XBMC Ported To Run On Mir Display Server

[jayrulez]

Yes, most of us say the real reason is for the API to be controlled by Canonical, and one of the reasons most people is pissed off is because instead of saying so, they keep pointing fictitious problems, or making vague statements that tend to show Wayland as a half-assed, crippled solution it's not. For example, the bold claim Mark did about Wayland sharing all of the X.org problems, while not clarifying what he bases this claim on.

No, the relevant documents have been amended and apologies have been made for the misstep. It is people like you who are still hung up and perpetuating this political crusade against Canonical like this just happened yesterday and not months ago.

About being pissed despite both are almost the same anyway, it's because the API is different, and that means the software you write (except when targeting a toolkit, but there are cases where this is undesirable) can't run on both seamlessly, you need to make a backend for Wayland and another one for Mir. If they'd implement it as a Wayland compositor, they can expose their own API, but things written for Wayland will run on their compositor seamlessly, because they'd support also the standard protocol; if the Mir API is supposed to be used for apps, though, the incompatibility will still be there; it solves the problem if that API is meant only for Ubuntu and Unity specifics, since this could be done without messing with anyone else. In the worst case, you'd need to macro the window creation to allocate on the client or not, according to the model your compositor use (or maybe even be announced by the compositor, so you can check on runtime).

Boo-fucking-hoo! So what if software written for a specific display server is not compatible with software written for another? Who will die because of that. Software written specifically for Windows is not immediately compatible with Linux distros either. Same for Mac, IOS, Android etc...

You losers are just too hung up over this and trying to blow it out of proportion. Canonical with do as it bloody well feels and no amount of ranting or raving on blogs and forums will change that.

Get over it and move on. Nothing is being taken from you.

Disclaimer:
I wish Canonical had gone with Wayland but they didn't and that's that.

I will still be able to use any other Distro with Wayland and Ubuntu with Mir. I don't see what the fucking problem is.

[mrugiero]

No, the relevant documents have been amended and apologies have been made for the misstep. It is people like you who are still hung up and perpetuating this political crusade against Canonical like this just happened yesterday and not months ago.

Nope. First, the only political crusade I have is against fragmentation, because it hurts end users. I don't hate Canonical, as some of you like to pretend all people who doesn't follow them to the letter does, and I even use Xubuntu and recommended to most of my friends Ubuntu, and installed it for them.
This have been amended in the wiki, as you said, but Mark Shuttleworth keeps saying otherwise.
Before accusing, read.

Boo-fucking-hoo! So what if software written for a specific display server is not compatible with software written for another? Who will die because of that. Software written specifically for Windows is not immediately compatible with Linux distros either. Same for Mac, IOS, Android etc...

No, it's not, and that's why we had pretty much absent support on Linux from proprietary vendors. When something is starting to look better, they create fragmentation to make it harder again.

You losers are just too hung up over this and trying to blow it out of proportion. Canonical with do as it bloody well feels and no amount of ranting or raving on blogs and forums will change that.

They can do what they bloody want, but we can complain about their ways as we bloody want, too. And the fact they can, doesn't mean they're right.

Get over it and move on. Nothing is being taken from you.

I agree, nothing is being taken from me. But it's being taken from almost everyone else. I can use my computer exactly as always, since I only rely on a browser, a compiler, maybe a few IDEs. All of my gaming needs can be completely filled by Windows, since it came with my laptop. Free software will likely keep working on Wayland, which is what I will switch to, and the only closed source package, aside from Steam (which I downloaded only for testing Portal, which I had a free copy back when it was that way), is Flash. Eventually, I hope youtube and other will drop Flash, and then I'll care zero for what Ubuntu does. But I have several friends who's workflow can be negatively affected by this.

[jayrulez]

Nope. First, the only political crusade I have is against fragmentation, because it hurts end users.

So you are campaigning against fragmentation? When it is something you like then it is choice and variety but when you do not like it then it becomes fragmentation.

This have been amended in the wiki, as you said, but Mark Shuttleworth keeps saying otherwise.
Before accusing, read.

What exactly is wrong with that comment? Would you clear to explain? Maybe you should ask Mark which mistakes exactly he thinks Wayland is repeating before assuming you know what he is talking about?

No, it's not, and that's why we had pretty much absent support on Linux from proprietary vendors. When something is starting to look better, they create fragmentation to make it harder again.

Proprietary and commercial vendors did not support Linux for many reasons and none of them had anything to do with multiple display servers. Mir won't change anything in that regard.

I agree, nothing is being taken from me. But it's being taken from almost everyone else. I can use my computer exactly as always, since I only rely on a browser, a compiler, maybe a few IDEs. All of my gaming needs can be completely filled by Windows, since it came with my laptop. Free software will likely keep working on Wayland, which is what I will switch to, and the only closed source package, aside from Steam (which I downloaded only for testing Portal, which I had a free copy back when it was that way), is Flash. Eventually, I hope youtube and other will drop Flash, and then I'll care zero for what Ubuntu does. But I have several friends who's workflow can be negatively affected by this.

Can you describe exactly what is being taken away from these people?

Maybe you should let your friends speak for themselves and decide for themselves what disrupts their workflows?

[mrugiero]

So you are campaigning against fragmentation? When it is something you like then it is choice and variety but when you do not like it then it becomes fragmentation.

No. When it's something significantly different than what is there, it is a choice. And it's still fragmentation, just that it *may* be justified in that case. When the only difference is that it's not compatible with the other solution, it's only fragmentation. And when it's something you actually have to code against, this fragmentation spreads (else, you are only wasting *your* time, nobody else's, so do whatever you want, I won't bother you about what you do with your time).

What exactly is wrong with that comment? Would you clear to explain? Maybe you should ask Mark which mistakes exactly he thinks Wayland is repeating before assuming you know what he is talking about?

I don't *assume* I know what he is talking about, I say it's spreading shit over other project without explicitly saying why he considers things that way. He gave no tech reasons for that claim.

Proprietary and commercial vendors did not support Linux for many reasons and none of them had anything to do with multiple display servers. Mir won't change anything in that regard.

One of them was that it implied porting over for an (for them) insignificant market share gain. When you divide the desktop between two display servers, you get two ports that go to around half of the original user base. Which in turn, means that by every man-hour they use to port the software, they get half the earnings.

Can you describe exactly what is being taken away from these people?

Read above.
As for devs in general, everyone who doesn't rely on toolkits will have to program the UI twice, if they care about reaching users.

Maybe you should let your friends speak for themselves and decide for themselves what disrupts their workflows?

I might, but they aren't really into IT. They wanted a free (as in speech, actually) system that just worked, and used some closed source tools that were mandated by their work.
Specifically, Mir wouldn't mean problems for them, since they don't use games (those are the most likely to suffer, since they rely a bit less on toolkits), but XMir will. As a someone who is actually testing it, I can tell you this affects in a bad way.

[jayrulez]

No. When it's something significantly different than what is there, it is a choice. And it's still fragmentation, just that it *may* be justified in that case. When the only difference is that it's not compatible with the other solution, it's only fragmentation. And when it's something you actually have to code against, this fragmentation spreads (else, you are only wasting *your* time, nobody else's, so do whatever you want, I won't bother you about what you do with your time).

Say what?

I don't *assume* I know what he is talking about, I say it's spreading shit over other project without explicitly saying why he considers things that way. He gave no tech reasons for that claim.

Where do I even begin with this?...

One of them was that it implied porting over for an (for them) insignificant market share gain. When you divide the desktop between two display servers, you get two ports that go to around half of the original user base. Which in turn, means that by every man-hour they use to port the software, they get half the earnings.

If 100 users weren't significant enough for them to port their software to begin with, then the split community (50 to wayland/ 50 to Mir) is still 100 users which is still insignificant. Dropping Mir completely won't magically produce more users to attract commercial software developers.

Read above.

I don't see how Mir stops anyone from doing anyone of those things you mentioned.

As for devs in general, everyone who doesn't rely on toolkits will have to program the UI twice, if they care about reaching users.

Any devs that care much about reaching users would just develop their software for Windows and be done with it.

I might, but they aren't really into IT. They wanted a free (as in speech, actually) system that just worked, and used some closed source tools that were mandated by their work.

If it works on Ubuntu now, it won't stop working because of Mir. XMir should take care of that.

Specifically, Mir wouldn't mean problems for them, since they don't use games (those are the most likely to suffer, since they rely a bit less on toolkits), but XMir will. As a someone who is actually testing it, I can tell you this affects in a bad way.

XMir is unfinished unoptimized software, if know this and you are using it now and expecting it to work flawlessly then it is not XMir that is at fault.

You may have realized that I purposely did not bother to give meaningful responses to some of your [points?]. It is because I don't care about this enough and I do not think it is as big of an issue as many are trying to make it out to be.
I do not care for arguing about all this shit so this is a bit of preemptive action on my part:
You do not need to bother replying to my post as I will refrain from further participation in this thread. For anyone else that feels the need to, I urge you not to because I do not care enough. However, what you may want to do is fill out a copy of this form and email it to someone who does.

[Matte3ucro]

Fantastic job. It seems that porting an application to Wayland AND Mir is not that hard.

[mrugiero]

If 100 users weren't significant enough for them to port their software to begin with, then the split community (50 to wayland/ 50 to Mir) is still 100 users which is still insignificant. Dropping Mir completely won't magically produce more users to attract commercial software developers.

The point is, right now they are starting to show some interest. And now, they split the user base, so they are likely to stop caring again.

If it works on Ubuntu now, it won't stop working because of Mir. XMir should take care of that.

If it works on Windows right now, it won't stop working on Linux, WINE should take care of that. I'm obviously talking about it running native.

XMir is unfinished unoptimized software, if know this and you are using it now and expecting it to work flawlessly then it is not XMir that is at fault.

I'm aware of it, and I don't expect it to be good or fast, I expect to find the bugs and report them, so the harm is reduced to the minimum possible before my friends get a hand on it. However, since MS said it was actually smoother and all kind of crap, I expected it to be kind of usable.
I'm also aware that there's no need for XMir, since it provides no features X.org by itself doesn't provide, and since it's actually an X.org server running inside of Mir, will never be faster than X.org. So why should anyone use something that provides neither performance gains nor features?
And I'm not talking only about the performance loses, but the glitches it has got.

[Nobu]

What exactly is wrong with that comment? Would you clear to explain? Maybe you should ask Mark which mistakes exactly he thinks Wayland is repeating before assuming you know what he is talking about?

I would like to know that, myself, but he doesn't seem eager to share that little tidbit of information...at least, I'm having a hard time finding such explanations. I'm sure he's heard people asking, unless he's shut himself in a little hole.

That said, I could assume (but would prefer not to) that he is talking about how Wayland is written as a protocol rather than an API, as he seems to put some emphasis on that in the aforementioned post by himself. Honestly, I don't see the distinction. An API could be seen as a means of communication (telephone, pen & paper, etc), whereas a protocol would be a structured method of communicating (a language, if you will). In order to communicate properly, you need both sides to be able to use the same API (must be able to read and write on paper, etc.) and must speak the same language. If either is not the case, then loss of information or a breakdown in communication will occur.

Thus, an API for Wayland will exist (in the wayland libraries and the toolkits themselves), and a protocol for Mir will exist (implicit, in the Mir API)...so I'm left wondering, what mistakes from X does Wayland repeat?

[mrugiero]

No, the relevant documents have been amended and apologies have been made for the misstep. It is people like you who are still hung up and perpetuating this political crusade against Canonical like this just happened yesterday and not months ago.

What exactly is wrong with that comment? Would you clear to explain? Maybe you should ask Mark which mistakes exactly he thinks Wayland is repeating before assuming you know what he is talking about?

Just to point out what is shown by Mark's comment.

[allenmaher]

Specifically, Mir wouldn't mean problems for them, since they don't use games (those are the most likely to suffer, since they rely a bit less on toolkits), but XMir will. As a someone who is actually testing it, I can tell you this affects in a bad way.

You mention that game developers want to reach users. According to steam survey numbers most linux gamers (not counting those who boot to windows for gaming) are Ubuntu users. So why would they be negatively impacted if they use Mir? Would that not be the demographic that steam/Nvidia/AMD would be most interested in?

Yes XMir is currently slower, but will be less so when it sees the light of day. Again what have they lost?

Every thread that mentions Ubuntu these days seems to be met with a lot of irrational vitriol. Ubuntu's decision not to use wayland has no impact on anyone unless they feel that:

1. They are being forced to use Mir against thier will (I see no evidence for this)
2. That only wayland developers have the right to attempt to replace X (if so how did they get this right?)
3. Mir might turn out to be better than wayland and doom the project that you have spent so much time working on (again what evidence is there of this?)
4. They have the right to dictate when and where fragmentation can and should occur (if so how did you get this right?)

As with everything in the linux world, if you don't like it,don't use it, or fork it and make it better.

Can threads that mention Ubuntu now go back to discussing what is in the article? It is tiring looking through the threads for interesting on topic discussion. There used to be much more of that.