Slashdot Mirror
Ubuntu 13.10 Will Not Ship Mir By Default
An anonymous reader writes "Ubuntu 13.10 is due for release later this month, and the Ubuntu developers were planning to replace the native X Server with Mir/XMir as Canonical's next-generation Ubuntu display server. However, they have now decided Mir will not be the Ubuntu 13.10 default on the desktop over the XMir X11 compatibility layer suffering multi-monitor issues and other problems. Canonical still says they will use Mir for Ubuntu Touch 13.10 images and remain committed to the Mir project."
Or maybe they can stick with X and replace unity with XFCE.
XFCE don't fuck it up, all you have to do is stay yourself.
Gentoo user here, just to side-step any Ubuntu fanboy responses.
Why are two competing display server stacks considered a problem in this case?
Over the years we've had countless situations like this
The various desktop environments, package management systems, initialisation systems, boot loaders, audio stacks, etc. etc.
Often seen as the benefit of open-source software.
The ability for multiple software components to exist that fulfil the same function. May the best man win.
Innovation and progress comes from each project trying to out-do it's rivals.
Often these competing solutions have a single distro or company behind them, driving development forward.
Why is Ubuntu's new display server, competing against X.org and Wayland any different?
Was it pure failure,or today's sick fascination with 'mobile' that would lead a 'modern-replacement-for-X' project to have "multi-monitor issues"?
I can be sympathetic to the weirdness sometimes experienced in that area with classic X, given that it's a hoary design from the age when 'multi-monitor' meant "Computer that costs more than everybody in front of it" bodged and genetic-drifted into a totally alien environment; but this is the future, the one where you are hard pressed to buy a motherboard without at least two built-in video outputs, not infrequently more, you'd think that that would be a major consideration in any new graphics system design.
You specified Ubuntu GNOME, yet the article was about Ubuntu in particular. Despite Ubuntu GNOME being Ubuntu based, I had expected that if anything, they would be supporting Wayland. Did the Ubuntu GNOME group express any sort of interest in Mir?
No the point is that when Ubuntu switches to Mir, Ubuntu gnome will have to replace the whole graphics server and compositor rather than just teh display manager, amd to get advantage of Weyland use Weyland-enabled apps. It probaby won't be worth doing - the resulting system would be so different that you may as well have your own debian based distribution as making a variant of Ubuntu.
One question: what do you think Wayland and Mir will look like in five years, especially if you're leaving out highly desirable features from day one?
Dude seriously. The latency of X is killing me. Have you seen, the signals have to make 4 extra IPC calls before they're seen by the application. By my count that adds at least 40ms of latency.
Oh hang on a mo.
Looks like the turbo button isn't pressed and my 386 SX/25 was only running at 4MHz.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Like Pulse audio it takes a long time to make a WM that does not have some serious issues somewhere. Ubuntu choosing to try to create a WM more suitable to the Unity gui is understandable. But it is no small task. This is the great part about the Linux kernel not a weakness as the nay sayers that peddle the poison crap that Linux distros are too fragmented. Unlike the alternative which is only united by the fact that with a Windows or Apple window manager you have NO CHOICE PERIOD.
Ubuntu is stable and very usable always with the window manager that they choose, so is Slackware, Knoppix, Mint etc etc etc. The detractors and shills do not realize the real significance of this. Which is the fact that different groups can do what they want as witness the Google WM on top of the kernel. Shills that harp that fragmentation there is a problem are starting to be exposed for what they are as witness the fact that Android is kicking but all over the planet.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
Both to RedHat and Cannonical for actually trying to innovate in this space.
At least one of the projects will fail and there will be instability for those trying out the new solutions, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try. I love seeing this because whatever happens, it will make desktop Linux more fun!
They should do that then.
Something will need to replace ubuntu soon as the easy to use grandma friendly linux desktop. They are hell bent on killing that distribution.
Or maybe they can stick with X and replace unity with XFCE.
XFCE don't fuck it up, all you have to do is stay yourself.
A big thumb up for XFCE from me. It runs fast, is relatively bug-free, and has plenty of configurability. However a little tweak which I like to do is turn off the default compositor and replace it with Compton. It is slick, does not suffer from tearing problems, and offers some extra eye candy with fade in/out and shadow effects.
This kind of setup runs as fast as Windows, which is very fast these days. However on that Linux setup you will also get lower memory consumption, I was hovering around 150MB when in an empty desktop. A Windows desktop grabs about 500MB (you can crank that slightly down by disabling some services, but it is usually not worth the effort).
Because fanboys.
which is totally what she said
Sorry, I don't understand the comment.
Isn't Doing shit, "just because" a fundamental part of OSS software development?
Do you want to remove the "scratch your own itch" element?
Quick google says that Mir is GPL V3
What exactly is the issue here?
I'm missing something...
It's good as long as they use a common interface.
KDE, Gnome, XFCE and Unity all use the X display server right now.
However, with this move, some of those will use Wayland, some will use MIR, and some will be able to use both.
As long as the parts are interchangable - great. But as soon as interfaces change, it's generally bad.
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
Yeah, yeah, cue all the "X11 is crufty and nobody needs all those awesome features it has". Sure. Right. One question: what do you think Wayland and Mir will look like in five years, especially if you're leaving out highly desirable features from day one?
The problem is that X11 doesn't have "awesome features". It has a critical path which acts as a bottleneck and a bunch of crap that nobody uses any more. And increasingly it has a bunch of extensions trying to work around the framework's deficiencies which reside in their own processes and increase the render and network latency.
So whatever form Wayland takes the chances are it'll be a damned sight more maintainable than X11.
Which highly desirable features are you referring to?
In case you meant network transparency, X11 doesn't have that anymore either. Sure, you can run xterm remotely with decent performance, but as soon as you start using client-rendered fonts (the only way to get anti-aliasing), gradients or lots of images, performance of X11 becomes so slow that the networking can no longer be considered "transparent". Overall you'll probably get better performance from VNC than from X11.
Not everything newer is progress. Being able to only use one window at a time is not progress.
Go and try Debian. There is a reason why they have a huge following and most of what people like in Ubuntu is there in debian with none of what people dislike.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It has a critical path which acts as a bottleneck
Bottleneck to what? High performance rendering has been in the X server for ages now. It gets a direct path to the GPU when such a thing exists.
and a bunch of crap that nobody uses any more.
My god the horror. That old line drawing code from the 80's. Sitting all alone, stable and debugged in some source file somewhere. And paged out on disk taking up no resources if it's really not being used.
And increasingly it has a bunch of extensions trying to work around the framework's deficiencies
It's amazing, really. In any other system updating the API to have new features is considered a good thing. The bias against X is so strong that even this is taken as a negative.
which reside in their own processes and increase the render and network latency.
WTF? The extensions are part of the X server and reside in the X server. If you're talking about the input latency to the compositor then you're full of crap. The IPC latency on a 10 year old Linux desktop is down in the microseconds. You won't notice the 4 extra IPC calls.
So whatever form Wayland takes the chances are it'll be a damned sight more maintainable than X11.
Maybe. But the thing is which I find mildly disturbing is that while X11 has many, many defincies, the Wayland folks seem to enjoy making up straw men and picking on things which are easily refutable.
As I pointed out here and in another post, the latency thing is one of the big lies they keep propagating. Yes it exists, but it is so small that it is negligable. So not a lie, more a half truth which is far more dangerous since it's as deceptive but harder to refute.
If Wayland is better, it should be better on its merits.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
> Why are two competing display server stacks considered a problem in this case?
Device drivers. The display server isn't just another piece of user level software. It drives one of the key bits of hardware in the entire system.
It can quite literally mean the difference between a machine being very respectable or being a doorstop.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Quick google says that Mir is GPL V3
What exactly is the issue here?
I'm missing something...
I think the main reason comes down to binary drivers. Neither Nvidia nor ATI have ever released enough specs for a fully capable (ie, respectable 3d support, hardware video decoding, etc) OSS driver to be written. If you actually want to use your video card to its potential you have to use binary drivers.
Having two competing display servers makes the environment more varied and makes the video card makers less likely to support either (whereas a single option would be more likely to be supported).
That said, the hardware companies seem to be fairly committed to Wayland over Mir, so I'm guessing that eventually thats what will eventually end up on top.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
You have no clue what you're talking about.
VNC is a joke. It can't even manage simple things across a LAN. On the other hand, X can handle media intensive applications under the same conditions.
X isn't designed well for the WAN but it's an easy enough problem to solve.
So X runs better across the Internet than VNC does across the LAN.
Regardless, the X approach to network transparency is now the norm rather than the exception. If you gut Linux in this regard you are putting it at a disadvantage and setting it back 20 years.
You've got to be very effective at insulating yourself from the world at large if you think otherwise.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Maybe. But the thing is which I find mildly disturbing is that while X11 has many, many defincies, the Wayland folks seem to enjoy making up straw men and picking on things which are easily refutable.
You do realize that "the Wayland folks" and the X11 folks are the same folks, right? Perhaps you should give this a watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44
What's with you?
You come into all these threads claiming you do stuff and people keep telling you you don't. You need to start ignoring the flawed evidence of your eyes and accept the fact that X is bad.
Just accept it.
It will make the transition much easier.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
My god the horror. That old line drawing code from the 80's. Sitting all alone, stable and debugged in some source file somewhere. And paged out on disk taking up no resources if it's really not being used.
Yes the horror. It's junk which must be maintained and tested and impedes development of new functionality.
Maybe. But the thing is which I find mildly disturbing is that while X11 has many, many defincies, the Wayland folks seem to enjoy making up straw men and picking on things which are easily refutable.
They're not straw men and you didn't refute them so much as pretended that the brokenness didn't matter. Many of the people supporting Wayland are former X11 developers fed up with having to work around broken design. There are some good technical articles describing what is wrong with X11 such as this one.
Low on memory, totally configurable, really nice well integrated applications and an interface many people will understand right away.
As a bonus it has excellent support and future planning.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I recently worked on a Laptop for a friend that I had to create a new user and copy all the prefs and files over.
it kinda amazed me that all there was to move was the bookmarks. no photos, no documents, not even anything in the downloads folder! this laptop was about a year and a half old and basically stock.
The only thing she really did was print recipes and joke email.
So the only thing I would say is that the Printing support in ChromeOS is crappy by design.
"Buy a cloud printer" doesnt really do it for me.
Other than that, Sure