Mir Still Causing Concerns By Ubuntu Derivatives

[GreatEmerald]

That's the problem I was talking about. But that view is one sided, isn't it? Canonical is barely cooperating with others, but others apparently don't even want to cooperate. As I said, KDE devs, for instance, wouldn't even accept Mir patches. You can blame whatever faction you want, it won't help fix the issue. I can also understand, why KDE devs aren't too happy about Mir, but still, it doesn't help.

They have stated quite clearly, and on technical terms, the reason why they don't accept the patches upstream. It's because there is no guarantee that the patches will be maintained in the future, and they are only used by one distro so far, and that it's protocol-agnostic, and that it's guaranteed to break at this point. It's not that they don't want to cooperate with Canonical, it's that it makes no sense to accept such patches.

Walled garden? Why that? Nah, I guess you can figure out what I meant, if you take yourself some time and look at the Steam Survey. Sure, there are other distros, which are easy to use and there other distros with OEM deals - but they're not the ones usually reaching average end users - in reality.

And guess why that is? Because of the same "Ubuntu = Linux" viewpoint of the users, which stems from habit and simplified view. Which also happens to be why Windows is dominant. Ubuntu's popularity has little to do with technical reasons.

[alexThunder]

They have stated quite clearly, and on technical terms, the reason why they don't accept the patches upstream. It's because there is no guarantee that the patches will be maintained in the future, and they are only used by one distro so far, and that it's protocol-agnostic, and that it's guaranteed to break at this point. It's not that they don't want to cooperate with Canonical, it's that it makes no sense to accept such patches.

http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/05/mir-in-kubuntu/

Note that this text isn't generated by a machine, but written by a human being with intentions in mind. The antipathy is pretty obvious. Reasonable? Yes. Use/helpful? No.

And guess why that is? Because of the same "Ubuntu = Linux" viewpoint of the users, which stems from habit and simplified view. Which also happens to be why Windows is dominant.

Yes. Average end users like simplifications - and that's not limited to the viewpoint. That's why Ubuntu actually is successful (read: it's getting somewhere).

Ubuntu's popularity has little to do with technical reasons.

Of course not. Did anyone say something different?

[energyman]

a) Drivers for none-MIR setups:
Corporations want RHEL or SLES.
AMD makes binary drivers for those customers

b) Ubuntu Software Center.
Lindows had a similar thing. didn't work out at the end.

c) Steam. Steam works fine on none-ubuntu platforms.

d) canonical contributes nothing back. Without all the other distributions, canonical can pack up and die.

[bartek]

I think a lot of you are forgetting when you're talking about using a Mint base etc. The Software Center is the entire pull for Ubuntu. You can't use the Software Center on other distros except the Official ones (Xubuntu-Kubuntu etc) It doesn't work at all on Mint. Some guy (Mint Forums) was trying to install a game he bought on Ubuntu, in Mint through an install of the Software Center; but it didn't work. They would cease to be Official Distros and people would abandon them. Of course we have Steam now too and other Games coming out whose only Support will be for Ubuntu. Devs have pretty much settled the fragmentation issue and I know it's difficult for some of you to swallow.

Now some of you are going to come in here and ask me what's wrong with included package managers for Debian/Redhat etc. What's wrong is they don't offer Devs a place to sell their Games and Apps. The entire community outside of Ubuntu is so afraid of having an App store for fear it restricts their freedom. Forums of other distros don't understand the Software Center in Ubuntu. When people come in asking if there is an App store, they are greeted by posters telling them to use the one included. They seemingly can't grasp the idea that people want to be able to buy Software when the Open Sourced versions in the Distros repositories don't cut it. Having paid software available is a benefit. It's not restricting your freedom in any way and you have a choice to buy or not to buy, as there will probably be Open Source alternatives near the Item in the Store like currently.

In any case, you guys are making a big deal out of something so far away. It's not even a Movie of the Week, I've been reading the Mailing Lists and they are saying it's not going to be a problem switching the Distros over to something else. Heck, Mark himself stated recently it wasn't an issue; If I were you, I wouldn't even worry about it right now . For this other guy, yes, Ubuntu has done more to draw in Windows users. The App store gave devs a place to sell things for one. And before Ubuntu, Linux adoption was completely stagnant and now it's on the rise. We wouldn't have even had Steam without Ubuntu. What in the hell is wrong with you guys, why are you so stuck in your old ways. It's time to look to the future, not the past.

+ 1

And : https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ub...ne/037287.html

I think most of the points have been covered in this thread but I'll just emphasise a few points:

- The use of Mir in Ubuntu should have no effect on using any alternative display systems. Some things will gain Mir backends but everything will continue to support X and Wayland if the upstreams support it and developers package and support it in Ubuntu.

- There are a number of different levels of co-existence with Unity/Mir that are possible:

a) Unity on X and KDE on X - the current case. You can install both and choose a session from a greeter

b) Unity on XMir and KDE on XMir using Mir as a system compositor [1] - this is the case you can test from the PPA [2] today. Looks and behaves much the same as a).

c) Unity on Mir and KDE on XMir using Mir as a system compositor - this is the case we're working towards. For KDE it will be the same as b).

d) Unity on Mir and KDE on Mir using Mir as a system compositor - IF KWM was able (have not seen any technical reason this can't be done) and wanted to create a Mir backend this would work like b) (see discussion later in this thread).

e) Unity on Mir and KDE on Wayland using Mir as a system compositor - IF Wayland is able (have not seen any technical reason this can't be done) and gets a Mir backend this will work IF LightDM support is added like b) (see below).

f) Unity on Mir using Mir as a system compositor and KDE on Wayland using Wayland as a system compositor - Would not be able to switch between
sessions. Would either need to switch LightDM configuration or display managers.

g) Unity on Mir and KDE on Wayland using Wayland as a system compositor - Would be technically possible but the Mir team has no plans to add a Wayland backend. Would not be shipped as a default so would not be well tested by Canonical.

- Canonical will need to support XMir for the foreseeable future. XMir is just X.org with a Mir backend. This means supporting XMir will mean supporting most of the case of running X.org in the traditional sense.

- LightDM will continue to support the traditional VT switched X display. We have extensive regression tests for this case and it is used by a number of other desktops.

- While Canonical is not going to add Wayland support to LightDM the work we are doing to support Mir in LightDM is much the same as would be required to support Wayland in LightDM. Anyone is welcome to implement this. Note it's not clear to me at the moment how different desktops plan to use Wayland (no system compositor, shared system compositor, differing system compositors, same/differing Wayland socket naming conventions). I'll leave it to Kubuntu/KDE to decide the value in sharing the rest of the display manager codebase.

--Robert

[1] The "system compositor" is a display server that switches between running sessions. The purpose of this is to control the graphics during the whole boot / session lifetime. It replaces handing over between display servers and VT switching.

[2] https://launchpad.net/~mir-team/+archive/staging

+ 1

[duby229]

+ 1

And : https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ub...ne/037287.html



+ 1

Concerning the gentleman that you quoted.... Which brings up the obvious question, why mir at all? If as he says there are no technical reasons wayland can't be used as a display server for Unity, then why does Canonical need mir at all? What exactly was the point in this fracture?

[GreatEmerald]

Yes. Average end users like simplifications - and that's not limited to the viewpoint. That's why Ubuntu actually is successful (read: it's getting somewhere).

Of course not. Did anyone say something different?

No, and that's what's bothering me. Most people are on Ubuntu since it's popular and is relatively simple (Mageia is even more simple and easy to use, it just lacks the existing user base). Overall it wouldn't be too bad, but now that Canonical is pulling such stunts that make them separate from the rest of the platform, Ubuntu users are slowly but surely stopping to be users of GNU/Linux at large. They are dragging this userbase with them, and the users follow for no good reason, just because of habit or for not knowing better. They're also doing it incrementally, via the foot-in-the-door phenomenon, so nobody from the inside really sees how Ubuntu grows more and more distant from every other distribution...

[Plombo]

It's interesting and rather telling that the Canonical employees in this discussion don't seem to have read Martin's blog post. For example, Robert Ancell says he "has not seen any technical reason" that KDE can't support Mir when one technical reason for this is quoted in the very message he's replying to and more are in Martin's blog post:

Given that the protocol may change any time and given that the whole thing is developed for the needs of Unity we have to expect that the server libraries are not binary compatible or that old version of the server libraries cannot talk with the latest client libraries. We would constantly have to develop against an unstable and breaking base.

But it gets worse, the protocol between Mir server and Mir clients is defined as not being stable. In fact it?s promised that it will break. That?s a huge problem, I would even call it a showstopper.

And, most importantly:

Mir doesn?t have a real protocol. The ?inner core? is described as ?protocol-agnostic?. This renders a problem to us if we would want to use it. Our architecture is different (as described above) and we need a protocol between the desktop shell and the compositor. If Mir doesn?t provide that we would need to use our own protocol. And that already exists, it is called ?Wayland?. So even if we would support Mir, we would need the Wayland protocol?!?

As far as I know, no one at Canonical has not addressed any of these concerns in any way, instead opting to ignore them and pretending that the whole thing is just an angry rant with no technical basis.

I don't mean to pick on Robert Ancell specifically, since most Canonical employees seem to be operating on a similar level of information. If Canonical wants to be taken seriously with Mir, it needs to step out of the void it exists in and look at what the people outside of Canonical are saying about the project - especially the people they are expecting to support Mir upstream.

[Sonadow]

Mageia is even more simple and easy to use, it just lacks the existing user base.

No, it is not. Rpmdrake is a legacy from Mandriva which really needs to be laid to rest with its consistent complaint of how some of its dependencies need to be updated and thus needing a restart, and MCC has, on my machines, always ended up screwing something instead of doing what it's supposed to do, even up to Mageia 2. Most of the end I end up just editing the config files manually and completely bypassing MCC, and using urpmi / urpme / urpmq / urpmf instead of relying on Rpmdrake for package management.

And Mageia's net_applet is a nightmare in the making; to date it has never successfully connected to any non-open network for any machine I have used it on. In fact manual invoking wpa_supplicant / iw dev wlan0 connect with dhclient always produced better results than net_applet. Even networkmanager and nm_applet are way ahead of net_applet in the game.

[GreatEmerald]

No, it is not. Rpmdrake is a legacy from Mandriva which really needs to be laid to rest with its consistent complaint of how some of its dependencies need to be updated and thus needing a restart, and MCC has, on my machines, always ended up screwing something instead of doing what it's supposed to do, even up to Mageia 2. Most of the end I end up just editing the config files manually and completely bypassing MCC, and using urpmi / urpme / urpmq / urpmf instead of relying on Rpmdrake for package management.

And Mageia's net_applet is a nightmare in the making; to date it has never successfully connected to any non-open network for any machine I have used it on. In fact manual invoking wpa_supplicant / iw dev wlan0 connect with dhclient always produced better results than net_applet. Even networkmanager and nm_applet are way ahead of net_applet in the game.

Well, your experience is clearly different from mine's. The package manager could do with some optimisations, yes, but that has nothing to do with user-friendliness. Never had any problems with the control centre, and I'm constantly using the network applet to connect without any problems.

[bartek]

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ub...ne/037287.html

+ 1

I think a lot of you are forgetting when you're talking about using a Mint base etc. The Software Center is the entire pull for Ubuntu. You can't use the Software Center on other distros except the Official ones (Xubuntu-Kubuntu etc) It doesn't work at all on Mint. Some guy (Mint Forums) was trying to install a game he bought on Ubuntu, in Mint through an install of the Software Center; but it didn't work. They would cease to be Official Distros and people would abandon them. Of course we have Steam now too and other Games coming out whose only Support will be for Ubuntu. Devs have pretty much settled the fragmentation issue and I know it's difficult for some of you to swallow.

Now some of you are going to come in here and ask me what's wrong with included package managers for Debian/Redhat etc. What's wrong is they don't offer Devs a place to sell their Games and Apps. The entire community outside of Ubuntu is so afraid of having an App store for fear it restricts their freedom. Forums of other distros don't understand the Software Center in Ubuntu. When people come in asking if there is an App store, they are greeted by posters telling them to use the one included. They seemingly can't grasp the idea that people want to be able to buy Software when the Open Sourced versions in the Distros repositories don't cut it. Having paid software available is a benefit. It's not restricting your freedom in any way and you have a choice to buy or not to buy, as there will probably be Open Source alternatives near the Item in the Store like currently.

In any case, you guys are making a big deal out of something so far away. It's not even a Movie of the Week, I've been reading the Mailing Lists and they are saying it's not going to be a problem switching the Distros over to something else. Heck, Mark himself stated recently it wasn't an issue; If I were you, I wouldn't even worry about it right now . For this other guy, yes, Ubuntu has done more to draw in Windows users. The App store gave devs a place to sell things for one. And before Ubuntu, Linux adoption was completely stagnant and now it's on the rise. We wouldn't have even had Steam without Ubuntu. What in the hell is wrong with you guys, why are you so stuck in your old ways. It's time to look to the future, not the past.

+ 1

Concerning the gentleman that you quoted.... Which brings up the obvious question, why mir at all? If as he says there are no technical reasons wayland can't be used as a display server for Unity, then why does Canonical need mir at all? What exactly was the point in this fracture?

I don?t care about fracture, I?m an end user. i just want a system that serves my needs. I want to use my smartphone as my desktop computer. At this point Ubuntu is the only one to give my needs a go. If they feel Mir is the way to go ... So be it.

The whole Linux-ecosystem is based on fragmentation. I use Ubuntu since 5.10. I?ve tried many other distributions. I?ve used KDE, GNOME, XFCE, ... I don?t see no reason why Canonical should not develop their own display server. if they feel Mir is the way to go and wayland isn?t ... I?ll be happy to believe them.

Some day a new distribution will rise. They may bring a new system which is better ... Then I?ll be happy to switch to them but for now there is only 1 that serves my needs.