Mir Now Allows Multi-Threaded Compositing

[TheBlackCat]

The only way Wayland can beat Mir in the adoption game is to make it fully usable, have all graphical toolkits support it and have all distributions default to using Wayland in the default installation by Jan 2014.

No, the only way Wayland can beat Mir is if it does all those things before Mir does. We have no idea when Mir will be at the state Wayland is now, not to mention when the toolkits will be ported to it, and we don't even know if other distributed will use Wayland in their default installation, not to mention when. Just saying that they are going to be able to get it out in 10 months does not mean they actually can. We will need to see whether they actually pull it off.

[SilverH]

@erendorn

It totally did bro, TY!

When I saw the official reasons I thought like "Man this sound like bullshi%", but since I don't know a single damn about Linux...
I guess I'll wait and see what happens for now.


Changing OS will be painful to me (I'll need like a week messing with foruns to switch to Debian or other distro)

[dee.]

@erendorn

It totally did bro, TY!

When I saw the official reasons I thought like "Man this sound like bullshi%", but since I don't know a single damn about Linux...
I guess I'll wait and see what happens for now.


Changing OS will be painful to me (I'll need like a week messing with foruns to switch to Debian or other distro)

There isn't really a need to change, since 12.04 is supported until 2017, you can just stick with that and hope Ubuntu gets their shit together. Or you could move to Mint or something which is a relatively easy transition to make from Ubuntu, due to the common base.

[nerdopolis]

It doesn't function yet so no, it does not necessarily have

What do you mean it "doesn't function"? There are multiple toolkits that have been ported to Wayland, and Weston is pretty functional.

Keep in mind, that I took these videos more then a year ago... I need to take a new wayland video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9x8gXno-P0&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdKwSrwxIYA&feature=channel_video_title

Wayland is missing some shell ICCCM and EWMH equivalents right now, which does reduce usability slightly.
As for my LiveCD, once a native login manager is ported to Wayland, I can remove Xorg from the startup path.

Now lets see where Mir is (after 9 months of being developed in secret).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1KqhKchALDA

[jrch2k8]

What do you mean it "doesn't function"? There are multiple toolkits that have been ported to Wayland, and Weston is pretty functional.

Keep in mind, that I took these videos more then a year ago... I need to take a new wayland video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9x8gXno-P0&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdKwSrwxIYA&feature=channel_video_title

Wayland is missing some shell ICCCM and EWMH equivalents right now, which does reduce usability slightly.
As for my LiveCD, once a native login manager is ported to Wayland, I can remove Xorg from the startup path.

Now lets see where Mir is (after 9 months of being developed in secret).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=1KqhKchALDA

the problem with ubuntrolls is that most of them are average joe's that does not even understand properly C/C++ let alone use bazzaar or Git, so no matter how you explained it, Lord Mark said it would be cool, so cool it is and wayland sucks.

if they could read C/C++ to begin with and notice how far far far behind is Mir compared to wayland they won't need to come here and troll in the first place, i give up since this is like explain Quantum Mechanics to your average grandma, there is just no way!!

[Sonadow]

No, the only way Wayland can beat Mir is if it does all those things before Mir does. We have no idea when Mir will be at the state Wayland is now, not to mention when the toolkits will be ported to it, and we don't even know if other distributed will use Wayland in their default installation, not to mention when. Just saying that they are going to be able to get it out in 10 months does not mean they actually can. We will need to see whether they actually pull it off.

Urm..wasn't that essentially the same thing I said?

We all know that the Wayland protocol is quite close to completion and there are videos floating about online demonstrating the use of Wayland and Weston for basic computing (with the exception of most X stuff not running yet because of XWayland not being fully ready or something like that). That alone puts it way ahead of where Mir currently is right now.

But Mir right now has the advantage of a definite deadline which they intend to meet (May 2014, iirc) and unless something really showstopping takes place Mir will roll out as planned. Wheras Wayland is still a 'at your own pace' rollout.

Wayland has already beaten Mir in completeness at this point of time, but all that will mean nothing if Canonical and Ubuntu roll Mir out well before Wayland does. Development momentum must be matched by user adoption; Wayland might be the best thing ever in the whole wide world but it's still going to be a wasted effort if Mir ends up being adopted because it was introduced to the users first. That's why i specifically mentioned a date of Jan 2014 as the latest which Wayland must be 'completed' and the related graphical toolkits should be made fully usable with the new protocol and distributions should adopt Wayland as the default display server protocol because that will be the bare minimum time needed to drive Wayland adoption and push Mir out of contention.

Anything later than that and I feel we might see a huge split in a fundamental piece of technology used to drive the Linux graphical desktop. Something along the lines of 40% Mir (Ubuntu is still the most widely used distribution, so im not surprised if they hold 40% of the desktop linux pi at my estimate) and 50% X and 10% Wayland, and things will only get messier from there.

[dee.]

But Mir right now has the advantage of a definite deadline which they intend to meet (May 2014, iirc) and unless something really showstopping takes place Mir will roll out as planned. Wheras Wayland is still a 'at your own pace' rollout.

Only problem is, Mir has no chance in hell of meeting that deadline. It will be postponed and postponed again. It's all PR and marketing speak at this point. None of the toolkits have plans of supporting Mir so Canonical would have to implement that support themselves. Xorg has no plans of supporting Mir so Canonical will have to implement legacy X support themselves. This is real life we're talking about, not some 80s movie where you can just play a video montage of programmers working on a display server and it'll somehow be ready just in time when the hero needs it...

In real life, deadlines are not magic, they do not magically make the problems be solved faster.

[przemoli]

1) Qt nor Gtk have full Wayland support. Both have bugs, and missing features, and Gtk is based on older Wayland version.
2) KDE do not have working Wayland compositor, GNOME is a bit better here, but they need to update to Wayland 1.0.
3) There is NO solution for Wayland on Nvidia/AMD proprietary drivers right now.
4) There is NO solution for Wayland on Android drivers right now.

Do not get me wrong. But declaring Wayland as "de facto" standard because "its ready" is wrong.

Mir is in better state and in worse state..

1) Qt nor Gtk have any official Mir support. Canonical is working on both accounts.
2) KDE do not have working Mir compositor, GNOME is no better here. Though Cannical works on XMir, so it may not matter too much in short term.
3) There is NO solution for Wayland on Nvidia/AMD proprietary drivers right now. (Though both companies talk with Canonical, where as AMD was mute about Wayland..)
4) Mir work on Android drivers right now.

As you can see, both have their strong points right now. Declaring one VICTORIOUS right now is a bit of sorcery :P

Only real concerns right now are:

Driver support. (Canonical have bigger leverage right now over Wayland supporters, hence they may cook solution that will not be tasty for wayland devs..)
Unification when one solution win. (If Wayland is way succesful will Canonical support it? Will everybody be able to coop with Canonical to work on Mir if its better?)

And answers to even those questions can only be given in the future.

[nerdopolis]

I tried out Mir today.

Right now, the display server isn't even compatible with TTY switching, and it hijacks them all. I start Mir on TTY1, and I switch to TTY2, and the text for the TTY displays only for a moment, before the contents of Mir take over.

The only test client that runs/displays is the unaccelerated one on my spare Intel laptop... all that does is show a color changing rectangle on the screen, at 0,0.

There is no cursor, so it seems there's no mouse input handling yet, as far as I can test...

There's no keyboard input yet. All the keyboard input goes right to the TTY. If I start Mir on TTY1 with the & to get the prompt, I can blindly type "killall mir" into the TTY's bash prompt to kill mir.

Remember, this has been developed in secret for 9 months. I think in Wayland years, Kristian H?gsberg was already demonstrating higher capability even earlier in Wayland's development. See his post from late 2008? http://hoegsberg.blogspot.com/2008/1...-terminal.html

[garegin]

The Mir deadline only cements Canonical's delusional worldview and unrealistic five year plans. Remember the 20% marketshare by 2020 announcement. Either its blatant PR, in which case they are making a fool out of themselves when the hour strikes or they are as deluded as the Germans who thought they could supply Stalingrad by air.