Xfce, LXDE, GNOME3 Desktops Running On Ubuntu Mir Via XMir

An anonymous reader writes "Through the use of XMir, a translation layer for running legacy X11 applications atop Ubuntu's forthcoming Mir display server, the GNOME Shell, Xfce, and LXDE desktops now run on this X.Org Server alternative. With XMir, the traditional window managers are still running while Mir treats these desktops as a single window."

Comments

Multiple Displays?

[LifesABeach]

Finally USB Display functioning?

Re:Multiple Displays?

[Blaskowicz]

Each running separate X sessions and unable to move a window from one display to another? That is what I got the day I tried a second graphics card in my PC to connect a second monitor.
The OS was an Ubuntu version released long after Windows 7 and it still expected me to write some xinerama xorg.conf bullshit, which would have probably ended with maximized windows covering both displays and modal windows appearing right in the middle, on both sides of the physical divide. But I think I would have had to give up running the nvidia driver. LOL!

Sad thing is Windows 98 SE happily ran multiple monitors on different graphics cards (different card, different driver, different vendor).

Re:Multiple Displays?

[Anonymous Coward]

Been using X since the 80s, and mutil monitors on X since somewhere in the late 90s, both with the displays all on the same box, and later, with some of the displays running on separate computers using xdmx.

Using Xorg.conf for xinerama config, while maybe not ideal for grandma, wasn't terrible, and you only did it once. But, for folks like you, there is now xrandr which you can setup via xorg.conf, use your WMs hooks into it to do it all gui-ish, or just run shell commands to setup your multi-monitor layout (since it would be trivial to write [hell you could do it in a short shell script], there is probably a daemon available that will auto add a monitor when plugged in and remove it when unplugged, but I am not familiar with it if it exists).

As for not being able to move a window between monitors, you are doing it wrong. Depending upon your window manager, and how *you* set things up, you can have independent displays (uncommon, but apparently how you set things up), one big shared desktop like windows and mac (gnome, kde, etc.), or, something smarter, a kind of hybrid between the two where things act like a unified desktop when you want them to, but you can switch virtual desktops independently per each physical display-- which is *very* nice (e17).

You can drag windows between displays even when the displays are on different boxes (xdmx). Unfortunately xdmx only works with xinerama, and newer graphics cards only work with xrandr, so in a crappy transition period now for this. But, if you ever want to setup a video wall with 100 monitors acting as one unified display, xdmx is probably the only game in town.

  If you want to use MS Windows, nobody is stopping you, but please don't spread FUD.

Re:What about wayland??

[TsuruchiBrian]

or XMirWayland or in case I want to run XMir in Wayland.

Re:Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Thousands of distros, tens of DE's and WM's, lots of different graphical toolkits, tons of libraries with significant overlapping functions, tons of system utils that do similar things, 6 or 7 common http servers, but TWO graphics servers? FRAGMENTATION! It's all gonna fly apart!

You dumbass.

Re:Hello

[iggymanz]

there are actually at least 8 X servers

Re:Hello

[jedidiah]

...except X.org is just another Xserver. It's not an entirely new protocol. This is why X servers and clients from a variety of Unixen and non-Unixen can all talk to each other.

It's like HTTP.

Mir is more like Microsoft trying to create it's own web browser protocol.

You should really follow your own advice.

Re:FOSS overload

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Truth. He is indeed a master baiter.

pictures of all desktops mentioned running on XMir

[bmullan.mail]

http://test.ubuntu-discourse.org/t/non-unity-desktops-now-running-on-xmir/479/2

Re:Hello

[Grishnakh]

The lower the level, the worse fragmentation is. Who cares how many text editors are out there, for instance? It doesn't matter, because you can use any of them that you please.

But lower down the chain, fragmentation becomes more of a problem, because things higher up the stack rely on standardization below them to work.

How many Linux kernels are there, for instance? Only one. (There's some different versions, but they're all compatible with each other as far as running application code.) (There's also *BSD and HURD, but those aren't used nearly as much, and at least one of the BSDs actually has a Linux compatibility layer to run binary Linux applications.) Until recently, there was only one display server, X; so graphical applications and toolkits only had to work with that. Then along came Wayland, which promised to fix a lot of problems with X; this wasn't so bad: most of us knew that X was long in the tooth and a replacement had to come sooner or later, so having everyone transition from the old to the new was a doable thing. But now, stupid Canonical had to decide to fragment things with Mir, which does mostly the same thing as Wayland but in an incompatible manner, so who knows what's going to happen.

Anyway, back to your other complaints: different libraries aren't a problem. Using one library doesn't interfere with using another; applications just use whatever libraries they're linked against. System utils doing the same things isn't a problem: use the one you like, the others aren't going to keep you from doing that. Different HTTP servers is a good thing: use the one you like. Choice is a good thing, not a bad thing, as long as things are compatible. Graphical toolkits are a little lower on the stack, so that is a bit of a pain having more than one, so it's a balance between choice and standardization. Having two main ones doesn't seem so bad; 6 or 7 of them would be more of a problem. (There's more than 2 graphical toolkits, but only 2 of them are really in widespread use in Linux-land.) DEs are higher up the stack than toolkits; use the one you like. There's nothing preventing you from using KDE apps in GNOME, and vice-versa. However, DEs are lower than regular apps, usually have a lot of stuff integrated, and are the "face" seen by users, so it would be nice if Linux had its act together better in that regard. Of course, when a DE is tied directly to an incompatible display server, that really fragments things.

BTW, last I heard there were at least 3 or 4 different graphical toolkits for Windows (Win32, MFC, .NET), and those are all from the same company.

Re:FOSS overload

[Anonymous Coward]

Had sex once.  Got bored halfway through.  Went back to my Linux box.  Much more interesting than trying to find nontrivial words in a language with only two words, In and Out, and one form of punctuation.

Re:Hello

[Bengie]

Except Wayland is being developed by 15 year X devs that understand windowing systems, and engineers. Mir is being developed by developers.

what was that saying about developers and engineers. Windows was written by developers, Unix was designed by engineers?

Re:Hello

[evilviper]

and at least one of the BSDs actually has a Linux compatibility layer to run binary Linux applications.)

Good god you're making me feel old. Not only have all the big three BSD OSes had Linux binary emulation for a long damn time... but I distinctly recall writing how-to's for a couple of them (that bounced around the internet and got translated into many languages I don't speak) some time LAST MILLENIUM.

No exaggeration there. The date on OpenBSD's compat_linux man page is March 1995. FreeBSD may have been a couple years earlier.

Re:KDE

[KugelKurt]

He's talking BS.
Martin Graesslin, the KWin maintainer, began to prepare KWin for Wayland before Mir was even announced. So he designed the transition path to support two and only two back ends. See https://plus.google.com/115606635748721265446/posts/136nV4uojKH for details (public post, no need for a G+ account).

Graesslin also made it repeatedly clear that he won't support single-distro solutions. That means no support for MS Windows in KWin, OSX' Quartz, or Android's SurfaceFlinger. Somehow nobody ever had a problem with that decision. Only after Canonocal announced Mir Ubuntu fanboys began to whine.

There are no technological benefits for Mir over Wayland. Canonical made false claims as outlined on http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTMxODA but they've since redacted the statements. Wayland even works with Android drivers: http://mer-project.blogspot.fi/2013/04/wayland-utilizing-android-gpu-drivers.html

The reasons for Mir are not technological, they are purely economical. Canonical wants to establish asymmetric licensing to have an economic advantage over the competition: http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/25376.html
Wayland OTOH is under MIT/X11 license for everybody. This means that not only can any Linux vendor grab it and to anything with it, incl. to make an Android version that uses Wayland: http://ppaalanen.blogspot.com/2012/09/wayland-on-android-upgrade-to-404-and.html
Mir's licensing makes it forever impossible to become part of any major BSD variant. Wayland, however, is being ported to FreeBSD: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTMwMzE

Wayland is being pushed by industry giants such as Intel and Red Hat, as well as smaller companies like Collabora (creators of many technologies commonly used on GNU-based Linux such as Telepathy, WebKit-GTK, etc.: https://www.collabora.com/projects/ ).
Mir is just backed by Canonical who, while claiming to be the most popular Linux distributor, still makes no money: http://www.internetnews.com/blog/skerner/canonical-ubuntu-linux-is-still-not-profitable.html