Canonical Developers To The Community: Help Us Figure Out The Direction Of Mir

[dmitriis]

I still wonder why do people compare apples to oranges when they compare Wayland to Mir.

The last time I looked Wayland was a protocol, not software.

Wikipedia makes it clear even if you don't look at the content of a web page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waylan...erver_protocol)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(software)

[Guest]

Canonical should abandon Mir and instead help add whatever features it needs to Wayland. The last thing that Linux needs is a bunch of incompatible window system APIs...

Mir is a display server. Wayland is a protocol specification for communication between applications and display server. Mir originally implemented a custom communication protocol. However, currently Mir focuses on support of Wayland protocol, but aims to be lightweight display server, to be better suited for IoT.

[r_a_trip]

Well, since Mir is becoming what it should have been from the start, a wayland compositor, they should try and get it to support the full range of the wayland protocol spec. Make it easy to plug in desktop components, so that it can support the smaller projects with Wayland capabilities. Try to coordinate with GNOME and KDE to reach consensus over the features that aren't handled by Wayland itself. If Canonical plays its cards right they actually might do what they set out to do with Mir, lead the community with excelent technology.

[Tomin]

I think it could be useful if they made Mir some kind of general purpose Wayland compositor that you could use to implement X11-style window managers. I know that you can already use libweston or wlc, but maybe there could be a different approach. If Mir would allow this, then there might be some value to having it. Otherwise I probably would never use it.

[theghost]

By dumping Mir, they should also commit the developer resources freed up to contributing improvements to Wine for 99% application compatibility with Windows Apps in Wine and even look at making a driver compatability layer that would allow WIndows device drivers to be used on Linux. This would allow Linux to escape the chicken and egg problem, where many companies do not want to support Linux because it doesnt have the user base, and many users cannot use Linux because it doesnt have support for the applications and hardware people want to bring with them, by allowing more users to transition to Linux and abandon Windows altogether. Canonical should work with PC manufacturers to install Ubuntu alongside or even instead of Windows on PCs.

Wine is the greatest waste of useful resources.
If you want Windows stuff, keep using Windows.
Linux has so many construction sites where developer resources are better invested.
Btw, we had a driver compatability layer in the past, which was pretty messy.
Luckily it's not needed anymore...

[jpg44]

MIR is not comparable to wayland. MIR is AFAIK more like Weston (window management and compositor). Andit now works with wayland. Dumping MIR will help nobody. Helping MIR could help the smaller Desktop Environments to get wayland support, like MATE. MATE does not have the resources to migrate to wayland but with MIR they may get there.

If MATE cannot afford to port to Wayland, it can just remain on the X.org server. Due to the Glamor project, X.org will use the same driver base as Wayland. Theres no real urgency to port to Wayland

Many are asking for application portings to native Wayland. Programs will run fine on XWayland. I wouldn't say it would be a good use of developer resources to spend time on this, when the time could be spent adding more capabilities to the software. Its already been done for Qt and Gtk apps, which is the majority of the apps.

[Guest]

Wine is the greatest waste of useful resources.
If you want Windows stuff, keep using Windows.
Linux has so many construction sites where developer resources are better invested.
Btw, we had a driver compatability layer in the past, which was pretty messy.
Luckily it's not needed anymore...

Wine won't be needed for long. Lots of developers realize, that Linux is slowly becoming widely used platform. But, in order to run old stuff, wine is useful.

[jpg44]

Wine is the greatest waste of useful resources.
If you want Windows stuff, keep using Windows.
Linux has so many construction sites where developer resources are better invested.
Btw, we had a driver compatability layer in the past, which was pretty messy.
Luckily it's not needed anymore...

I respectfully disagree. Wine is among the top most valuable Linux projects. But this is some of the differences between different kinds of mentality on the subject. Many are concerned more about freedom, so want to make it easier for more people to move to a free OS. With what you want, this will never happen. Most people will be left with no choice to stay with Windows, even if they want to move to Linux. Also, on a driver compatability layer, it wouldnt be messy. I would advocate such things be done outside the kernel or in a module, then the mess would only be loaded by people who need it

[Vistaus]

[...]and even look at making a driver compatability layer that would allow WIndows device drivers to be used on Linux.

Such a thing already exists. It's called ndiswrapper

[Vistaus]

MIR is not comparable to wayland. MIR is AFAIK more like Weston (window management and compositor). Andit now works with wayland. Dumping MIR will help nobody. Helping MIR could help the smaller Desktop Environments to get wayland support, like MATE. MATE does not have the resources to migrate to wayland but with MIR they may get there.

Or they could just use any of the already existing Wayland display servers/window managers, like Weston, Mutter or Enlightenment.