Canonical To Ship Mir Display Server In Ubuntu 13.10

An anonymous reader writes "Canonical has announced today that they intend to ship the Mir Display Server by default in Ubuntu 13.10, rather than Ubuntu 14.04 as originally planned. They moved ahead their Mir adoption since the code is materializing and they want Mir/XMir widely tested prior to the Ubuntu 14.04 Long-Term Support release. Mir in Ubuntu 13.10 will be using the XMir X11 compatibility layer to run the Unity 7 desktop and there will be fallback support for running an X.Org Server if the graphics drivers don't support Mir."

Comments

Exciting

[Anonymous Coward]

If everything was the same in every OS, things would be very boring.

Re:Exciting

[interval1066]

If everything was the same in every OS, things would be very boring.

Say I have this screwdriver that I like very much, and I use it on every flat headed screw I find. Then say the manufacturer updates the screwdriver every year, but it keeps doing what I need it to do, plus they add neat stuff like comfort grip or head lights or whatever. Still screws screws though. Great. Love it. Then one day they decide to add a phillips adapter. Ok, does it still turn flatheads? Ok. I still love my screwdriver. THEN: they decide they want it to turn tri-screws, and if you want it to turn flatheads you have to engage a little catch on the end of the handle that's hard to see and extend the flathead attachment. What the hell??!??!?? Exciting? Certainly, the excitement poors from my head as I feverously read manuals and user forums trying to figure out how to get that flathead extended as I really still just need the driver to do what it always did. Infact, I almost never encounter triscrews, AT ALL.

This is the current state of Ubuntu.

Re:Exciting

[killkillkill]

Maybe it's just time to update your screws. Flat head crews are a pain in the ass, you can't go fast without the screwdriver moving off center and having to stop and reposition.

Re:Exciting

[wizkid]

The problem is that security holes show up in the screws. one day, instead of holding secure, they get smooth and so they have to do a security update. If they kept the same flathead design, so you could use the same damned screwdriver, then replacing the screw wouldn't be a issue. So you end up not having a choice, you have to buy the new screwdriver.

Of course I don't have that problem. I switched to mint screws. I can still use my flat screwdriver.

Re:Exciting

[Aaron B Lingwood]

--snip screwdriver analogy--

Your analogy holds true only if both projects, being Wayland and Mir, are serving the same purpose - They aren't.

Yes, they are both a display server/protocol, and yes, they are designed to replace X, but the goals of each project couldn't be more dissimilar.

Wayland is a long needed update to X that will fix a number of issues and allows for secure buffers that only the application and server can access. Wayland is being designed for the existing Linux desktop market and is a much needed project.

Mir, while adopting some ideas from Wayland, is a completely different beast that will focus on achieving two primary objectives: A display server that runs natively on both desktop and mobile, and, being actively developed and supported by new commercial partner Valve. It makes little sense for Canonical to wait for Wayland and then extend it for these two purposes as doing so will leave Canonical years behind on a shift that is happening NOW. Everyone has been waiting for the Year of Linux on the Desktop; this will bring the goal one step closer. The same goes for an unadulterated Linux on the Mobile where graphical applications are more easily ported from their desktop counterparts.

There is nothing stopping Wayland importing code from Mir and vice versa. The projects simply have different priorities for the time being and are likely to co-exist or even possibly merge when the race is over.

To borrow from your analogy: Canonical have found a reason to require a triscrew head. They believe it will work in more environments and also, with some effort, work on systems using a hex-screw. You are not locked in to using the triscrew and don't even have to change your screwdriver head should you not be involved in porting hex-screw to tri-screw or developing tri-screws for mobile devices.

None of this affects you. These guys are building a treehouse entirely in their own backyard. You seem a little miffed simply because you know some guys that previously built a treehouse and they are renovating it. Nonsensical.

Re:Exciting

[neuro88]

Your analogy holds true only if both projects, being Wayland and Mir, are serving the same purpose - They aren't.

Yes, they are both a display server/protocol, and yes, they are designed to replace X, but the goals of each project couldn't be more dissimilar.

Wayland is a long needed update to X that will fix a number of issues and allows for secure buffers that only the application and server can access. Wayland is being designed for the existing Linux desktop market and is a much needed project.

Mir, while adopting some ideas from Wayland, is a completely different beast that will focus on achieving two primary objectives: A display server that runs natively on both desktop and mobile, and, being actively developed and supported by new commercial partner Valve. It makes little sense for Canonical to wait for Wayland and then extend it for these two purposes as doing so will leave Canonical years behind on a shift that is happening NOW.

Wayland is absolutely being developed with mobile and desktops in mind: From the official wayland site itself (http://wayland.freedesktop.org/): "Part of the Wayland project is also the Weston reference implementation of a Wayland compositor. Weston can run as an X client or under Linux KMS and ships with a few demo clients. The Weston compositor is a minimal and fast compositor and is suitable for many embedded and mobile use cases."

And that's just the reference compositor.

But there's more. Work to get Wayland running on android about a year before (april 2012) Canonical's Mir announcement : http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2012-April/003149.html

In fact, while we're on the topic of Android, Canonical took someone else's code (libhybris) for running Wayland on Android drivers to achieve Mir support for android drivers. Here's an article about it from the author of libhybris: http://mer-project.blogspot.fi/2013/04/wayland-utilizing-android-gpu-drivers.html
Quote from the article "Earlier this year however, I discovered that a well-known company had taken the code - disappeared underground with it for several months, improved upon it, utilized the capability in their advertisements and demos and in the end posted the code utilizing their own source control system, detached from any state of that of the upstream project's. Even to the extent some posters around the web thought libhybris was done by that company itself."

Oh yeah, Canonical's criticisms of Wayland (ie, their stated reasons for creating their own display server instead of going with Wayland) were so awful that they had to retract them: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTMxODY

Regarding Valve's support... Citation please. Last I heard Valve was sticking with X and hadn't made any further comments. Unfortunately I'm unable to find a link to back this up at the moment. I *suspect* Valve is taking a wait and see approach, and they're probably silently hoping Wayland wins as Canonical has stated that Mir has no stable API/ABI, which would make it a nightmare for application developers to support. It's unclear if they'll stabilize the ABI/API in the future, but it's sounding like they won't. This is one of the major reasons why the major desktops don't want to support Mir.

Everyone has been waiting for the Year of Linux on the Desktop; this will bring the goal one step closer. The same goes for an unadulterated Linux on the Mobile where graphical applications are more easily ported from their desktop counterparts.

There is nothing stopping Wayland importing code from Mir and vice versa.

Mir can use Wayland code as Wayland is under the extremely permissive MIT lice

Pushed back, not forward

[Anonymous Coward]

For 13.10 and even now for 14.04, they're running everything in XMir. They actually pushed native Mir/Unity 8 BACK to 14.10.

Re:Pushed back, not forward

[interval1066]

I've never faulted them for trying to upshelf X, infact I aplauded the effort, some parts of X are so crusty they've turned to stone. But in so doing they've made the os inconvienient. Inconvinience in a pair of trousers is one thing, inconvienience when there's money and customers on the line however? That's unforgivable.

A bit late!

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely its a futile endeavour after http://science.slashdot.org/story/00/10/03/189218/mir-likely-to-be-deorbited-updated this

And this is the reason I've decided to leave.

[joelholdsworth]

Dear Ubuntu,

I have had 6 happy years using you every day. You showed me so many things - the world of Linux I never knew. I will never forget the time we've shared.

But you've you've changed. You're not the OS I once loved. I'm sorry to have to tell you this. I don't wish to hurt you. But I have to tell you the truth...

I've switched to Mint.

Re:And this is the reason I've decided to leave.

[MBGMorden]

No its still based on the current version of Ubuntu (except LMDE which is Debian-based). Remember than not even all the official versions of Ubuntu use Unity. Xubuntu for example "ships" with XFCE as the desktop and works quite well.

Re:Multi Monitors

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard to say. As of now, the only multi-monitor mode working is mirroring.

Re:I kindly disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong article ;) You must be using unity.

Re:Unity...

[Desler]

It is the very definition disunity.

From Merriam-Webster

Unity: the quality and state of not being multiple: oneness.

Disunity: lack of unity

Well... ALMOST

[SmallFurryCreature]

The REAL story is that your flathead Ubuntu was JUST about starting to approach a state reliable usability when they released the mother off all alpha state overhauls. They did it before with the move away from config files to the registry and nautilus. With each change we went from a system we had finally managed to get working to a system that wasn't working as we wanted AND had tons of bugs too.

It ISN'T like releasing a new screw driver THAT WORKS, it is like releasing a new screw driver that stabs you in the back and does unsanitary things with your hammer. If Ubuntu was a car, it would come with 50% new philps head screws that break off, have rusted or been installed the wrong way around through use of your semen covered hammer, 25% flathead screws that are no longer compatible with your old flathead screw and the new flathead screw isn't being developed anymore because it is going to be replaced, somewhere in 2023 and 25% of the screws have been left out because their use case is to obscure.

Most Linux users I know aren't all that into cutting edge. Most of really just want a desktop that runs programs and then we use the programs and never ever think about the desktop again. The desktop isn't a screwdriver, it is the packaging for the belt for toolbox you never put your screwdriver and anyway, you never ever move the toolbox.

I have all the applications I need open all the time. I do not NEED a launcher and I most certainly never EVER need to search something and then find both results from logs files, my "art" collection and amazon at the same time. I just want my desktop to provide the most basic services like paste and copy and then to GO AWAY!

And I do NOT need a build in mail client, music player or whatever. I can fucking pick my own. MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, if you made the desktop 100% reliable, safe and fast THEN you could spend your time adding crap as optional crap I would never bother with. Unity could have been a skin (nobody would have used it but hey though titties). But Ubuntu/Gnome/KDE seem to insist that anytime their products achieve "almost works" they MUST redesign.

I am a developer, I understand the desire to not continue to work on the same old same old, that doing that last 10% of making something really work takes 90% of the time and that that time sucks donkey balls. But that is life.

All Unity and Gnome3 and KDE have shown is that it doesn't take Ballmer and closed source to give the user what they don't want. Good job! You can compete with MS and release as big a turds as them.

And at least Windows 8.1 is adding the start button again.

Aaaah, that felt good.

Re:Why is this such a big deal?

[jandrese]

I installed Ubuntu 13.04 last night, because I wanted to run Steam games on Linux and it was their recommended system. First lesson: Clicking the "use the internet to install the most up to date code" is a mistake that causes the installer to stall for many minutes while it does downloads in the background.

Second Lesson: The disk partitioner seems exceedingly bare bones. I installed a new hard drive to do the install on, but the installer really really wanted to blow away my windows disk. I had to do the partitioning by hand (no "automatically lay out something sensible on this disk" option that I could find). This wasn't a hurdle for me, but it seemed pretty unfriendly for new people.

Third Lesson: The user manager is woefully bad. If you want to specify the UID for a user (so they match your other systems and make NFS work so much better), well, you can't. There's no option for that. The password requirements also seem rather steep (16 characters mixed case with punctuation no repeats no dictionary words can't be changed in any gui anywhere?)

Fourth Lesson: the default package manager is now an Apple app store ripoff?!? Ok, the UI is annoying, but at least I can just search for a package like the nfs client and get it right? No. It's back to the command line for you for some apt-get if you want to install a normal package.

Fifth Lesson: Software manager has a kind of hidden option to use the nVidia binary blob drivers so you get decent 3D performance. Doing so breaks compositing which breaks the entire desktop. 3D games run great though! Compositing seems kind of dumb anyway, and the weird search box that wanted to find Amazon products that are similar to "xterm" is something I could do without anyway. I'm just going to install Windowmaker instead once I figure out how to change the damn window manager preferences.

I thought Ubuntu was supposed to be the more polished distribution? Why is everything so hard or annoying in it? I guess the partial answer is Gnome 3, but even that doesn't explain everything. Man that control panel is missing about a million basic features though.

Re:Why is this such a big deal?

[broken_chaos]

As a Linux user I really could care less which X-server I'm using.

Mir isn't an X server. It has an X compatibility layer (XMir) which can be used to run an X server alongside Mir, but it's not an X server in itself.

Generally the complaints are that it's brand new (announced only a few months ago), will likely be very prone to breaking (at least for the first year or two), still requires an X server to be running to run X applications, and is trying to do something that Wayland is also trying to do (but has been trying to do for several years longer). Basically, it's a rather extreme case of NIH (not invented here), which is trying to be pushed out in a state that it's probably not ready to be used seriously.

The irony, which hasn't escaped the developers involved, is that it's the same situation as systemd, except reversed. This time it's Ubuntu (Mir) trying to replace something started by Fedora (Wayland), rather than Fedora (systemd) trying to replace something started by Ubuntu (upstart).

Re:Multi Monitors

[AliasMarlowe]

Hard to say. As of now, the only multi-monitor mode working is mirroring.

Can we choose which axis the displays are mirrored around?
Upside-down and left-to-right are so passé; a skewed mirroring axis would be better.