Ubuntu 13.10 Desktop Will Not Use XMir By Default

[Alejandro Nova]

This is amazing. Now Ubuntu won't enjoy any headstart, and Fedora 20 with the Wayland Technical Preview will become the first next-gen Linux display system to reach GA.

[Serge]

This is what I don't get. If Mir needs extra time and they really want it in for the LTS, why not simply push back the date and have 14.06 or something?

April 9, 2014, is the EOL of Windows XP. Ubuntu 14.04 will already be a little late (I think the current schedule calls for an April 20 release). Pushing it back by several months should be out of the question.

I think that, from a business perspective, rather than push back 14.04 several months to make sure that it offers a solid Mir experience, Canonical should delay plans to deploy Mir by default until 14.10 and instead focus on getting 14.04 out the door EARLIER, hopefully before April 9, to better leverage corporate IT's need to replace Windows XP.

[mrugiero]

April 9, 2014, is the EOL of Windows XP. Ubuntu 14.04 will already be a little late (I think the current schedule calls for an April 20 release). Pushing it back by several months should be out of the question.

I think that, from a business perspective, rather than push back 14.04 several months to make sure that it offers a solid Mir experience, Canonical should delay plans to deploy Mir by default until 14.10 and instead focus on getting 14.04 out the door EARLIER, hopefully before April 9, to better leverage corporate IT's need to replace Windows XP.

They stopped caring about desktop market share a while ago. That's why they closed the bug #1 after all.

[gQuigs]

I think that, from a business perspective, rather than push back 14.04 several months to make sure that it offers a solid Mir experience, Canonical should delay plans to deploy Mir by default until 14.10 and instead focus on getting 14.04 out the door EARLIER, hopefully before April 9, to better leverage corporate IT's need to replace Windows XP.

We talked about it at the last UDS but this use case was dismissed because the premise was questioned.. We don't think that there are some XP users who will just switch on the day support expires.. Those that will switch would likely want to switch (months) before the day it goes EOL.

[Serge]

We talked about it at the last UDS but this use case was dismissed because the premise was questioned.. We don't think that there are some XP users who will just switch on the day support expires.. Those that will switch would likely want to switch (months) before the day it goes EOL.

That's a good point. I was thinking that there is mindshare to be gained by being ready as a Windows XP replacement the day of or before XP's EOL, but you'd be sacrificing other kinds of mindshare by delaying Mir even more, so I guess that's not really worth the cost.

[Vim_User]

This is what I don't get. If Mir needs extra time and they really want it in for the LTS, why not simply push back the date and have 14.06 or something?

Mir is planned for 14.10, not 14.04, 14.04 is planned to have XMir+Unity 7.

[The_Letter_J]

Mir on the tablet may yet beat FC20 for the desktop

This is amazing. Now Ubuntu won't enjoy any headstart, and Fedora 20 with the Wayland Technical Preview will become the first next-gen Linux display system to reach GA.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/mir-devel/2013-September/000404.html

This is an attempt to ship an UbuntuTouch 10" tablet; needs 1300 sales in
the next two weeks if they want to meet their crowdfunding goal and ship.

$250 for 10" quadcore triple-boot tablet with ubuntuTouch is the goal.
Earlier in 2013, came out with A10-based 7" and 10" tabs for $110 and $175
usbOtg, wifi, bootable sdcard, and all the usual floss-friendly stuff
+$20 for a keyb-slash-case that turns the machine into a netbook. Nice.
Both of the earlier models are now 'out of stock' and the new model will
not ship unless their indieGoGo crowdfunding scheme works out (below)
Neal Peacock, Orlando FL, is the main hacker on the project it seems
He posted some debugging questions on the xmir-devel list (got answered)

http://igg.me/at/pengpod -- they are currently at 31k of 349k , with 17
days remaining in the fundraiser ... started 21 days ago. Not much hope.
The fundpage says 'in partnership with StartUpAmerica' at the bottom.
They currently have 112 people aka ~$280 per head, but there are a few
units left for the $220 price, and a large number for $250 each target.
Excess avg cost is spent on covering intl s&h, opt bt pack, et cetera.
The manufacturer was in business back in 2003, allegedly, see FAQ.
Besides the main dev, there is a marketroid and an operations guy.

If successful, the new tablet would have been Allwinner A31 quadcore ARM_A7,
ships with android 4.1 and Linaro 13.04 on internal 16gb storage dualboot,
can install ubuntuTouch on microSD if you wish, microUsbOtg + hdmi, 2gb
ram, ips 2048x1536 multitouch, wifi bgn + bt, 7000 mAh, 2mpix + 0.3mpix,
Power VR SGX 544 gpu supports OpenGL_ES2.0 + DX9.3 + OpenCL1.x + H.264
Android fully works with play.google.com -- expect Android 4.2 support RSN.
Linaro includes LibreOffice, GIMP, LAMP stack. Besides built-in Linaro,
known to boot with UbuntuTouch, Fedora, Arch, OpenSUSE, maybe more with
enough funding -- specifically mentions wanting to support Debian, Bodhhi,
Tizen, Cyanogenmod, FirefoxOS, Mer+NemoMobile (not Jolla?), Chromium,
and PlasmaActive. All source for the android build, as well as the Linaro
build, is fully available (no binary-blob software drivers outside the
not-quite-libre-kernel presumably?... not sure if there are any huge blobs
of firmware inside the A31 or the PowerVR gpu however).

http://www.pengpod.com/ , or you can see the spam-release over here --

http://www.onlineprnews.com/news/423687-1380308475-pengpod-launches-funding-campaign-for-pengpod-1040-triple-booting-tablet-with-ubuntu-touch.html

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Laptop-Graphics-Cards.130.0.html

gpu is about the same level of power as the Adreno 305, iGMA3150, GF4 4xx.
There is a project to create FLOSS 3D-accel drivers for the SGX5xx series,
started mid-2012-ish, but no ready-to-go drivers yet. Wiki was lastmod
Feb'13, but list is active -- http://powervr.gnu.org.ve

http://listas.gnu.org.ve/pipermail/powervr-devel

So prolly the claim that 'all' the code is available is not fully true.

p.s. Full disclosure, I had never heard of this guy, this company, this
product, et cetera... no financial interest for moi, and prolly will not
be pre-ordering one of these. But thought it was an interesting data
point that, as the article says, there will no longer be Ubuntu 13.10
with Mir as the default, but there might well be some UbuntuTouch tablets
that actually ship. At least one developer-device is known to work, and
even if this particular device fails to crowdfund, there might be some
other projects cooking. Ubuntu's big new thing is mobile, so in a way
I'm not surprised that when push came to shove, they concentrated on the
tablets and smartphone stuff, and let the desktop play second-fiddle.

p.p.s. What's really sad to my mind is that Wayland will prolly not be
part of RHEL7/CentOS7. Can anybody confirm or deny this supposition?

[mike4]

As long as it's not supported by Nvidia/Amd/Intel it doesn't make sense.

[Krysto]

Even if it's "ready" for 14.04, they'd be stupid to use it in a LTS version for the first time ever. I think they're stuck to waiting until 14.10 now, and hope it will be fully stable by 16.04 LTS.

[mark45]

This is amazing. Now Ubuntu won't enjoy any headstart, and Fedora 20 with the Wayland Technical Preview will become the first next-gen Linux display system to reach GA.

Yeah, but even if it did there would be pretty much zero interest or advantage for users since XMir isn't Mir, it's X.org running thru Mir. On the other hand the Wayland Technical Preview, while a preview, will run natively on Wayland, which is the whole point.