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Intel Rejects Supporting Ubuntu's XMir
An anonymous reader writes "Just days after Intel added XMir support to their Linux graphics driver so it would work with the in-development the X11 compatibility layer to the Mir display server premiering with Ubuntu 13.10, Intel management has rejected the action and had the XMir patch reverted. There's been controversy surrounding Mir with it competing with Wayland and the state of the display server being rather immature and its performance coming up short while it will still debut in Ubuntu 13.10. Intel management had to say, "We do not condone or support Canonical in the course of action they have chosen, and will not carry XMir patches upstream." As a result, Canonical will need to ship their own packaged version of the Intel (and AMD and Nouveau drivers) with out-of-tree patches."
I don't know if mir is a good idea, and neither do I trust the Xorg bunch, after their numerous fsckups, to really get it right, honest, with wayland. The shambles with xorg is because they made it one, and now they're refusing to fix it. Oh well.
The thing is, though, that intel's management throwing a tantrum will ultimately lead to less options and less pressure on the failing failbunch at xorg to get it right. So I'm not thanking intel's management for this.
Though Intel will be open to an alternative to X11 they are in no way obliged to carry an immature release just because Canonical wants to push theirs.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
This is what happens when you have a Linux distro geared towards niggers. It's one bad decision after another. You know it's bad when Linux For Niggers can't even mooch money from people properly. Maybe their Kickstarter campaign would have succeeded if they were on welfare.
Why does the Intel Xorg graphics driver have to know anything about XMir, which, as far as I understand it, is just an Xorg driver for running Xorg as a Mir client?
When will Linux finally use standard ABIs and APIs for drivers just like very other OS on the planet?
Why can't you just use one driver written a few years ago and use it universally across all distros due to this? The other free BSDs have this and you can install the extra compat libraries to accomplish this. I guess RMS thinks that is oppressive and wants opensource hardware even though patent holders from the likes of the h.264 consortorium forbid it!
Before I get flamed remember the article mentioned ATI and NVidia drivers as well so Intel is not the asshole here. Rather they different kernels and distros being redone requiring new QA and recompiling with every release.
There is a reason many old time linux users like myself only run CentOS in a VM Now. It is because Redhat provides ABIs and APIs that do not change for 5 years. Unfortunately it also means an out of date distro as well which is not fair to non server users (even a few server users who need a newer app or framework.)
http://saveie6.com/
Dumb framebuffer wars begun have they?
This is coming from me, a biracial guy (half white/half black), and my personal experiences in working fast food.
Our drink options are: Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Root Beer, Dr. Pepper, Hi-C Fruit Punch, and Light Lemonade.
- Majority of black people order Hi-C Fruit Punch.
- Majority of white people order Coke/Diet Coke.
The rest of the drink options are a random toss up between the few that don't fit into the majority.
We also carry a few non-fountain drink options: Sweet tea and Un-sweet tea.
- Majority of black people who order tea order sweet tea. In fact, I can only recall two black people, in the time that I've worked there (and I always work drive-thru where the majority of the people come), order un-sweet tea.
- Majority of white people order Un-sweet tea. Although, there is more leeway within the white fast food test subjects in their selection between sweet or un-sweet tea.
Easiness of orders: (Despite the fact that anyone can be rather irritating)
- White people: Seem to be able to order more quickly and more precisely. Tend to say "Thank you" more often. Tend to complain less, and, if they do, they seem more reluctant as a sign of respect to not make a big deal of something petty. Although, are more likely to not come back if we forget a pretty obvious item; such as a drink with the combo. White people have a more pleasant ordering voice (and this makes a difference when you've had a slew of rude orders). I always feel more appreciation from white people compared to black people.
- Black people: Slow, slow, slow orderers! You may think that I'm racist but, after many encounters I have had in fast food, these are the conclusions I have made from the majority of orders I have taken. Sometimes I sense that they are intentionally taking their time just because they know they can. Also, they ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS change their order. Here is a typical conversation I have with them:
Black customer: "I'll have number....Fo---Fi--NO! number 8 combo. WAIT. I'll just go ahead and get number 4 combo."
Me: "Alright, what size would you--"
Black customer: "NO! Scratch that. Keep the number 8 combo!"
Me: "O..ok. What size?"
Black customer: "Small."
Me:"What kind of drink would you like?"
Black customer: "Fruit punch"
Me:"Anything else?"
Black customer:" Um... (1 minute later I hear them on the cell phone talking about something unrelated to ordering)......."
Me: "H-hello?"
Black customer: "Yeah that's it!
"Me: "Okay, your total comes to $7.56, thank you!"
Black customer:"$7.56?!?! Hell no, lemme just get your dollar menu chicken sandwhich and value fries, and that'll be all for me (they pull up without me even giving them their total)"
Black guys mumble too much. I'm constantly asking them to repeat themselves. When I ask them to repeat themselves they immediately assume I just said, "Fuck your mom!" and get all pissy. Other times, they won't even TRY to speak louder or more clearly. Then when their order comes out wrong they get pissed off. The women ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS have something wrong with their food. Our fries will have just came up and they'll honk their horn and say they want fresh fries. The meat doesn't taste right. Their soda doesn't taste right. Their fries are too salty. Their fries aren't salty enough. The sandwich bun doesn't taste right. Their chicken nugget are cold. Their chicken nuggets don't taste fresh enough. The list goes on. This goes on all night for 8 hrs, and by the time the night is over I'm ready to jump off of a cliff.
If they order a shitload of food, they will sit at the window and open every single sandwich and inspect it while there is a line of cars behind them. I rarely witness a white person complaining about their fries. Our fries are usually always fresh, so no wonder. It is like black people are never satisfied. If they order a flavored tea (that we make with un-sweet tea) they will complain that the tea isn't sweet enough.
This is only grazing the surface, if I tol
This all will end up badly.
There is nothing wrong woth Mir or Wayland. But what's wrong is this "game" of hype and NIH. A lot of political decisions and talks and the defacto winner now is Wayland. But why ? I as normal user haven't seen Wayland nor am I able to decide yet whether its good or not. All I know is that GNOME Developers are pusing Wayland with all kind of patches to GNOMIFY it for the future GnomeOS (Fedora).
Sure, I am not a friend of Xorg either. It's bulky, old, doesnt come up the way like former Amiga or similar operating systems. It's something ontop of something else. But well see. We don't know yet, whether Wayland or Mir will be a good option. We can't know where it's vision and development leads to.
We still need to wait. Nonetheless I believe it's good for graphic cards manufacturer to support the current - in process - Xorg alternatives.
There is no future!
We all are doomed!
A nightmare came true!
The world is swallowed by evil!
You probably don't understand or do not want to, but that's the truth. That doesn't have anything to do with Religion or anything Alien, you only have to actually open your Eyes, the facts are everywhere.
Open-Source was killed by politics, ignorance, the lack of knowledge and sabotage. That also applies to various other things and thats also the reason for our doom and my very personal grief.
It's your fault and sooner or later you will pay the price, no matter if you want to or not. The world is about to end and it's your fault, get it, it's your fault.
This sounds like dumb management decision that hopefully community outrage will cause Intel to reverse.
I say this not because I support Canonical's decision to build XMir or even run Ubuntu, but because I don't think politics of this nature should see source code removed from kernel. I would encourage other kernel developers to re-apply the patches.
I may be entirely wrong, but my suspicion is that Mark Shuttleworth changed from Wayland to Mir when he/Canonical decided that they wanted to get into the mobile phone market. This is only a guess because I'm not familiar with the detailed functionality or development environment for the two alternatives, but I have this idea that Canonical get much more direct control over Mir than Wayland, and this has/will allow them to tailor it specifically to Canonical's plans to get into the mobile space with a competitor to Android/iOS/Windows...
It will be interesting to see how Mir develops as an alternative to Wayland. If it picks up mobile phone clients and Canonical gets deals that way, my guess it will have some legs. Otherwise, irrespective of whether it's technically superior, I think it might just fade away.
So when Ubuntu 13.10 ships, it will force you to use XMir?
If so, thanks for the warning. The last thing I want to do is deal with an unstable graphics driver. It's taken years for X11 with NVidia drivers to get stable, and I don't want to touch XMir with someone else's 10-foot pole for until it's been in use for at least 2-3 years.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I think Mir is a case study in how to correctly identify problems and then going about solving them all wrong.
See, the good thing about Wayland is, it does the right thing in having a limited scope. It aims to do one thing and do it well: provide an API for GUI clients to share buffers with a compositor.
And the problem with Wayland is, of course, that... it has a limited scope. Screen management? Input handling? Buffer allocation? "A modern desktop needs all that!" say the Ubuntu devs, and yeah, that's absolutely correct. "That's a client concern," say the Wayland devs, and guess what? From their point of view, that's correct too. (Although Wayland since started working on an input handling API.)
Now, the important thing to realize is, when the Wayland guys say that something is a client concern, as I understand, they don't necessarily mean the GUI applications, no. They mean the compositor.
Meaning that a whole lot of the stuff desktop shells rely on is, in fact, not provided by Wayland itself.
That's where Weston comes in: it's supposed to be an example (a "reference implementation", to use the designated words) of how to write a compositor. But... not necessarily in a way that meets the higher level needs of desktop shells. Unsurprisingly, both KDE and GNOME will be using their own compositors.
So basically, a whole lot of the desktop integration on top of Wayland will be, as it were, left as an exercise to the reader.
With all that in mind, I think the highest outcome end game is somewhat clear: frame-perfect rendering through the Wayland API of Mir-composited KDE/GNOME/Unity clients.
Or in other words, Mir should probably be a set of APIs to handle all the admittedly important desktop integration -- clipboard, multi-screen layout, input and gestures, systray/notification requests... -- with an optional and replaceable compositor thrown in.
All the points of contention that I know of, mainly that Canonical requires server-side buffer allocation (presumably for mobile ARM platforms) where Wayland does it client-side, could have been resolved with some diplomacy and a mutual willingness to reach a satisfactory compromise.
But instead, it looks like the report card is just going to say, "Doesn't play well with others." As usual. What a sad mess and wasted opportunity.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
There's not a lot of bloat in the system and that could be removed in a recompile, absolutely nothing to do with X11.
And why, precisely, is a "client/server relationship" bad, wrong or misguided? What issue, exactly, does it raise?
Other than being X11's way of solving access to hardware and being an old idea?
X11 was no more "made for dumb terminals" than Windows was made for cheap hardware.
OpenGL and glx run many windows DirectX games under Wine FASTER than Windows running DirectX.
Many games ported to use Linux and OpenGL natively show up FASTER than their Windows relation, either OpenGL (being faster on Windows than DirectX) or DirectX on Windows.
Explain Windows XP/Vista/7/8 not being able to use the drivers binary of older OSs?
Many cases the drivers will flatly refuse to install.
But apparently this is fine if it's Windows closed binary, its then the mfgr's fault.
But for Linux, the same thing is Linux's fault.
Right...
You can recompile the 2.4+ drivers to run on the latest Linux 2.6 kernel with very few changes, as few or fewer than to get a Windows XP driver compiled for Win7, for example. However, in the windows case, only the device manufacturer is allowed. In Linux, you can do it yourself.
But apparently, it's only a problem in Linux.
Right...
Dad recently purchased a Windows 8 laptop, but the FujiXerox DocuPrint 203A printer doesn't have a Windows 8 driver. Some posts suggest that it is a rebadged Brother HL-2040.
I was using Windows as an example of why closed sourced drivers are bad for hardware longevity. Should my parents throw out a perfectly useable printer simply becausse FujiXerox cannot be bothered to release a new driver?
And you CAN run drivers written for the 1.2+ kernel on 2.6.
CAN? No.
It's theoretically possible to run some particular one? I could agree, but you'd have to show this is the case and where. Because it's highly uncommon.
Meanwhile the drivers for the USB devices have been the same ever since they were introduced in Linux 2.0.
The greybeards already had GL backends from their commercial unix vendors and thus had no itch to scratch.
X.org/XFree86 were slow lumbering beats who thought 'Who will ever need 3d acceleration'.
And the young upstarts decided 'we can do better', did it without proper engineering practices, regression testing, or any real concern for retaining the old feature set (without either clearly delineating the new one up front, or at least starting in a seperate branch, the XFree86->Xorg transition not withstanding) and basically ruined everything that once made X great, while leaving all the important new features in a constant state of flux for what... 10 years now?
As somebody who's used it, modern X is 'good enough', but it's also horribly broken. And the attitude regarding that brokenness is 'Fix it yourself', regardless of fact that many of those fixes span multiple modules and may or may not require YET ANOTHER BREAKAGE to accomplish.
Intel heavily supports Wayland, including employing the primary developer. Isn't this move on their part simply saying, we're dogfooding Wayland, and Canonical needs to handle XMir itself? Snark aside, doesn't that seem like a reasonable move on their part?
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
This needless display system might put the fledgling Linux gaming industry on the back foot. Games need good drivers quite often. Steam only runs on Ubuntu (officially) and this silly bullying may cause them much more harm then the benefits they may get (and what are they after all!)
As much as Linus may dislike me saying it a standard ABI is a bad thing for this community. It'll result in another MS Windows platform full of non-free software dependent hardware. We have too much of that already and it sucks (NVIDIA, ATI, Creative sound cards, printers, wireless, ethernet chipsets, etc). There will be no support after a few years just like there isn't on MS Windows. Particularly with how quickly GNU/Linux advances. People need to learn to recognize that non-free dependencies are bad and show there support for free software policies. Users shouldn't be stuck on old versions of an operating system, unable to get up-to-date drivers, or even need to install updated drivers. The drivers/firmware should be 100% free and maintained by the community / in the mainline kernel and related projects.
ThinkPenguin's got it right. They focus on shipping hardware that is free software compatible, backwards compatible with LTS releases and older versions of distros, and properly supported.
Interesting that the majority of forum members believe that XMir/Mir only benefits Canonical. If it works out superior to Wayland and other Distros want to take advantage of the "device convergence", then the are perfectly able to adopt Mir as their Display Server. I say let these guys (Mir and Wayland) battle it out. Soon one will be the winner and will gradually absorb the benefits the other offers...and don't take sides yet.
[Multi-window multitasking is] not really a market segment it is a use case.
Every use case, such as multi-window multitasking, has a corresponding market segment of people who regularly use it. Page 4 of an Ars Technica article about OS features useful to the market segment of creative professionals (discussion) mentions multi-window multitasking features, and page 5 decries Microsoft's focus on retooling its OS for "consumption" (passive viewing of works created by others) of one thing at a time.
this makes no sense