The Performance Penalty Of Xfce/Xubuntu On XMir

[erendorn]

Because it's a potential candidate to the successor of X.org on Ubuntu and its derivatives. Right now it's a race between wayland and mir, and while mir is younger and less supported by the community, it's catching up really fast.

Fixed that for you.

Ubuntu will replace X by Mir, other distributions will replace X by Wayland. It doesn't matter what happens or when or who gets first at what.
What make these replacements possible anyway are the huge amounts of work in the kernel, X, and the linux graphic stack. That's the reason you may get the impression that these projects advance more quickly today. It's because it's not where the work is (has been) done.

[uid313]

XWayland

It would be interesting to see a three-way comparison of X.org, XMir and XWayland.

Or a five-way comparison of X.org, XMir and XWayland, native Mir, native Wayland.

[r_a_trip]

Sigh

It's sad. Summing up the pro-Mir side, it's "Mir is showing pretty pictures and I can haz the pretty pictures, so Mir rulez!"

Never mind that this split in display technology will have far reaching consequences in the WM/DE and application space. Everything that needs to display "pretty pictures" (compositors, full-screen apps, etc.) will now either have to speak both Wayland and Mir or opt to choose one or the other. The projects that opt to speak both, will have to shoulder the burden of maintaining two display dialects, with one constantly changing to fit the needs of Unity (Canonical's M.O. in words and deeds sofar). The projects that opt to speak just one, will have to deal with bad blood from the side that doesn't get to run their wares on the display server powering their OS.

Since the world, except Canonical and some of their spin-offs, is going Wayland, this might mean that Ubuntu (and close by derivatives) will only be able to run DE's and applications that are specifically written for the Mir display server. Reversely, no Ubuntu specific apps for us Wayland using folk either. (I know whose side will feel the squeeze more in this case though.)

Or, when dystopia really hits, we will get an ueberkludge, where there are compat layers left and right to be able to run Mir atop Wayland, Wayland atop Mir and the bulk of the projects opting just to speak X11, as that is something both still can do. The folk who have no inkling whatsoever about the technical reasons for writing a clean break X11 replacement, will cheer this on as the best thing since sliced bread, because now they "can haz all the pretty pictures!", while people with a little more technical insight shudder at the thought.

All because Canonical thinks they have stumbled on a brilliant strategy of releasing everything under a (sometimes deliberately cumbersome) FOSS license (with the option of proprietary spin-offs with the CLA), and through their completely anti-community way of doing things (no the Ubuntu community is not the whole community) they can be sure they are the only ones who use it and have nothing to fear from other FOSS projects and vendors, as they won't touch it with a ten foot bargepole. Cold business shenanigans and their oblivious fan base cheers it on as they lap up the party line. (Locked in a gilded cage with the key to the door in hand and still captive! Who'd have thought that was possible?)

[bwat47]

It's sad. Summing up the pro-Mir side, it's "Mir is showing pretty pictures and I can haz the pretty pictures, so Mir rulez!"

Never mind that this split in display technology will have far reaching consequences in the WM/DE and application space. Everything that needs to display "pretty pictures" (compositors, full-screen apps, etc.) will now either have to speak both Wayland and Mir or opt to choose one or the other. The projects that opt to speak both, will have to shoulder the burden of maintaining two display dialects, with one constantly changing to fit the needs of Unity (Canonical's M.O. in words and deeds sofar). The projects that opt to speak just one, will have to deal with bad blood from the side that doesn't get to run their wares on the display server powering their OS.

Since the world, except Canonical and some of their spin-offs, is going Wayland, this might mean that Ubuntu (and close by derivatives) will only be able to run DE's and applications that are specifically written for the Mir display server. Reversely, no Ubuntu specific apps for us Wayland using folk either. (I know whose side will feel the squeeze more in this case though.)

Or, when dystopia really hits, we will get an ueberkludge, where there are compat layers left and right to be able to run Mir atop Wayland, Wayland atop Mir and the bulk of the projects opting just to speak X11, as that is something both still can do. The folk who have no inkling whatsoever about the technical reasons for writing a clean break X11 replacement, will cheer this on as the best thing since sliced bread, because now they "can haz all the pretty pictures!", while people with a little more technical insight shudder at the thought.

All because Canonical thinks they have stumbled on a brilliant strategy of releasing everything under a (sometimes deliberately cumbersome) FOSS license (with the option of proprietary spin-offs with the CLA), and through their completely anti-community way of doing things (no the Ubuntu community is not the whole community) they can be sure they are the only ones who use it and have nothing to fear from other FOSS projects and vendors, as they won't touch it with a ten foot bargepole. Cold business shenanigans and their oblivious fan base cheers it on as they lap up the party line. (Locked in a gilded cage with the key to the door in hand and still captive! Who'd have thought that was possible?)

For applications most of this is at the toolkit level, so as long as the major toolkits have mir and wayland backends there should not be any major issues (QT will certainly have both backends if it doesn't already, and afaik canonical said they'd have a GTK backend for mir too). Regarding games, I believe SDL already has both mir and wayland backends in the works, so I really don't think wayland users will have to worry about "games only running on ubuntu".

For DE's the line is pretty much drawn in the sand already. Gnome and KDE are using wayland, Unity is the only one using mir (no other DE has shown any interest at all in mir so far). Smaller DE's like XFCE and LXDE will probably use X as long as they can and then make a decision only when they have to. If you are using a non-ubuntu distro you really won't have to worry much about mir...

The situation certainly isn't ideal and I'm sure the split will introduce some problems, but I think you are exaggerating heavily; I do wish canonical had used wayland instead, but all this FUD and doom-bringing is getting silly. Linux has had many such "splits" in the past, its the nature of the OSS beast.

[LinuxGamer]

For applications most of this is at the toolkit level, so as long as the major toolkits have mir and wayland backends there should not be any major issues (QT will certainly have both backends if it doesn't already, and afaik canonical said they'd have a GTK backend for mir too). Regarding games, I believe SDL already has both mir and wayland backends in the works, so I really don't think wayland users will have to worry about "games only running on ubuntu".

For DE's the line is pretty much drawn in the sand already. Gnome and KDE are using wayland, Unity is the only one using mir (no other DE has shown any interest at all in mir so far). Smaller DE's like XFCE and LXDE will probably use X as long as they can and then make a decision only when they have to. If you are using a non-ubuntu distro you really won't have to worry much about mir...

The situation certainly isn't ideal and I'm sure the split will introduce some problems, but I think you are exaggerating heavily; I do wish canonical had used wayland instead, but all this FUD and doom-bringing is getting silly. Linux has had many such "splits" in the past, its the nature of the OSS beast.

Open Source my ass

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?83152-Ubuntu-for-Android-unlikely-that-we-would-be-able-to-open-source-for-commercial

[mrugiero]

For applications most of this is at the toolkit level, so as long as the major toolkits have mir and wayland backends there should not be any major issues (QT will certainly have both backends if it doesn't already, and afaik canonical said they'd have a GTK backend for mir too). Regarding games, I believe SDL already has both mir and wayland backends in the works, so I really don't think wayland users will have to worry about "games only running on ubuntu".

True, but not all of the applications will be that way. Specifically, there are things where a toolkit is not really needed. If your windowing part is simple enough (for example, if you are making a game with a custom, written in OpenGL as the game, interface, as most games are, you only need to handle input and draw a window or declare fullscreen), a toolkit would be something you don't need.
You might use SDL.
On Canonical's claims, they also said KDE would run out of the box on Mir, so I'd rather wait until I see things materialize before assuming they'll fulfill all of their claims. SDL doesn't have both yet, according to the blueprints the SDL port for Mir is work in progress. I'd consider it done for the case of believing or not they'll fulfill such claim, obviously, since they are already working on that. On Wayland, I *think* SDL2 is already working, but I'm not sure.

I agree, however, that this part of the problem is overblown.


EDIT: On being part of the OSS beast, I don't agree. I believe it's more a part of the ego beast, or the stupidity beast.

[LinuxGamer]

True, but not all of the applications will be that way. Specifically, there are things where a toolkit is not really needed. If your windowing part is simple enough (for example, if you are making a game with a custom, written in OpenGL as the game, interface, as most games are, you only need to handle input and draw a window or declare fullscreen), a toolkit would be something you don't need.
You might use SDL.
On Canonical's claims, they also said KDE would run out of the box on Mir, so I'd rather wait until I see things materialize before assuming they'll fulfill all of their claims. SDL doesn't have both yet, according to the blueprints the SDL port for Mir is work in progress. I'd consider it done for the case of believing or not they'll fulfill such claim, obviously, since they are already working on that. On Wayland, I *think* SDL2 is already working, but I'm not sure.

I agree, however, that this part of the problem is overblown.


EDIT: On being part of the OSS beast, I don't agree. I believe it's more a part of the ego beast, or the stupidity beast.

Hmm remember what Martin Said? "But I have doubt that KWin will work just fine on top of Mir" http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blo...ces-of-ubuntu/

i see it as the BSD Beast

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?83152-Ubuntu-for-Android-unlikely-that-we-would-be-able-to-open-source-for-commercial

[mrugiero]

Hmm remember what Martin Said? "But I have doubt that KWin will work just fine on top of Mir" http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blo...ces-of-ubuntu/

That's why I said I'd rather wait and see on the "GTK and Qt will be supported". Qt, I'm pretty sure, since they need it for their basic desktop. But GTK, they could as well expect the GTK people to do the work, or just blame them if someone complains for the lack of support.

[V10lator]

Hmm remember what Martin Said? "But I have doubt that KWin will work just fine on top of Mir" http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blo...ces-of-ubuntu/

Did Mark ever say it will run native? Cause they have XMir for other DEs...

[Thaodan]

For applications most of this is at the toolkit level, so as long as the major toolkits have mir and wayland backends there should not be any major issues (QT will certainly have both backends if it doesn't already, and afaik canonical said they'd have a GTK backend for mir too). Regarding games, I believe SDL already has both mir and wayland backends in the works, so I really don't think wayland users will have to worry about "games only running on ubuntu".

For DE's the line is pretty much drawn in the sand already. Gnome and KDE are using wayland, Unity is the only one using mir (no other DE has shown any interest at all in mir so far). Smaller DE's like XFCE and LXDE will probably use X as long as they can and then make a decision only when they have to. If you are using a non-ubuntu distro you really won't have to worry much about mir...

The situation certainly isn't ideal and I'm sure the split will introduce some problems, but I think you are exaggerating heavily; I do wish canonical had used wayland instead, but all this FUD and doom-bringing is getting silly. Linux has had many such "splits" in the past, its the nature of the OSS beast.

Games don't use toolkits like Qt (except some games like KDE-Games).