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Ex-Red Hat Employee Matthew Garrett Comments On the State of XMir
First time accepted submitter slack_justyb writes "Matthew Garrett, former employee of Red Hat, comments on the current state of XMir and Canonical's recent decision to not ship XMir as the default display server in Ubuntu 13.10. Noting the current issues outstanding in XMir, the features yet to be implemented, the security loopholes, and Intel's recent rejection to support Mir in general. All of this leading Garrett to the conclusion that 'It's clear that XMir has turned into a larger project than Canonical had originally anticipated, but that's hardly surprising.'"
Do you know of any actual popularity statistics? Pretty much every "non-techie" Linux user I know runs Ubuntu, and quite a lot of the techies too. That's not representational of course, and some real hard numbers would be interesting.
Seconded. Even though many long-time users are switching to Mint or similar, I believe that Ubuntu still commands the lions share of the linux-on-desktop-or-laptop market.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Does Ubuntu still ship with non-free firmware? I know they still lure users into running non-free software.
But when you consider the entire Linux "market": desktops, servers,embedded - and every other use that's not visible, Ubuntu may not be as popular as it looks.
Who runs an Ubuntu web server? Or router?
But yes, stats would settle any conjecture.
Who is going to run X, Mir, Wayland, or fucking SurfaceFlinger on a web server or router? You don't run any desktop environment on those systems.
Still suffering from the butthurt he got when Ubuntu sided with Scott James Remnant over him in a technical dispute which then led to MG quitting like a petulant little bitch. Just like what happen when he was with Debian. Now he just takes to shitting on Canonical whenever he can. The fact is, Canonical is concentrating on getting Ubuntu Touch ready and with the technical difficulties with XMir, and made the prudent decision not to dump it as a default on the Ubuntu user base.
BTW, the while he may not work for Red Hat, he's still on the fedora advisory board. Can somebody say "conflict of interest"?
This discussion is obviously about the Linux Desktop, you fuck wit.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I find the XMir situation unfortunate. I switched to Ubuntu this past year for a clean, nice font, supported linux distro. Hopefully, this will not be the start of the end of Ubuntu.
Yes, I could go Mint, Debian, etc... I still like the fact that there is a company behind the download - its a trust issue. I know it's all opensource so I can see the code, but let' be real, who's got the time to read each line...
Maybe back to OpenSUSE.
FTFA:
Mir could have done the same, but doesn't because of a conscious design decision - in the Ubuntu Phone world, clients stop doing things when they're told to. Ubuntu Desktop is expected to behave the same way.
So they're letting design decisions for their phone interface dictate how they implement their desktop interface. It's the same stupidity that the Gnome developers are engaged in. A desktop is not "just another kind of phone," and if you treat your primary users as second-class citizens, they'll all jump ship.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Who is going to run X, Mir, Wayland, or fucking SurfaceFlinger on a web server or router? You don't run any desktop environment on those systems.
What do you do when you use GUI tools for configuration?
Quite a percentage aparantly (old article though): http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/is-ubuntu-becoming-a-big-name-in-enterprise-linux-servers/10602
Wikimedia's traffic stats and Steam's Hardware Survey show Ubuntu way ahead of other desktop distributions.
Ubuntu is Steam's reference platform so that's hardly surprising.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> I consider myself a power user and was horrified of the Dash and other things. AFter using those for awhile,
The dash is a solution in search of a problem.
It is something that should be an optional extra rather than the sole thing that is forced on you with older interfaces being sabotaged by unnecessary architectural decisions.
"You will like it eventually if it's forced on you" is hardly a compelling argument.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I think the distro to watch is PuppyOS. Talk about easy to use... and it can run on just about anything.
It's still missing features
XMir doesn't support colour profiles. XRandR properties aren't exposed, so there's no way to control TV output encoding or overscan. There's still no hardware cursor support. Switching to XMir now would reduce functionality without providing any user-visible gain.
no hardware cursor support? talk about a dealbreaker!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I ran precisely one Ubuntu server, but they compiled Apache with some fucked up options and it would not, no matter what I did, run one of my PHP sites. In frustration, I through Debian on another machine, and it worked fine. At that point I decided never to try Ubuntu on a server again, and since then I've basically dumped it entire.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The company I currently work for has several thousand servers all running Ubuntu Server, which in turn is running OpenStack and the supporting infrastructure.
Ubuntu is what you use if you want to use Debian but need commercial support (and yes, we have made use of that support on several occasions)
My webserver is currently running ubuntu (server edition without X), could someone please clarify why that makes me an idiot?
"You will like it eventually if it's forced on you" is hardly a compelling argument.
>forced
Because none of that other UI desktop stuff exists on the Ubuntu repos. Nope, not at all. You're not allowed to install them even if they do.
This is how stupid you are.
Most of the websites (and db servers) I've created for my company are Ubuntu Server... I don't deal with heavy security implications because they are all internally facing, although the ports are locked up and we haven't had any problems, and while I don't pay that much attention, I haven't heard of Ubuntu Server being any less secure than other linux distributions.
No X Server, go gui at all, and no need for one.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
fuck with what; Candlejack?
See? That's your problem. Nobody will be able to convince of anything else, and any kind of argument or indicators you disagree with will be met with moving goalposts etc. Because you are a believer.
I run several Ubuntu server LTS's in an enterprise environment. That said, they are the _exception_, I run twice that many RHEL/CentOS installations in the same environment. So far though, no problems with our administration staff or developers - unless you are hooked on something amateur like authconfig-tui/gtk from RHEL, you'll be just fine. The same QLogic HBA driversin RHEL are in Ubuntu - albeit they are newer in Ubuntu.
"You will like it eventually if it's forced on you" is hardly a compelling argument.
But it is a valid one. Just look at all the times Facebook made changes to their UI; they're still going strong despite all the "outrage" each time they make changes.
I still like the fact that there is a company behind the download - its a trust issue
you just blew my mind.
We are cycling around a wheel of and racing to reinvention. All of Canonical's efforts could have been paired up with Wayland to make a one-size-fits-all display server and it probably would have been finished and ready to deploy by this point. It's opposition like Mir that is stagnating much needed innovation. I imagine Canonical's thoughts going something like "Oh, since Wayland isn't moving fast enough - even though it's been in development for years - we'll just make our own, from scratch." If they didn't think it'd cost them this much effort, then they're more arrogant than I thought. The one thing about them I've learned over the years is they love biting off more than they can chew - only to spit it right back out onto the plate. If there is one positive thing to come out of this is that it lit a fire under Wayland's butt.
While nerdy cretins think the greater world exists to listen to an endless litany of 'technical' excuses, things that fail to work 'out of the box' will NEVER (never, never never) earn public acceptance. But then again, the nerdy Linux cretins say "good, we don't want ordinary people ever feeling comfortable with Linux".
That the simple act of rendering to the screen is still something billions of dollars of Linux investment still can't get right disgusts me. It is NOT a difficult technical problem to solve.
1) old hardware crap should NOT be supported in hardware mode by new Linux distributions. All older hardware lacking sufficient technical ability should be driven by software solutions alone. This means being grown up, and selecting a base-line standard for video hardware. All video hardware from recent times allow complete software solutions to baseline 2D rendering requirements.
2) having selected a baseline hardware standard for hardware video acceleration (probably GPU parts capable of Open GL ES2.0), the OS use of the hardware should be as clean and minimum as possible. Clever stuff should be left ENTIRELY to the domain of the apps themselves.
'Clever' 'clever' crap in Linux is actually mind-boggling stupid as an idea. Hardcore video/GPU apps simply want clean access to the GPU hardware, rendering through their own libraries, and expecting the OS screen composition engine to display the final result on the screen. IS THIS ROCKET SCIENCE?
It doesn't matter, thank god. Android for the desktop (which arrives when the first mains-powered ARM parts hit the market in 2014 with AMD and Nvidia graphics cores) will be the only 'Linux' that matters for 99.999% of all users.
In reality, Linux is ruined by the idiots that fail to comprehend how computers have changed. An OS should NEVER be about libraries, or power-functions. That thinking became irrelevant when the resources of even the cheapest computer exploded. Today, every app can incorporate first-class libraries to do all the heavy lifting. The OS simply needs to provide a sane shell, proper message handling of VERY low latency, and the usual hardware management. Otherwise, performance apps simply need the OS to "get out of the damned way".
Problem is, the people that work on Linux are 'fiddlers', "control freaks", "hackers", and technical introverts. None of them cares to see (or has the psychological make-up to see) the greater picture. For that, we have to turn to the OS projects from Apple and Google (and now Valve). The pity is that increasing numbers of Windows users would love to see a non-Microsoft future, but will not migrate to a joke of a platform dominated by profoundly dysfunctional types.
PS can there be any excuse for a 'fat' OS in this age? What possible justification can there be for loading the OS with complexity? All a 'fat' OS ensures is massively increased situations for bugs and errors, and a vastly slower computer as almost every piece of software has to run through insane numbers of very inefficient abstraction layers. If people need such abstraction, it should be in the coding environment, not in the underlying structures of the OS.
Many people unfortunately.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the kind of response we've come to expect from Linux enthusiasts. Keep up those high stands, Larry.
No, this is Linux Other which is way ahead of any distro. Look again ;)
In frustration, I through Debian on another machine
I through Debian threw the window. sheesh... facepalm. Where did all you third graders come from? You THREW Debian on it, moron.
A number of people also use Linux Mint and Debian, especially since 2011/2012 when Ubuntu fucked up pretty badly with Unity.
I understand the desire to capture the mobile market. However, like Microsoft, Canonical is making a mistake trying to merge the mobile platform with the workstation/server platform. They're different devices requiring different interfaces, and what's desirable in one is horrible in the other (see Windows 8). Since they've decided to follow that model I've decided to part ways with Ubuntu. I'm in the process of migrating my systems to Slackware, and as soon as I have a good process down all of my clients will be making the transition as well.
You mean like Gnome 2.xx? Go ahead and try, see how far you get. Even trying to install the MATE fork results in a multitude of breakage all over the system, because of dependencies related to the increasingly ironic "Unity" desktop.
I've been looking for a replacement to Ubuntu for a while now and have begun moving on to Debian as a result with frequent stops here and there to try out other distros to see if any come close to working as well for me as earlier versions of Ubuntu did. So far the only one which does is Debian and even then there's all sorts of stuff that I have to relearn while missing the way Ubuntu used to handle it...
So yeah, 'forced' is an apt description. I (and many others) have been forced to make a decision between keeping our Gnome 2.xx desktop and Ubuntu. Sadly unlike those who still cling to Windows XP those of us who use Linux are unable to simply use the older versions because of how quickly bitrot sets in and how difficult it becomes to install applications.
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Although I really don't understand but the fact is a lot of people run Ubuntu server
It's clear that XMir has turned into a larger project than Canonical had originally anticipated, but that's hardly surprising.
Isn't "something you didn't anticipate" almost the defintion of "a surprise"?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.