopt some of their technologies, Canonical is basically going to end up forking the platform. If that happens, it will be a fairly major step backwards for Linux on the desktop since developers will be on the hook to adjust to supporting not just multiple packaging systems and multiple library versions, but also multiple incompatible core system API's. Essentially Ubuntu will no longer be "Linux" in any way that matters to developers and all the support for Linux out there now will either die or just switch over to being Ubuntu specific and I don't see how that benefits anyone in the community.
I'm thinking Canonical should just stop beating around the bush and split. I wouldn't be surprised if they announced their own kernel soon.
Ubuntu, We Want To Be Different.
Sure, breaking tradition will cause a little more fragmentation in the Linux world, but is that so bad? We don't think our needs, or that of our users, are always met by sticking to the 'same old song and dance' so we're bucking the trend.
There is good and bad in change.
And.. as usual, it will do less, perform more poorly, and cause more headaches than the existing solutions. Thanks for the useful contribution, Canonical. Thanks also for Pulse Audio and Unity - I have yet to understand exactly what purpose they serve, but they sure keep my mind sharp every time I have to remember to switch desktop environments or "killall pulseaudio" as a universal fix for all my computing woes.
But didn't Mir come crashing down in fiery chunks?
Anybody want a peanut?
the Apple of Linux. I'll likely never run another *buntu install again. Too bloated, too proprietary, too wanting to be commercially successful. Bad taste...
... like I needed another reason to switch to CrunchBang...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
This is a terrible development. The splintering of the Linux desktop into a bunch of incompatable window systems is the last thing we need and which has been prevented for years by the X standard. While the Mir says it will support X applications, the threat comes from the fact that there may also be Mir applications which will not be able to run on other distributions, will not be able to run on X server root displays of other distributions. Another danger is not only Canonical trying to create a fleet of Mir only applications that cannot run on X server, but as well, end up creating a driver mess with drivers that can only run on Mir, or where driver vendors will now be faced with supporting many incompatable driver APIs for all of these windown systems, which will deter hardware vendors from supporting the platform.
The presents of so many incompatable window systems will simply make Linux appear to be a splintered, fractured platform that will appear impossible for hardware vendors to support.
Another problem with this Mir idea is that it takes away the ability of Linux users to continue to use their fine tuned, customized X desktops which so many have invested time in tailoring to their liking, and with their own choice of window manager.
I also find the name to be odd. Do they name it after a soviet space station as an indication that they are planning to take away our rights in a soviet style dictatorship? Canonical has been acting like a soviet style dictatorship that has forced its own obscene agendas on its users for years, including the Unity atrocity which is utterly antagonistic towards users. The Unity environment was designed to force on users some convuluted model of how things should work, as if Canonical has felt it needs to take away users freedom and force on users things that will cause them great pain and discomfort because the pain is good for them, as a price to pay for Canonicals fetish for bizarre and unueable user interfaces. It is sort of like how an interior decorator designs extremely uncomfortable furniture that inflicts misery on the users of that furniture, because to the interior decorator, such misery is a beautiful thing, they think that deprivations and discomfort have an aesthetic value to them.
http://xkcd.com/927/
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Let's reimplement the display server architecture again! Yay!
I understand the desire to replace X. Big chunks of X either aren't needed any more or have moved into other locations (mostly the kernel). but i find it hard to believe that the direction and goals of wayland are so different to what ubuntu want that its worth starting fresh.
maybe now that a display server has so little to do, it something that a small team can knock up in a few months. in which case maybe every window manager will end up being a display server.
Never been a Ubuntu fan but I can see a reason behind this, in the light of the recent announcements of an Ubuntu phone OS and an Ubuntu tablet OS to cohesist with the traditional desktop OS.
If they really want to build a common ground between these three platform (and it's a VERY BIG "if", considering the disaster that Windows 8/RT/Phone is becoming), then a video display compositor lighter and more updated than the whole X server is, I'd say, mandatory. Apparently Wayland, which they announced they would eventually adopt some few years ago, is not the correct choice according to them.
Add to this the fact that they are finally reinventing the wheel *correctly* with Unity switching fully to QT, which will let there be an alignment with the Ubuntu phone and tablet announced programming paradigm.
Anyway: considering that Microsoft failed with 4 years of developement and thousands of programmers on a similar project, resources that Canonical no way has, and considering that Shuttleworth & Co have repeatedly made big announcements but very few results have been seen (Ubuntu for Android could have been an interesting project, what has happened to that), I doubt we will see some results in 2014 as claimed.
This is clever - this way they automagically get full GFX support for closed source vendors (MALI400 drivers on cheap tablets for example).
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
It's a warning. Any minute from now Ubuntu may slide into a flaming descent of fragmentation.
Canonical seems out of control: they create one new, half-baked technology after another. Shame, because for a while, Ubuntu was doing quite well.
GTK3 is lovely. You are a twat.
Unsupported opinion is argument.
Some of these statements are true.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
This will go nowhere. Cananonical has "completion" issues. Look at their past track record on linux. The focus on a feature for a release or two and then either declare it done or stop talking about it. They were going to make everything easy, printing, wifi, audio. Pulse Auido is still far from perfect and network manaeger still has issues. Then we have 10 second boot times, better looking that Mac, Desktop notifications, Wayland and 200 million users by October 2013.
Back in October of 2011 I predict the death of Wayland on my blog which I almost never post to. http://elder-geek.blogspot.com/2011/10/ubuntu-is-failure.html
Unity is still here, but instead of fixing it for the desktop, more work will go into making it run on other platforms. I love Linux with all of my heart. But Ubuntu is so preditible on how they are going to fail. They never complete anything that they start. Linux will be safe in the long run from the Distro that strives to remove the word "Linux" from their users minds.
vi +
I really don't have the technical knowledge to praise or damn the idea, but as I understand it, there are some clever moves in this;
It appears that they rip out enough of Android that they can use the Android graphic drivers for Mir, so that every device with android drivers delivers "free" drivers for Mir too. That would give them a huge advantage in the Smartphone and Tablet arena.
QtMir, QtUbuntu, Qt/QML; it looks like Ubuntu dumps Gnome/GTK in favour of Qt5 for core OS (GUI) development. As I see it they will clone KDE/Qt, substituting the KDE parts with QtUbuntu.
Their time line seems very optimistic though.
From Ubuntu's point of view drivers are what matter. If Wayland is causing them problems on that front then they probably have to drop it.
There's something quixotic about all the recent changes in Ubuntu, isn't there? In the real world they are a Linux distro preferred by 2% of users for its good driver support and its ease of use. But in Shuttleworth's mind, they are a smartphone/tablet/TV operating system that is about to go mainstream and take over the world. Maybe if his desktop market share was a tad higher than 2% it would be realistic, but it just seems to me that they are overreaching and mostly daydreaming of grandeur where they should be focused on serving their core clientèle better.
I wonder what will be the effect on Valve plans for Linux. Good thing is they have a lot of options, like going upstream with pure Debian, or downstream with Mint.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
I've used Ubuntu since 5.10, and with the exception of Unity, I like it. Correction, my issue with Unity was not that it was developed, but the way it was effectively forced on users as the default choice, *before* it was properly ready. On balance, that's a pretty short gripe list for an OS that has seen me through numerous, effortless upgrades over the last 7 years.
However, with the overall Unity strategy and the announcements around the integration of Canonical-branded spyware into Dash, I have no choice but to rethink my choice of distro. Ubuntu has without question come closer than any other distro to mainstream success, built on rigorous software engineering principles, attention to detail and focus on the user.
For reasons I don't understand that seems to be changing.
Mark has an opportunity to continue his innovative approach to making Linux easier for Joe User, but now seems determined to muscle in on aspects other teams are tackling, while leaving glaring gaps that Ubuntu are ideally placed to fix. Gaps? Yes.
How about a really, *really* slick configuration framework that packages could integrate with, to make it easier for end users to manage their environments?
How about an uplift enabler, that would make it much easier for a package author (let's say LibreOffice) to wrap and submit a new release of their suite for multiple Ubuntu distros, so that users running current-1 still get access to new packages if they want them?
How about a really slick roll-your-own ISO packager, so that I could take an existing ISO (say 12.04 LTS) and then merge it with the very latest packages and patches, producing a bespoke ISO for myself that would give me the 12.04 Core Build without having to pull in hundreds of megs of patches.
The list goes on, but you get the idea.
My concern is not that Mark is doing pointless things. Canonical have the backing to build great software.
What concerns me is that Mark doesn't seem to want to be so collaborative, and, rather than play to his strengths, he is poking his finger into other pies... He can, of course. It's his company, his money, and he is very successful. But I can't help but think that there are other issues, in a far worse state than the components that Canonical and Ubuntu are trying to fix.
I sincerely wish Canonical success. I just don't know how much longer I will share their vision enough to remain part of that community.
Look, if I can't run "ssh -X" to an Ubuntu system -- I'm not using it. And by not using, I mean not installing, recommending, or providing support to.
I don't care if there's VNC, RDP, whatever the hell wayland has.
I don't care what your protocol is. I don't /like/ using X11 forwarding, but it's what I have supported on every desktop, laptop, netbook that is guaranteed to fucking work without having to emerge some dialect of VNC or whatever-the-fuck flavor of the month it is.
If you don't support X11 for your graphical apps, you're not getting installed in the desktop or server environment.
And no, I don't like having X on my servers anyway -- but if management dictates a GUI so their MSCE shithead of the month can follow a pretty fucking checklist on login, I'll do it and laugh my ass off at the security liabilities while demonstrating that it's against best practices and they signed off on it.
Need a VPN? Use SSH. Needs a different auth system? Use SSH. Need the ability to move a port from one place to another, use SSH. Need a custom solution with some sort of multi factor authentication-- use SSH under it.
Need a publicly exposed server where field techs log into a console for a specific task that updates a database on the back end... use SSH with a restricted shell and fixed commands.
Dear Canonical, you break my workflow -- I won't break you. I'll just use Debian and be severely disappointed by your choice to bend compatibility over.
Will the source code for mir be availbable (at least in parts ?).
Will it be GPL ?
Standards are there for a reason. If you want to break them you need a damned good reason. I don't see them having one.
The description of Mir's goals in TFA wasn't really very clear, but it is true and widely recognized that *some* alternative to X11 is badly needed. X11 has become FOSS's own "X25 elephant" like something conjured up in the committees of the ITU, whereas open systems need is a lightweight "TCP/IP gazelle".
Whether Canonical can produce the goods is a different question entirely, but the need for such an alternative is rapidly approaching certainty..
In which universe is Wayland commonly used?
If Wayland sucks, OK. But otherwise there's no excuse for spinning up yet another foundation.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The description of Mir's goals in TFA wasn't really very clear, but it is true and widely recognized that *some* alternative to X11 is badly needed. X11 has become FOSS's own "X25 elephant" like something conjured up in the committees of the ITU, whereas open systems need is a lightweight "TCP/IP gazelle".
Whether Canonical can produce the goods is a different question entirely, but the need for such an alternative is rapidly approaching certainty..
The only way it could possibly become a TCP/IP of graphics is if it was licensed as BSD or something similar. TCP/IP is an open standard today because of BSD licensed code.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Coming soon - Ourobuntus! The distro that eats its own tail!
Just a few more tweaks and it will be ready to take over the market.
I know some young people want this new fangled GGI stuff -- what do they know?
I would prefer a serial port and a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vt100
I started reading their spec and the introduction had so much made-up bullshit that I could bear to carry on. What kind of tosspot says "[Of wayland] The input event handling partly recreates the X semantics and is thus likely to expose similar problems to the ones we described in the introductory section."
If you take a system with a bug and fix the bugs then you have partyly recreated the semantics but it is *less* likely to expose similar problems because the changes are there specifically *too* remove the problems.
Is canonical trying to make itself look incompetant on purpose?
I'm often told to put things like that down to stupidity instead of malice, but that's bullshit. The introduction to that spec is deliberately avoiding saying anything true about the reasons for creating something different. I'm putting that down to malice - as I was told several times before, it's better if people can be trusted.
If this supports X applications, it has to support the X11 protocols. IE, it IS an X server, even if it does more than that!
... like I'm going to trust anything from this craptacular company. Moved from Ubuntu back to Debian and all I lost was an ugly interface and ever-increasing efforts to monetise me.
Seriously, cows have been around since the dinosaurs? Some paleo guys might want to hear about that :-)
First, I want to say that XKCD rocks, and I do enjoy it when people post links from /. to there so I don't have to.
/.). We could even spruce it up with better and better AI/pattern matching over the years to provide better results.
That said - can't someone come up with a script to do this for us? I'm thinking something like the UNIX fortune program (kinda like the one at the bottom of
Personally, I think this would be awesome!
You should have said "two of these statements are true".
word.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I've been a user of Kubuntu since 2007 and happy too. I don't get why people only talk about ubuntu, and when disappointed with it switch to other distributions, when kubuntu still gives you the classical desktop experience, and not something broken like unity.
I hope that whatever they do with mir they don't end up breaking Kubuntu. At least it survived the unity madness, and doesn't send your keys to amazon.
What, you mean, like "mistype"? :-)
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re: the one criticism they strangely seem to ignore is that Unity is licensed so that Canonical is assigned the copyright for any potential contributions. Just like you, Canonical enjoys being given things for free.
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Amen, brothers and sisters! That's the exact same sort of thing that happened with the community building up the compact disc database (cddb, look at its history on-line) The original software behind CDDB was released under the GNU General Public License, and many people submitted CD information thinking the service would also remain free.
The same sort of thing happened with CUPS, with apple buying outright ownership of the CUPS software package and hiring the developer fulltime with CUPS having all contributions assigning copyright to the key developer (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS#History ):
Michael Sweet, who owned Easy Software Products, started developing CUPS in 1997. The first public betas appeared in 1999.[3] The original design of CUPS used the LPD protocol, but due to limitations in LPD and vendor incompatibilities, the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) was chosen instead. CUPS was quickly adopted as the default printing system for several Linux distributions, including Red Hat Linux.[citation needed] In March 2002, Apple Inc. adopted CUPS as the printing system for Mac OS X 10.2.[4] In February 2007, Apple Inc. hired chief developer Michael Sweet and purchased the CUPS source code.[5]Not so strangely, the same sort of copyright assignment sort of thing is NOT done or required for the linux kernel, but seeing as we trust our benevolent dictator to not kowtow or sell out to external interests, somehow this is definitely okay. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#Copyright.2C_trademark.2C_and_naming
Torvalds states that the Linux kernel will not move from version 2 of the GPL to version 3. He specifically dislikes some provisions in the new license which prohibit the use of the software in digital rights management,[109][110] and it would also be impractical to obtain permission from all the copyright holders, who number in the thousands [emphasis by moiNotice how the presence of multiple contributors who do not assign copyright over to a single benevolent dictator allows for the GPL to function the way it is intended to function (at least by the RMS [not root mean square] definition): free software that remains free as in freedom.
While Linux may not be about revenue stream, Canonical is about monetizing what it can out of the gnu/linux/foss enviro-world, just like redhat also monetizes what it can out of the gnu/linux/foss world structure. Redhat just tends to donate back into the eco-structure much more than canonical does, and canonical tends to behave more like a bully thinking that canonical can lead by loud exhortations: "hey everybody, have a release schedule that meets our needs, not yours." Remember that Canonical is NOT about Linux.
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Herding cats by proclaiming yourself to be "THE leader" and shouting loudest does not work: example look how debian bent to Canonical/ubuntu's will on release schedules. It did not.
That said - can't someone come up with a script to do this for us? I'm thinking something like the UNIX fortune program (kinda like the one at the bottom of /.). We could even spruce it up with better and better AI/pattern matching over the years to provide better results.
Sounds interesting! Could you develop the script?
So... does it support GTK+ 2 or not?
for me it is ok.
I hope this time they support completely the VIA drivers. I have some motherboards with VIA chipsets and plan to buy some Nano ones.
..for the peanuts gallery!
I will be happy with anything that let's me switch graphics cards without having to restart the session or whole damn system.
I hope they commit themselves to this project if it will improve graphic performance for the desktop and games. I don't understand why ppl hate unity so much. I think it's very intuitive and easy to access anything on your machine just by typing 3 to 4 letters and you have your documents or programs showing in the dash. I actually like unity better than metroUI although this is another UI that is just fast as intuitive as unity. Not a big fan of the old start menu I always used rocketdock on windows 7.
BSD is not ahead of linux on the desktop because it's still stuck in the unix past and this is why linux like windows should always improve and create newer technologies to improve the desktop experience. A lot of these linux zealots need to take a chill pill. Just because ubuntu is morphing into something not their liking doesn't mean it's the end of linux as we know it. There are so many damn distros out there to choose from and a lot of window managers to pick from. I hate lxde, xfce, mate, cinnamon, because they are all windows 95/xp type start menu's which i despise. I hope gnome also improves.
In the course of software development, there comes times where you have to break compatibility. These problems are more visible for users of rolling release operating systems like Gentoo, where you never 'upgrade' the distribution, just the components inside it. Well, when one of these compatibility breaks occurs, it's not hidden behind a distribution upgrade, it's just something you have to deal with when it happens.
Could I? Yes! ;)
Will I? Dude - this is clearly an attempt to crowd-source something that would be awesome, but that I'm too lazy to do
... Canonical announces they'll switch to GNU HURD.
In 2006 I called Canonical a poor mans Microsoft and they are proving it with everything they do.
MS doubled down on the dying desktop market with 7, and tried to reverse themselves with 8 with laughable results.
MS throws in half-baked shit ideas into everything they do.
Canonical spent too much money on the stupid and bound to fail Unity(that MS followed right behind these stupid jackasses is delicious irony) and found themselves in financial trouble so they pushed spyware on their technically inept users(like MS Canonical caters to the technically ignorant).
Now they are going to waste more money reinventing the wheel?
When will these retarded fuckwits die?
Ubuntu has always been and will always be dogshit. It is built on dogshit(Debian) much like MS builds on horseshit.
The sooner Debian and all its bastard, mutant ugly as fuck children die the better the world will be. Just like Microsoft.
TCP/IP has nothing to do with any software license.
That you or anyone can implement their own implementation is because the standard is open and always has been. TCP/IP predates the BSD license.
RFC's are open by definition.
You haven't been using X recently. I've had multiple video drivers break on both current-gen hardware as well as legacy. 8 bit color is broken (only does greyscale mode now, no paletted colors, or 8 bit truecolor modes), Depth switching STILL hasn't been implemented, etc.
There's tons of shit that could be done in X if anybody actually WANTED to.
Rather wayland is an attempt for devs to prove themselves better than their forebears after fucking their forebears architecture all to hell in the past decade. (And while X was kind of clunky to begin with, it at least used to work for all features it had, and rarely for example would lock you out of the console because a device manager wasn't running... I'm looking at you Xorg+udev default configuration!)
I personally wouldn't say to "stay away" from Arch completely. Just... be prepared to spend some time on it. I've attempted to roll Arch in the past, and although I've never been completely satisfied with the result, I've learned a TON in the process. For me, Arch was a learning experience.
I started with Ubuntu, switched to Mint after the Unity madness, and then experimented some with Arch and Slax (never did get Slax going). I learned a great deal about the internals of the system from Arch that I would never have learned otherwise. Never had as thurough of a command-line workout as that. Also, I learned about countless fun config files that one typically edits with a GUI that doesn't nescesarilly reveal every option.
All in all, I loved the experience, and wouldn't trade it for anything. It was a nescesary step forward in my mastery of Linux-Fu.
However, after a few months, the whole "now you're breathing manually" thing gets old and I wanted something that just works. Therefore, I'm sticking with Mint for the forseable future.