Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Ubuntu Allegedly To Have Its Own X, Wayland Alternative

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #51
    Originally posted by porkbutt View Post
    I recently evaluated all of the other distros since Ubuntu 12.10 was such a turd.

    What I discovered was that even though 12.10 sucks, it was still better than anybody else's.

    1. Mint - slightly less stable than Ubuntu, less useful desktop, it has nothing on Ubuntu
    2. Arch - A toy, not a real distro meant for real work
    3. Fedora - 17 was decent(except for the bugs), 18 is unbelievably shitty
    4. OpenSuse - Are they still around?
    5. Mageia - Might be contender someday, but not yet
    6. Debian - I appreciate them being the extremely FOSS-minded, but they always have a dinosaur kernel that can't boot a newer PC. Debian Unstable is... Unstable.
    1) Less stable, better desktop
    3) Agreed
    4) Surprisingly, yes
    5) So far theyre doing good, hope to see them continue
    6) Agree on both points

    2) Very much so disagree... All computers I've got run Arch both as desktops and 2 dedicated home servers. Its hardly a toy. Is it for the average user? Hell no, but it is far from a toy. Once you get it setup you just stop caring, keep up with updates, check the homepage for news once a month to spot any update-problems or non-standard updates (replacements for example) and you just keep going. Btw my "real work" is CS, schooling, video/audio editing and casual gaming-- its really nice having the latest versions of all libraries, LibreOffice, AV tools and gfx drivers & wine to get those things done.
    All opinions are my own not those of my employer if you know who they are.

    Comment


    • #52
      Originally posted by johnc View Post
      I've never been into the Wayland hype myself, as the project claims to bring pretty much nothing better than X except cleaner code and protocols. From a user perspective, big whoop. As far as I can see, no real new "features" are actually planned, and Windows 7 & 8 continue to have far more advanced display servers.
      1) Cleaner code,
      2) cleaner and more efficient protocol,
      3) better support for GPU-switching,
      4) better support for full-screen apps (try having a full screen window change the resolution under X, depending on your WM you'll get mixed results)
      5) proper screenlocking (under X an app can bypass the screenlock if it really wants to)
      6) lightweight enough that it can be used on tablets, phones or desktops.
      7) Better multi-monitor support,
      8) frame-perfect graphics-- no lagging, tearing or stuttering
      9) also fun fact: its relatively future-proof. The wayland protocol really just moves pointers and buffers around to different sections, it lets other programs handle what those buffers contain, how the data got there and things like that. By letting third party handle the major implementation details and just having the protocol as barebones as possible it means if there ever comes a day when we have a big shift in how we do graphics (like X went through) we may not have to throw the protocol out the window or start bypassing it like we did with X, we just change the 3rd party bits to the new architecture./ style and keep plugging away

      Any questions?
      All opinions are my own not those of my employer if you know who they are.

      Comment


      • #53
        Yes Arch is fantastic.
        • It decently stable, more or less as stable as the 2 releases a year desktops
        • You always has the latest libs.
        • No messy big updates two time a year. Only practical smaller updates continuity.
        • Good documentation
        • Everything works as it's supposed, a minimum of silly patches of upstream project.

        Comment


        • #54
          Originally posted by Ericg View Post
          Any questions?
          I have one: What are the key differences between wayland and android's DS?

          Comment


          • #55
            Originally posted by Ericg View Post
            1)
            5) proper screenlocking (under X an app can bypass the screenlock if it really wants to)
            Shouldn't the new sceenlocking in the composting layer in kde and gnome do the same thing?

            Comment


            • #56
              Originally posted by Figueiredo View Post
              I have one: What are the key differences between wayland and android's DS?
              Literally the only reference I can find online, because I dont know that one off the top of my head, is: elinux.org/images/7/79/Lf_elc12_rosenkranzer.pdf

              In it (slide 19 and 20) they mention its "Designed for modern GPU's" "accessible from C, Java and C++" with "little overhead" BUT just going off of experience and anecdotal evidence, its a battery-killer (problem for laptops if you wanted it on "desktop" linux), judging how Google handled the audio portion of Android, its probably not well written or they took a lot of shortcuts. And I'm gonna guess it doesn't scale well for the simple fact it was designed with phones in mind wherein you either have the "Desktop" up (home screens) or 1 fullscreen window. Not 2 or 3 windows with one rendering video the other doing CAD work and the other writing a memo.

              Obviously Im exaggerating with that example but you get my point-- its designed for 1 app at a time, not multiple all rendering at once. Also it was designed around touchscreens which may or may not be an issue, you'd have to go through all the code and see how hard it would be to allow for mouse style events.
              All opinions are my own not those of my employer if you know who they are.

              Comment


              • #57
                Originally posted by Akka View Post
                Shouldn't the new sceenlocking in the composting layer in kde and gnome do the same thing?
                Ideal-world yes but then we're back to the core issue of wayland: "Why didn't you just extend the X server?" ---> "Because most of our time is spent bypassing the X server anyway. Lets just get it out of the way so we can finally do the things with graphics that we've always wanted." Also it doesn't help if composting in KDE is turned off, which it sometimes is. Gnome (3) users dont have a choice in that regard.

                KDE and Gnome screenlocking also doesn't help if the user isnt USING those two screenlockers. Any of the *Boxes I believe still use the default X screenlocker, with Wayland every compositor will have proper screenlockin at a minimum and if KDE, Gnome, Qt, etc want to do something fancy ontop of it, thats fine.
                All opinions are my own not those of my employer if you know who they are.

                Comment


                • #58
                  Originally posted by Ericg View Post
                  Literally the only reference I can find online, because I dont know that one off the top of my head, is: elinux.org/images/7/79/Lf_elc12_rosenkranzer.pdf

                  In it (slide 19 and 20) they mention its "Designed for modern GPU's" "accessible from C, Java and C++" with "little overhead" BUT just going off of experience and anecdotal evidence, its a battery-killer (problem for laptops if you wanted it on "desktop" linux), judging how Google handled the audio portion of Android, its probably not well written or they took a lot of shortcuts. And I'm gonna guess it doesn't scale well for the simple fact it was designed with phones in mind wherein you either have the "Desktop" up (home screens) or 1 fullscreen window. Not 2 or 3 windows with one rendering video the other doing CAD work and the other writing a memo.

                  Obviously Im exaggerating with that example but you get my point-- its designed for 1 app at a time, not multiple all rendering at once. Also it was designed around touchscreens which may or may not be an issue, you'd have to go through all the code and see how hard it would be to allow for mouse style events.
                  There are android phones that can output a different screen than that of the phone. My moto atrix from the top of my head, so may not be impossible.

                  But from your answer another question arises, can canonical extend android's DS enough that it would also work well in the desktop form factor?

                  My point is: Canonical is faced with a choice: They can follow intel and the other GNU distros and adopt wayland, relying on Intel and community to further develop it, also requiring porting of the desktop GPU blobs to this DS supported only by GNU distros and also of the apps/toolkits. Or, they can follow google and adopt android/chromeOS DS and instantly gain support for ARM SoCs drivers, which would require convincing AMD and nvidia to port their blobs to android/chrome OS, the porting of the apps and toolkits and rely on google to further develop the DS.

                  Neither is painless, but I can understand canonical if they choose to stand closer to a google/linux instead of GNU/linux. Google has already taken linux where no other GNU/linux distro has ever gone: consumer devices. By "borrowing" hardware support from android/chromeOS, ubuntu can deliver a better user experience and has a higher chance of convincing an OEM to ship a product with it.

                  Maybe wayland is technically better, but that is meaningless if it only performs well in a very strict number of devices.

                  Comment


                  • #59
                    Originally posted by Figueiredo View Post
                    There are android phones that can output a different screen than that of the phone. My moto atrix from the top of my head, so may not be impossible.

                    But from your answer another question arises, can canonical extend android's DS enough that it would also work well in the desktop form factor?

                    My point is: Canonical is faced with a choice: They can follow intel and the other GNU distros and adopt wayland, relying on Intel and community to further develop it, also requiring porting of the desktop GPU blobs to this DS supported only by GNU distros and also of the apps/toolkits. Or, they can follow google and adopt android/chromeOS DS and instantly gain support for ARM SoCs drivers, which would require convincing AMD and nvidia to port their blobs to android/chrome OS, the porting of the apps and toolkits and rely on google to further develop the DS.

                    Neither is painless, but I can understand canonical if they choose to stand closer to a google/linux instead of GNU/linux. Google has already taken linux where no other GNU/linux distro has ever gone: consumer devices. By "borrowing" hardware support from android/chromeOS, ubuntu can deliver a better user experience and has a higher chance of convincing an OEM to ship a product with it.

                    Maybe wayland is technically better, but that is meaningless if it only performs well in a very strict number of devices.
                    Well Wayland's already backed by a few car manufacturers and a few mobile manufacturers, its got Intel's, Red Hat's and all of X.org's backing, 90% of the community and all major toolkits. If Canonical really wants to get into bed with google thats their choice...but I think it'd kill Ubuntu.
                    All opinions are my own not those of my employer if you know who they are.

                    Comment


                    • #60
                      Originally posted by Figueiredo View Post
                      There are android phones that can output a different screen than that of the phone. My moto atrix from the top of my head, so may not be impossible.

                      But from your answer another question arises, can canonical extend android's DS enough that it would also work well in the desktop form factor?

                      My point is: Canonical is faced with a choice: They can follow intel and the other GNU distros and adopt wayland, relying on Intel and community to further develop it, also requiring porting of the desktop GPU blobs to this DS supported only by GNU distros and also of the apps/toolkits. Or, they can follow google and adopt android/chromeOS DS and instantly gain support for ARM SoCs drivers, which would require convincing AMD and nvidia to port their blobs to android/chrome OS, the porting of the apps and toolkits and rely on google to further develop the DS.

                      Neither is painless, but I can understand canonical if they choose to stand closer to a google/linux instead of GNU/linux. Google has already taken linux where no other GNU/linux distro has ever gone: consumer devices. By "borrowing" hardware support from android/chromeOS, ubuntu can deliver a better user experience and has a higher chance of convincing an OEM to ship a product with it.

                      Maybe wayland is technically better, but that is meaningless if it only performs well in a very strict number of devices.
                      Why don't port their desktop to android instead. As I understand it, this is was firefox did with firefox os.

                      Comment

                      Working...
                      X