Intel Reverts Plans, Will Not Support Ubuntu's XMir

[Serge]

One announcement that was corrected had an inaccuracy about wayland... the rest of the bashing has been pretty one sided.

I will use ubuntu in the future, it is still a great distro and I like the unity DE, I will like it more when it is rewritten in QT/QML and does not have to depend on gtk. As an ubuntu user i have no problem with MIR, if it works, great. I have no problem with Wayland working and being great. I won't be using gnome shell or lxde so it does not affect me. My question is this, since no one is forcing you to use Mir why do you care?

Of course Intel which has an investment in wayland is going to take this action. Who cares, the patches exist and I will be getting them from the ubuntu repositories anyway.

I have noticed linuxgamer that not a thread on Ubuntu goes by without you chiming in and saying something in the same vein as the comment above, how is is that you have any right to accuse others of bashing and fanboism?

For the record, there are no tears shed here over the announcement, sorry to spoil your fun.

Re: Why people who don't use Mir care about it: Because users of other distros fear that incompatibility between Mir and Wayland will cause burdens for developers and either decrease overall code quality or lead to software being created Mir-only or Wayland-only. Personally, I'm not opposed to fragmentation, as I equate fragmentation with choice, and choice in my opinion is a good thing. However, in this case, there does not appear to be any technical advantage for Mir over Wayland, which really doesn't lead to any meaningful choice from an end-user perspective.

[Serge]

All the management said was they disagree with Canonical and don't want to work with them. There's no evidence to support it's anything but political, no mention of breaking or stability issues.
Canonical is very much being forthcoming and open to driver devs at this point. They are trying to collab with all sorts of groups and project managers. But there is so much frustration revolving around Mir, many don't feel like working with them. I suspect when someone says "it's a one distro solution, so we won't work toward making out software compatible" are really just saying "you guys were dicks, so now you have the pleasure of dealing with people being upset at you."
It's all a vicious cycle. They disagree on how things should be done and now Canonical is getting walled off from both the inside and outside.

No, the community is continuing to work on Wayland, which it was doing before the Mir announcement. Canonical is trying to shift or split community focus for no reason other than copyright control. The community is not trying to retaliate against Canonical for being dicks in the past. The community is merely trying to protect itself.

Also let me clarify the importance of copyright control to Canonical: Canonical wants the ability to dual-license the code. It is the same business model as that practised by MySQL AB for years. It does not mean that Canonical wants to close source the stack. It just means that Canonical wants to offer closed licenses parallel to open licenses. I understand the business reasons for Canonical's decisions. Canonical's business interests are not my interests, however. So knowing the reason doesn't make this any easier to swallow.

[Bathroom Humor]

No, the community is continuing to work on Wayland, which it was doing before the Mir announcement. Canonical is trying to shift or split community focus for no reason other than copyright control. The community is not trying to retaliate against Canonical for being dicks in the past. The community is merely trying to protect itself.

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. They can still be giving Canonical the finger while they continue on with previous plans.
They wanted Wayland support, then Mir is shoehorned in from the black abyss of secrecy, they get upset about the decision, tell Canonical to buzz off and build thier sandcastle somewhere else, and continue working on Wayland support while being conciously uncooperative to anything Mir related.
But there has been a notable increase in Wayland adoption since the announcement of Mir in many projects, so it's not like there was zero impact or reaction from the community in terms of getting ready for Wayland.

[Serge]

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. They can still be giving Canonical the finger while they continue on with previous plans.
They wanted Wayland support, then Mir is shoehorned in from the black abyss of secrecy, they get upset about the decision, tell Canonical to buzz off and build thier sandcastle somewhere else, and continue working on Wayland support while being conciously uncooperative to anything Mir related.
But there has been a notable increase in Wayland adoption since the announcement of Mir in many projects, so it's not like there was zero impact or reaction from the community in terms of getting ready for Wayland.

Well, that is very speculative. I am not saying that you are wrong. It is entirely possible that Mir's announcement indeed increased interest in Wayland. It is also possible that the increased interest in Wayland would have occured regardless. Or even think about this: What would Wayland look like now if Canonical took all the time and money they have invested in Mir and invested it in Wayland instead? But that's neither here nor there. I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm just saying we can't really be sure.

[F i L]

Amazing. Nearly 100 comments and still no one has pointed out how much, on these same Phoronix forums, Intel gets criticized for NIH syndrome regarding the graphics stack. Hypocrisy in action, hurrah!

Completely different situation. Intel not using Gallium or whatever doesn't fragment the entire Linux Desktop ecosystem the way Canonical's Mir does.

[djdoo]

Well reading the article and most of the comments here at the thread and also watching the Mir developing story all summer long leaves me an unpleasant taste in my mouth about Canonical but not only for it.

Guys keep in mind that we are talking about companies and not sole developers!
Companies run after profit. They take decisions considering how they will gain more profit short term and long term. Market share and all these widely known stuff.
Please stop talking about ''contributions'' from companies to OSS code! They invest not contribute!!
If a company writes code for FOSS it is because it wants to take advantage and make profits from the particular OSS project because the company cannot maintain it by itself only. So it needs the community and the gift is that we can get the software free until the company finds a way to make it its own child or take advantage of the existing code tree and fork it...
That's almost the story of Canonical for Mir... They coded a bit for Wayland and when they decided to make their own child they just forked it took advantage from the community work there and voila Mir!
Very bad behavior to the community to say the least...

I am an AMD satisfied generally user both on CPU and GPU (mostly now with LK3.11 and R600g improved driver which I use RHD5850) for my desktop but I have to say that Intel surprised me well with this decision.
Only the way seems to be unprofessional as a previous folk said and a bit like taking revenge for something but the point is that Canonical must raise on its own their new child! Correct in my opinion... They brought a not needed fragmentation for the community (but obviously needed for their profits and plans) and they must support it by themselves.

[ninez]

Hilarious.

...Especially, merging it -> only to revert a day later and finally, making this public statement. I laughed pretty hard Intel; keep up the good work...lol This was a beautifully executed prank, that is leaving Mir lovers / Canonical butthurt.

<...actually, it was probably an honest/naive mistake of the developer who commited Mir support to begin with, but obviously, Intel's been behind/endorse Wayland for a long time now, they support Linux not Ubuntu specifically; so there's no reason to manage Ubuntu's support for them... The public bashing bit, was still pretty funny though... well done...lol..>

people who were talking about China + Ubuntu + Intel and $$$; Obviously, you think Ubuntu is having a larger impact than it actually is. Maybe Intel's internal numbers show a much different story of where Linux' value is to them.

[cardboard]

all of the mad this is causing...

[finalzone]

AFAIK, most Ubuntu-preinstalled PC sold around the world (eg. more than 1000 Dell shops in China) come with Intel hardware.
One could think that the business logic for Intel would be to ensure that the future default display server of Ubuntu is fully compatible with their driver.

Canonical has yet to made a single profit since its inception. Dell also provides Fedora, Suse, Red Hat Enterprise Linux as option as well. The last two is where the company made money
in term of support which is very lacking for Canonical Ubuntu LTS.

[bwat47]

I guess Intel doesn't want my money. Only the future can tell on which display server ( Wayland, Mir, X?) will become the default Intel has just told the Ubuntu community, don't buy Intel video hardware.

lol, and what's the alternative? nvidia, amd? neither of them have any plans to support xmir upstream either... Intel is the only graphics manufacturer that has 'first party' fully supported open source drivers. They are still the best choice for a linux user if you don't need a dedicated card, and I don't see that changing.