Ubuntu's Mir Moves Ahead With Unity 8 Interface

[dee.]

mir will be success, and steam will be ported to mir/unity8, steambox in future will use mir not x,X is a garbage, and i believe one of reasons to dev mir was valve, nvidia and amd pressures, they want a new deaktop market but not with old X, or a wayland who never ready to use

^ assumes facts not in evidence

[jayrulez]

- Mir is unnecessary, it doesn't do anything they couldn't do with Wayland

Linux Mint is unnecessary, it doesn't do anything they couldn't do with [INSERT DISTRO NAME HERE].

- Mir is inferior, Canonical does not have the knowhow to create a display server that would be near the quality of Wayland

FUD. Creating a display server is not rocket science.

- Mir is controlled by a single entity, Canonical, instead of being developed by an active ecosystem in a distro-agnostic way (unlike Wayland)

More FUD.
Are you saying that any project controlled by a single entity inherently cannot be developed in a "distro-agnostic" way or is this just specific to Mir?
If the latter is the case, what specifically about Mir prevents it from being used in another Linux distribution?

- Mir will not be ready before Wayland

May I use your future gazing crystal ball? I would love to see next week's lotto numbers.

- Mir does not have the support of any of the toolkits, any other distro, or basically anyone except Canonical (unlike Wayland)

The majority of distros are pointless duplications. Many toolkits are used only by a small niche and do not matter in the grand scheme of things. Basically, the only toolkits that may matter to Ubuntu in the future are Qt, GTK(this one is iffy) and maybe EFL. Canonical already has a QPA plugin for Qt and there is no conceivable reason why it won't be accepted upstream (as you like to point out is the case). If GTK matters at all then Canonical will do the work to port GTK to Mir. EFL might not even matter to Canonical.

[dee.]

Linux Mint is unnecessary, it doesn't do anything they couldn't do with [INSERT DISTRO NAME HERE].

Except that your argument is proven wrong, there are plenty of users of Linux mint who find Mint to fulfill their specific needs. Linux mint is basically all the good parts taken from Ubuntu with all the crap left behind and replaced with something better. It provides a usable and well-performing OS with transparency and respect for user rights.

FUD. Creating a display server is not rocket science.

So where's your display server? It'd be better to stay silent on things you don't know anything about. Of course anyone with some knowledge in coding can throw up together some kind of haphazard mechanism for getting graphics on the screen, but if you want to do it well, in a maintainable way, with functionality, performance and quality? You need people who actually know what they're doing. Wayland has this, and it took several years for Wayland to get where they are now. Mir does not have that same expertise that the Wayland devs have. There's no conceivable way for Mir to become as good as Wayland in a shorter amount of time.

More FUD.
Are you saying that any project controlled by a single entity inherently cannot be developed in a "distro-agnostic" way or is this just specific to Mir?

It's neither. It's just that Canonical has an extremely poor track record in collaborating or co-operating with other distros: they're unable to work with upstream, they're unable to work with downstream. This is documented fact which you can easily check if you wish.

Furthermore, no other distro or any other company seems to have any interest whatsoever in Mir. And for good reason, since Canonical has no interest in developing it in such a way that would benefit the entire ecosystem. There's a reason why no other distro uses Unity, despite it being available as open source. Canonical doesn't care about compatibility or interoperability with others, they're only interested in building a wall between themselves and other distros.

If the latter is the case, what specifically about Mir prevents it from being used in another Linux distribution?

Because no other distro, or any other entity besides Canonical, has any say or influence in its development process. Also, because everyone else is moving towards Wayland, which is the sensible choice. Linux doesn't need walled gardens, we need open standards and infrastructure. Canonical is being very short-sighted here with this power grab, because it would ultimately benefit them more to invest in a healthy ecosystem, with collaboration and co-operation. That's the very spirit of open source, enabling collaboration even between nominally competing entities.

May I use your future gazing crystal ball? I would love to see next week's lotto numbers.

One does not need a crystal ball to observe facts and make reasonable conclusions based on them.

The majority of distros are pointless duplications. Many toolkits are used only by a small niche and do not matter in the grand scheme of things. Basically, the only toolkits that may matter to Ubuntu in the future are Qt, GTK(this one is iffy) and maybe EFL. Canonical already has a QPA plugin for Qt and there is no conceivable reason why it won't be accepted upstream (as you like to point out is the case). If GTK matters at all then Canonical will do the work to port GTK to Mir. EFL might not even matter to Canonical.

So what you're saying is: basically, the only toolkits that matter to Ubuntu are the three major toolkits that most software uses. Well, duh? For that matter, all of those three toolkits have expressed support for Wayland, and none of them have expressed any interest in implementing Mir support. Qt supporting Mir is not certain and there's certainly no indication if they will maintain that support, could be that Canonical ends up forking that as well. Furthermore, none of the graphics driver developers have expressed any interest in supporting Mir. SDL has no plans for Mir support, but does have plans for Wayland support. Wayland is supported by basically everyone except Canonical, who again suffers from NIH syndrome.

Your words also betray exactly the kind of attitude that Canonical promotes these days: Other distros don't matter. They want to be the MacOS of the Linux world, instead of investing in interoperability and a healthy ecosystem that would benefit desktop Linux as a whole (and ultimately also Canonical by extension), they're doing the opposite and building walls between themselves and other distros. Again, very shortsighted.

[Nobu]

Are you saying that any project controlled by a single entity inherently cannot be developed in a "distro-agnostic" way or is this just specific to Mir?
If the latter is the case, what specifically about Mir prevents it from being used in another Linux distribution?

Adoption upstream (in toolkits, applications, etc.). Currently, Ubuntu is doing most of the necessary porting (if any is being done). Whether or not those changes are accepted upstream has yet to be seen, though some have already stated they will not accept distro-specific changes (or, in other words, changes which only benefit the distro, and not upstream or any others downstream).

The majority of distros are pointless duplications.

If they were exactly the same, they wouldn't exist. There are many which have very small differences, which may be insignificant to you or I, but obviously were important enough for someone to want to make their own distro. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Many toolkits are used only by a small niche and do not matter in the grand scheme of things. Basically, the only toolkits that may matter to Ubuntu in the future are Qt, GTK(this one is iffy) and maybe EFL.

Sure, but SDL is a rather important toolkit as well, and I'm sure there are others. If they want to maintain their own patches, more power to 'em...but if it were me, I'd like some support from upstream.

Canonical already has a QPA plugin for Qt and there is no conceivable reason why it won't be accepted upstream (as you like to point out is the case).

Well, if it's just a plugin, and it's only for supporting Mir, then I see no reason why it should be accepted upstream. It should be able to live perfectly fine downstream. It's the patches which are necessary for that plugin to work which need to be upstreamed, and (if they could conceivably be used to benefit some other plugin) I don't see why they wouldn't be accepted. Of course, it won't be so easy to support GTK, etc., apps upstream, unless those toolkits have a similar plugin architecture.

[Andrecorreia]

lol

im the troll? lol

why should nvidia dev drivers with ppl who dev xorg/wayland? they want optimus support on linux and we see what problems they have with dev from linux , xorg , etc.

money is everything in the world, look for redhat, only cares about money( but never say that ofc)

[Nobu]

im the troll? lol

or a wayland who never ready to use

Yes. Not the only one, mind.

money is everything in the world, look for redhat, only cares about money( but never say that ofc)

Wrong. They have to care about their users, too. Not only are they RedHat's main source of income, but (being a support company) it's part of their reason for existence. RedHat would quickly fade into obscurity if they didn't care about their userbase.

Edit: "We've all got a little [Troll] in us."

[pandev92]

I think thath mir won't be ready for ubuntu 14.04 , but canonical have shown that they are able to put a program unstable, for example unity on ubuntu 11.04. I hope for the community, that wayland will be the next standard on linux.

[dee.]

Mir isn't unnecessary if Canonical wants to build it. It's their company so they can create whatever they like.

Cheap justification, the same can be said for absolutely anything. Just because someone wants to do something doesn't mean it's good to do so.

Mir is inferior just because you want to think of it that way.

...nnnope, I'm pretty sure I just gave a lot of good reasons why Mir is inferior. Technical merits are not matters of opinion. Also, so far Mir does not even exist, Wayland does and it is on is already being used.

It's good that it's controlled by a single entity, it means that it will do what they want it to do and that it will fit their needs.

It's not good for the rest of the ecosystem.

Even if it won't be ready before wayland they can still push for it and when it will be ready since Ubuntu == Linux.... Wayland will fall aside.

Wayland will not fall anywhere, because it will be used where it counts... Ubuntu's popularity on the desktop doesn't matter, as that is the smallest segment of Linux adoption as of now. Ubuntu is the big fish in the small pond. The real money is currently somewhere entirely else. Render farms, servers, supercomputers, devices, embedded, cloud, enterprise... The popularity of Linux desktop will happen eventually, but for it to happen, there needs to be a strong, healthy ecosystem of interoperable distros, with reasonable cross-compatibility... we don't need solo-acts like Ubuntu mudding the waters, the best way to promote growth is to play nice in the sandbox.

However Ubuntu is seemingly no longer interested in being a Real Linux distro, because it is setting itself apart in a way that is incompatible with the rest of ecosystem. Also, you're again showing the sociopathic attitude which Canonical promotes, which goes against all the ideals of the open source software which they built their OS on.

The more likely scenario is: Mir will not be ready on time. Canonical devs are unable to get it working well enough for the next LTS release. Meanwhile, Wayland will already be in use in the bleeding-edge distros like Fedora. Ubuntu will be forced to choose, either forget Mir and go with Wayland like the real distros (smart choice), or try pushing an unfinished, buggy product on the users, alienating people away from Ubuntu (stupid choice).

Other toolkits will play along nicely don't you worry about that.

You sound like a mafia boss. Is that another symptom of the sociopathic "me me me" attitude of Canonical? If the toolkits won't co-operate, what, you'll break their legs?

What you fail to understand is that there is no linux for the normal user except Ubuntu. Arch and other BS don't exist. Maybe you use them and think they are popular but they are not. Ubuntu gets pushed preinstalled on laptops and it's adoption rate will go up. Canonical is right to want more control because you can't trust a bunch of devs on the internet to have the best user's interest. If you had a corporation you would do the same. Control is very good when you want to take linux from 1% to more. Control is exactly what they need.

2/10, troll harder.

What you fail to realize is that the rest of the world is moving away from centralized control schemes. The advantage of open source is that it's not under the control of any central authority. That is why windows and other proprietary OS's are losing ground, why Linux is becoming more and more popular. It is very shortsighted for Canonical to throw away the one thing that is trending like hotcakes right now. You fail to understand that, because you're a follower. You need that shiny SteveJobsian prophet showing the way, leading the troops to glory.

Also, I'd like to know who are the "bunch of devs on the internet". I wasn't aware that anyone actually lived on the internet?

[entropy]

BTW, has the Mir backend been merged to mesa?
Back in March a Canonical employee got no reply following his initial patch.

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2013-March/035714.html

[GreatEmerald]

BTW, has the Mir backend been merged to mesa?

It wasn't, at least to master. Quite easy to find out by just browsing the source code...