Canonical Working On Mir's Performance, Mir On Mir

[ashkbajw]

as some said above, ubuntu = linux, because for what matters, the world is 99% technological analphabets, they just want 1 bottom solutions.
The problem here is we all say canonical is evil and stuff but none is doing anything to fix that. We depend on canonical devs. THAT is the problem.
The solution? Hire devs. If you make enought or have a business, hire one and make him (or her, who knows) fix those silly problems we are always complaining about.

As far as i've seen, the problem has always been that what gets fixed is the low level stuff, that that the normal user and the more linux savvy will never see nor use.
-Vinagre has that stupid bug where if you use jpeg compression, everything gets messed up, and it seems to be a bug in the library as every other vnc client i've used has the same issue. Not a single one WORKS. It doesnt even have a bilinear filter of something like that.
-pidgin still misses functionality.
-Not a single good NES/MegaDrive/gameboy/gba emulator out there that has good quality and just works, they all have stupid and useless console interfaces, the guis for the few that have are completely unusable and full of bugs. The emulators work better (and some times faster) with wine than their native versions.....
Zsnes and pcsx-r / pcsx2 are the only good quality emulators i've seen.
-We still have the stupid package managers problem. Have you seen what the open pandora guys did? How come that only when there's money inbetween do developers do things right? We still have that archaic folder structure, with lots of libraries version conflicts, incompatible versions that cant coexist, no user independent installations, etc.
-As always, we lack professional level programs for image, audio, video, etc.

We should have a forum, and reach an agreement and use that and that alone.
You always see corporations making forums to decide what to do with their "new technologies", why cant we just do the same? or do we need money to give us some incentive to cooperate and leave our fanboisms/orthodoxy aside?
Then some say, "yeah but more code is always better" and "everyone is free to do what they want", if so then stop complaining about how linux is so small and why normal people dont want to use it.
Ubuntu is winning because that's what they've been doing all along. They negotiated with all the companies to have standards and make stuff look "professional", professional meaning well done and not half done crap that doesnt work at all because of stupid bugs that can be fixed with 3 lines of code but that have been there for more than 5 years.
-Mir is the same idea, provided they stick with it to the end. As the linux community lacks lots of standards, they are doing their own to keep their stuff professional. Even if it looks like a mac-windows hybrid rip off, it has the looks and does the stuff it's supposed to do. I might not be the best in productivity, but neither is windows nor mac and normal people dont complain about it. See how they even said that old X11 drivers would be compatible......cant you see the pattern?
I'd love to see Wayland be supported by canonical, but they are playing alone because there is no consensus on the community.

If we could just make something that works and reach an agreement to use it and let it grow instead of each pulling for their side and whining about technicalities, throw away the old legacy bullshit and start a new "modern" linux (maybe a chroot with disk images for legacy apps), in short, something that works, nothing else, maybe then, and just then it would be the day of linux....

[GreatEmerald]

as some said above, ubuntu = linux, because for what matters, the world is 99% technological analphabets, they just want 1 bottom solutions.
The problem here is we all say canonical is evil and stuff but none is doing anything to fix that. We depend on canonical devs. THAT is the problem.
The solution? Hire devs. If you make enought or have a business, hire one and make him (or her, who knows) fix those silly problems we are always complaining about.

We should have a forum, and reach an agreement and use that and that alone.

Red Hat already does a fine job at hiring devs and all. That's not the reason why Ubuntu is so popular. The reason is because popularity attracts more popularity. Sheer habit also always helps (with the mindset of Ubuntu = Linux and all). And guess what, that sounds familiar, doesn't it? Yeap, that's exactly how Windows still holds the majority of the PC market share.

And yes, there already has been a forum where agreements were reached. It's called Linux Standard Base. But guess what, Canonical is ignoring it. We have a lot of standards defined on FreeDesktop.org as well, but again, nearly all of them are ignored by Canonical. What's the point of making standards, if Canonical is going to ignore them anyway?

Wayland is the standard for all Linux distributions in the future. And Canonical would have had no difficulties in using it, because everything that Mir can do, Wayland can do as well. But again, it's being ignored, in favour of additional control by the company.

Overall these Mir discussions are tiring. It's always the same every time any news about Mir is posted, ever since it's first announcement...

[Calinou]

Right, with CLA licenses, closed-source graphic drivers (nVidia will never open source their driver, stop dreaming) and closed-source software like Steam.

Look at how Steam was praised by all the youngsters. Oh also, Nouveau isn't anywhere near nvidia in terms of functionality or performance. It doesn't even have a GUI to configure stuff around.

[dee.]

as some said above, ubuntu = linux, because for what matters, the world is 99% technological analphabets, they just want 1 bottom solutions.
The problem here is we all say canonical is evil and stuff but none is doing anything to fix that. We depend on canonical devs. THAT is the problem.
The solution? Hire devs. If you make enought or have a business, hire one and make him (or her, who knows) fix those silly problems we are always complaining about.

There is plenty of people doing lots to fix that. They're called Wayland developers. Canonical could also have contributed to Wayland and helped, like they promised to do a couple of years back. They could have added their developer manpower to the pool and helped the entire Linux platform. But, they didn't. Instead, Mir.

As far as i've seen, the problem has always been that what gets fixed is the low level stuff, that that the normal user and the more linux savvy will never see nor use.

Not true, plenty of good software for Linux that has active development.

-Not a single good NES/MegaDrive/gameboy/gba emulator out there that has good quality and just works, they all have stupid and useless console interfaces, the guis for the few that have are completely unusable and full of bugs. The emulators work better (and some times faster) with wine than their native versions.....

Bullshit, Mednafen works great for everything up to SNES, Mupen64plus works great for N64, and Dolphin works great for GameCube games. Mednafen especially is brilliant, it works better than the best SNES emulator on windows (ZSNES) and has all the same features plus some more.

It's really not that difficult to type "emulator-name rom-name" on the terminal. Or hell, write a quick shell script with zenity if you absolutely need to poke things with a mouse and are allergic to the keyboard...

-We still have the stupid package managers problem. Have you seen what the open pandora guys did? How come that only when there's money inbetween do developers do things right? We still have that archaic folder structure, with lots of libraries version conflicts, incompatible versions that cant coexist, no user independent installations, etc.

What's a folder, some kind of windows thing? The directory structure of Linux follows the POSIX standard and it is good. Nothing wrong with it. On the contrary, it is windows that has stupid directory structures. It might look fancy to name directories "Program Files" and such, but when you're on the terminal, you don't want to type out "cd Program\ Files", it's much easier to type "cd usr". I haven't seen a version conflict... well, ever. The distro packagers make sure that those don't happen.

Package management works great on Linux, it's still lightyears ahead of any proprietary OS.

-As always, we lack professional level programs for image, audio, video, etc.

No we don't.

We should have a forum, and reach an agreement and use that and that alone.

We have that. It's just that some people (Canonical) don't play nice with others and are unable to co-operate with anyone.

You always see corporations making forums to decide what to do with their "new technologies", why cant we just do the same? or do we need money to give us some incentive to cooperate and leave our fanboisms/orthodoxy aside?
Then some say, "yeah but more code is always better" and "everyone is free to do what they want", if so then stop complaining about how linux is so small and why normal people dont want to use it.
Ubuntu is winning because that's what they've been doing all along. They negotiated with all the companies to have standards and make stuff look "professional", professional meaning well done and not half done crap that doesnt work at all because of stupid bugs that can be fixed with 3 lines of code but that have been there for more than 5 years.

We have those forums. We have corporations that put lots of money in Linux, ones that really drive Linux development forward, investing money and time and contributing code. It's Canonical that wants to do everything in-house and not collaborate with others, meanwhile, Wayland is going to be used by Tizen (Intel, Samsung), Sailfish (Jolla), RHEL/Fedora (Red Hat)... companies that make real money with Linux and really contribute to it.

-Mir is the same idea, provided they stick with it to the end. As the linux community lacks lots of standards, they are doing their own to keep their stuff professional. Even if it looks like a mac-windows hybrid rip off, it has the looks and does the stuff it's supposed to do. I might not be the best in productivity, but neither is windows nor mac and normal people dont complain about it. See how they even said that old X11 drivers would be compatible......cant you see the pattern?
I'd love to see Wayland be supported by canonical, but they are playing alone because there is no consensus on the community.

No, bullshit. There's consensus on the community, that consensus is "let's use Wayland". Canonical was on board of that train up until a few months ago, when they decided "to hell with everyone else, we'll do what we want". Incidentally, that was about the same time when they infested their app launcher with adware... and at that time, they had this ad that attacked windows 8, which was quickly taken down, and ever since Canonical has been kissing up to M$ more and more.

If we could just make something that works and reach an agreement to use it and let it grow instead of each pulling for their side and whining about technicalities, throw away the old legacy bullshit and start a new "modern" linux (maybe a chroot with disk images for legacy apps), in short, something that works, nothing else, maybe then, and just then it would be the day of linux....

That's what Wayland is, basically. It throws away legacy cruft and creates a modern display server, which still has backwards compatibility. Canonical just wants to create their own OS, one that is no longer compatible with real Linux OS's.

[sireangelus]

As I see, the mesa devs have neither responded to nor commited the proposed Mir backend.

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

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/tree/src/egl/drivers/dri2

BTW, did Canonical actually expressed regrets for their blatant lies?

From the commit you posted:

A first pass at a Mir platform for EGL.

This is RFC mainly because I hope to shortly make Mir's API less painfully
pointless-callback-based. There's no point in committing this as-is, but
it's hopefully still useful to review.

There is plenty of people doing lots to fix that. They're called Wayland developers. Canonical could also have contributed to Wayland and helped, like they promised to do a couple of years back. They could have added their developer manpower to the pool and helped the entire Linux platform. But, they didn't. Instead, Mir.



Not true, plenty of good software for Linux that has active development.



Bullshit, Mednafen works great for everything up to SNES, Mupen64plus works great for N64, and Dolphin works great for GameCube games. Mednafen especially is brilliant, it works better than the best SNES emulator on windows (ZSNES) and has all the same features plus some more.

It's really not that difficult to type "emulator-name rom-name" on the terminal. Or hell, write a quick shell script with zenity if you absolutely need to poke things with a mouse and are allergic to the keyboard...



What's a folder, some kind of windows thing? The directory structure of Linux follows the POSIX standard and it is good. Nothing wrong with it. On the contrary, it is windows that has stupid directory structures. It might look fancy to name directories "Program Files" and such, but when you're on the terminal, you don't want to type out "cd Program\ Files", it's much easier to type "cd usr". I haven't seen a version conflict... well, ever. The distro packagers make sure that those don't happen.

Package management works great on Linux, it's still lightyears ahead of any proprietary OS.



No we don't.



We have that. It's just that some people (Canonical) don't play nice with others and are unable to co-operate with anyone.



We have those forums. We have corporations that put lots of money in Linux, ones that really drive Linux development forward, investing money and time and contributing code. It's Canonical that wants to do everything in-house and not collaborate with others, meanwhile, Wayland is going to be used by Tizen (Intel, Samsung), Sailfish (Jolla), RHEL/Fedora (Red Hat)... companies that make real money with Linux and really contribute to it.



No, bullshit. There's consensus on the community, that consensus is "let's use Wayland". Canonical was on board of that train up until a few months ago, when they decided "to hell with everyone else, we'll do what we want". Incidentally, that was about the same time when they infested their app launcher with adware... and at that time, they had this ad that attacked windows 8, which was quickly taken down, and ever since Canonical has been kissing up to M$ more and more.



That's what Wayland is, basically. It throws away legacy cruft and creates a modern display server, which still has backwards compatibility. Canonical just wants to create their own OS, one that is no longer compatible with real Linux OS's.

Why the hell would i want to write a script to do things i can do with clicks???? let the cli have still the power it has today. But godsake, why would anyone, especially new user and not tech-savy even KNOW what the hell a script is????? why do i have to use the CLI to define a new monitor or force a resolution when the EDID fails?Why can't the process of downloading and installing something from the internet is always a pain in the ass and we can't have double click next-next-next-end packages?I still thinks that the basic macosx app system(the one that all apps are self-conteined) is an easier way, but i would settle for that.

Mir and unity will be ready in a year. How many years it is that we are waiting for wayland to magically appear and free us from the X.Org monster???? Ok, it's been based on SOME work of wayland. A single library/backend that makes it possible to directly use android drivers. And the whole unity/mir effort? in a year they will deliver. They can't afford the mistake. Wayland instead takes the long and lazy road: the devs are in no hurry to finish the project, because they don't have a corporation that needs that.I have no doubt that wayland is a valid project, but it will fail on desktop because no one will really use it when, and not if, ubuntu will have a boom in "sales". For the simple fact that ubuntu aims at people, NOT users, NOT power users, NOT system admins, NOT developers. Ubuntu aims at people.The one that (like a friend of mine) picks up a android aosp phone and can't unlock it.And i can assure you that she's neither dumb nor a computer ignorant(she nows her way around a pc quite well, even if she does not know the inner workings or does not know what a driver is), she's one of the brightest people i know.

As i said before, canonical went to project in project asking that they should coordinate and play nice, and have all a common release window, so that they could provide a predictable and stable environment to make linux more appeasing for developers and software houses. They refused, so now don't bitch about how canonical is doing all things their way.
Just so you know, i've been a long gentoo user, even before that i was a red hat user. This year i've bought a new laptop and even if every fiber of my essence was against it, i've installed ubuntu(At first) and now i'm happily running xubuntu... Because it has better "support" than any other distro.

[entropy]

From the commit you posted:

A first pass at a Mir platform for EGL.

This is RFC mainly because I hope to shortly make Mir's API less painfully
pointless-callback-based. There's no point in committing this as-is, but
it's hopefully still useful to review.

Fair enough. But where's the review?

There hasn't been a single reply.
Doesn't look like the mesa devs are looking forward to this...

[newwen]

What Canonical is doing is harmful to the entire Linux platform. Without Mir, we'd have a common API for almost the entire Linux platform (excluding Android). Canonical was on board with the Wayland plan until a few months ago, and now they seem to be hiring Microsoft "ex-workers" (read: moles) left and right and kissing up Microsoft's ass. Makes you wonder...

I'd say you're being a little paranoid, but seeing what Microsoft has done in Windows 8.1 blatantly copying Unity smart scopes, you might not be far out.

[dee.]

Why the hell would i want to write a script to do things i can do with clicks???? let the cli have still the power it has today. But godsake, why would anyone, especially new user and not tech-savy even KNOW what the hell a script is?????

Because we don't have to assume that people are idiots. Wikipedia exists. Even idiots can copy-paste instructions from the internet to the command line or download premade scripts that they can put on their desktop as links. For fscks sake, it's not rocket science.

This whole windows paradigm of making everything hold your hand at the cost of functionality is a shitty one. It doesn't do any favors to the user, it's better for the user to learn how to do things rather than just blindly click through text boxes that they don't understand. If average people can learn to use spreadsheets, they can learn to use the CLI. Heck, back in the early 90s almost everything was done in DOS, and regular, non-tech-savvy people had no problems running programs or doing their work or copying files.

why do i have to use the CLI to define a new monitor or force a resolution when the EDID fails?Why can't the process of downloading and installing something from the internet is always a pain in the ass and we can't have double click next-next-next-end packages?I still thinks that the basic macosx app system(the one that all apps are self-conteined) is an easier way, but i would settle for that.

Uh what? Listen, if you want windows, go use windows. Problem solved. LINUX IS NOT WINDOWS, and we (most Linux users) are happy about that, because we don't want windows.

Package management in Linux is lightyears better than windows installers and registries and all that bullshit by any objective measure. Besides, what problem do you have installing packages from the internet? On my Linux OS, I can download a .deb file, doubleclick on it in my file manager, which brings up GDebi and lets me install the package with ONE CLICK OF THE MOUSE, which is actually LESS than in windows installers. You're making up imaginary problems.

Having all apps be self-contained is stupid, it's waste of resources. If you want macos, use macos.

Mir and unity will be ready in a year.

No it won't. How could it be ready before wayland, since all they're doing is watching what wayland devs do and copying that?

How many years it is that we are waiting for wayland to magically appear and free us from the X.Org monster????

Do you live in a subterranean barrel under a large rock? Wayland is way ahead of mir. It's got a stable API, toolkit support is almost done in all major toolkits, there are already desktops using it (Maui). Fedora 20 will have optional Wayland support, and 21 will have it by default.

Stop parroting Canonical talking points, because they simply lie to people.

Ok, it's been based on SOME work of wayland. A single library/backend that makes it possible to directly use android drivers. And the whole unity/mir effort? in a year they will deliver. They can't afford the mistake.

You sound like a religious fanatic. They maybe can't afford the mistake, but that doesn't mean they're not going to make it anyway.

Wayland instead takes the long and lazy road: the devs are in no hurry to finish the project, because they don't have a corporation that needs that.I have no doubt that wayland is a valid project, but it will fail on desktop because no one will really use it when, and not if, ubuntu will have a boom in "sales". For the simple fact that ubuntu aims at people, NOT users, NOT power users, NOT system admins, NOT developers. Ubuntu aims at people.

Nice rhetoric, but pointless. No other distro or OS is ever going to use Mir, for a simple reason - Mir is being made for the needs of Canonical only, Canonical doesn't care about compatibility with anything other than Unity, no one else has any say in it, and Canonical will break API compatibility between versions (they themselves have said it) - therefore: there's no way for other distros to make use of it. No toolkit has promised support for Mir, so canonical will have to do all that downstream.

All other distros will use Wayland, which is being done good and properly like a real display server, simply because it promises a stable API, and because it isn't made for only one desktop and one use case - it will be usable in all operating systems from mobile to desktop. Tizen and Sailfish OS will both use Wayland. All desktop Linux distros will use Wayland. The only one using Mir will be Ubuntu.

The one that (like a friend of mine) picks up a android aosp phone and can't unlock it.And i can assure you that she's neither dumb nor a computer ignorant(she nows her way around a pc quite well, even if she does not know the inner workings or does not know what a driver is), she's one of the brightest people i know.

Ubuntu mobile is being made stupidly, because they're not including ACL in it, which means, Ubuntu phone won't be able to make use of the already massive library of Android apps. Your friend who can't unlock an android phone won't be able to get any Android apps running in a ubuntu phone.

As i said before, canonical went to project in project asking that they should coordinate and play nice, and have all a common release window, so that they could provide a predictable and stable environment to make linux more appeasing for developers and software houses. They refused, so now don't bitch about how canonical is doing all things their way.

Bullshit. Canonical had plenty of time to help in Wayland development, they sat on their asses and did nothing. Then suddenly turned coat and released huge FUD and slander about wayland. The ones who didn't collaborate are Canonical. Don't try to rewrite history.

Just so you know, i've been a long gentoo user, even before that i was a red hat user. This year i've bought a new laptop and even if every fiber of my essence was against it, i've installed ubuntu(At first) and now i'm happily running xubuntu... Because it has better "support" than any other distro.

No it doesn't.

[Akka]

I'd say you're being a little paranoid, but seeing what Microsoft has done in Windows 8.1 blatantly copying Unity smart scopes, you might not be far out.

I have not tried smart scopes but to me it look like a regular combined desktop and local search with filters?

[Serafean]

Why the hell would i want to write a script to do things i can do with clicks???? let the cli have still the power it has today. But godsake, why would anyone, especially new user and not tech-savy even KNOW what the hell a script is?????

Because there are things that simply can't be configured via a user interface. I dare you to configure ALSA to use dmix over multiple outputs without learning the configuration syntax, and then come up with a UI that allows that amount of flexibility.

Ubuntu aims at people.The one that (like a friend of mine) picks up a android aosp phone and can't unlock it.And i can assure you that she's neither dumb nor a computer ignorant(she nows her way around a pc quite well, even if she does not know the inner workings or does not know what a driver is), she's one of the brightest people i know.

Sit a professional athlete on a bicycle for the first time in his life => he'll fall off. Same principle, to every tool there is a learning curve.

Mir and unity will be ready in a year. How many years it is that we are waiting for wayland to magically appear and free us from the X.Org monster???? Ok, it's been based on SOME work of wayland. A single library/backend that makes it possible to directly use android drivers. And the whole unity/mir effort? in a year they will deliver. They can't afford the mistake. Wayland instead takes the long and lazy road: the devs are in no hurry to finish the project, because they don't have a corporation that needs that

Where have you been the past four years?Wayland took the time they needed to get things right. Mir built directly on that, changing next to nothing. Also full wayland desktops will be here within the year, so touting Mir as a finally complete solution is BS.

Fair enough. But where's the review?

There hasn't been a single reply.
Doesn't look like the mesa devs are looking forward to this...

They can simply ignore it and let canonical patch their asses off. My bet is on this approach.