Xfce, LXDE, & GNOME Are Running On Ubuntu XMir

[r_a_trip]

Noooooo....

Dear $deity, this is terrible news. While it might sound good that other DE's can run on XMir, it only cements the existence of X for years to come.

Canonical has already told the world that their future is Unity + Mir. The other *buntu flavours are welcome to keep running on an Ubuntu base and Canonical has indicated they will help these flavours where possible, but these projects will need to do their own heavy lifting to be able to run on that Ubuntu base. Running the flavour DE's on XMir might be solution enough for Canonical. Hey, it runs, what more do you want?

Since most upstream DE's have already indicated that they aren't feeling much for implementing a Mir back-end, this means that the lowest common denominator will be X. So these DE's will probably have to keep around full X compatibility for years to come or otherwise be accused of trying to kill the *buntu flavours.

So the world will keep writing to X, because both Mir and Wayland can handle that between them. It looks like the ideal of getting a next gen graphics stack is being overruled by X with a vengeance.

[dee.]

We have 3 or more different Kernel, We have 3 or more sound server, we have X different file system, We have X different package manager....
OSx or Windows have more than 1 DE ? bad comparison. Or you suggest we need to do the same with Linux ? 1 Kernel, 1 File system, 1 DE, 1XServer, 1 Company ?

I love when people from open source community trying to discredit Canonical explaining that the better way to do is the way of proprietary solutions... Big Facepalm.

Uh no, are you incapable of reading? Did you actually read what I wrote? Let's repeat:

Competition is fine for higher levels of the stack, like the desktop environments: we can have a 100 different desktop environments and all can still run the same applications, because they all use X and conform to certain standards... but in such an essential part of the system as the display server, competition is a bad thing and only causes division.

Canonical or not, again the company behind it has nothing to do with it. Try to think outside of your fanboyistic "us vs them" mentality. If it was Red Hat or whatever company doing the same thing, it'd be just as bad.

And yes, we have a bunch of different sound servers. That's exactly my point - do you want the Linux graphic stack to become a similar mess what the sound system is now? Can you honestly say that all the different implementations of sound systems are somehow good for Linux?

All the userland stuff - package managers, DEs - don't matter, there can be a 100 of them for all I care. We'll still have all the same software running happily together - but display server is a different issue. Is that hard for you to comprehend? That not all software is the same? In some cases, competition is good - in this case, it only causes problems and headache for everyone involved.

And yes, I used proprietary OS's as an example - not because they're superior in any way, but to highlight what a horrible business decision it would be for any OS to create two competing display servers. So instead of dismissing the argument in a stupid way, can you just tell me, why do you think it would benefit Linux to have competing display servers? What benefit do you see the desktop Linux ecosystem gaining from that competition? What benefit are users getting from it?

[seb24]

Dear $deity, this is terrible news. While it might sound good that other DE's can run on XMir, it only cements the existence of X for years to come.

Canonical has already told the world that their future is Unity + Mir. The other *buntu flavours are welcome to keep running on an Ubuntu base and Canonical has indicated they will help these flavours where possible, but these projects will need to do their own heavy lifting to be able to run on that Ubuntu base. Running the flavour DE's on XMir might be solution enough for Canonical. Hey, it runs, what more do you want?

Since most upstream DE's have already indicated that they aren't feeling much for implementing a Mir back-end, this means that the lowest common denominator will be X. So these DE's will probably have to keep around full X compatibility for years to come or otherwise be accused of trying to kill the *buntu flavours.

So the world will keep writing to X, because both Mir and Wayland can handle that between them. It looks like the ideal of getting a next gen graphics stack is being overruled by X with a vengeance.

- The Canonical dev propose to help to do Mir backends for other flavour.
- The X compatibility still important because lot of DE have no plan to migrate from X to Wayland.
- Wayland and Mir still in active development and are not ok for production environment

[dee.]

Dear $deity, this is terrible news. While it might sound good that other DE's can run on XMir, it only cements the existence of X for years to come.

Canonical has already told the world that their future is Unity + Mir. The other *buntu flavours are welcome to keep running on an Ubuntu base and Canonical has indicated they will help these flavours where possible, but these projects will need to do their own heavy lifting to be able to run on that Ubuntu base. Running the flavour DE's on XMir might be solution enough for Canonical. Hey, it runs, what more do you want?

I don't think any of them are going to actually run this way - this was just a Canonical employee doing some kind of PR-stuntish thing, kind of like "see, it's totally fine guys, you can run your little desktops on our stuff, nothing to worry about"...

This kind of solution would be really shortsighted and would put these distros in a disadvantaged position - for example, say GnomeBuntu (or whatever they call it) chose to ran on XMir - what happens in the future when Gnome drops the X backend? And even before that, there are likely going to be apps that won't run on a pure X system (which a DE running on top of XMir will basically be, for all intents and purposes) - there will be apps that require Wayland, and apps that require Mir, and then these distros wouldn't be able to run them. The distros wouldn't be able to leverage the benefits from a modern display server in any way, they'd effectively be stuck with X.

So I don't think any of the *buntus are going to run this way, it'd be really stupid if they did.

So the world will keep writing to X, because both Mir and Wayland can handle that between them. It looks like the ideal of getting a next gen graphics stack is being overruled by X with a vengeance.

Exactly. That's exactly why Mir is horrible - without it, we could all move over to Wayland in peace and quiet. Now, it's become a huge mess, thanks to Canonical's bumbling. What Canonical is doing is probably holding the Linux desktop back for several years.

[seb24]

Uh no, are you incapable of reading? Did you actually read what I wrote? Let's repeat:

Competition is fine for higher levels of the stack, like the desktop environments: we can have a 100 different desktop environments and all can still run the same applications, because they all use X and conform to certain standards... but in such an essential part of the system as the display server, competition is a bad thing and only causes division.

Canonical or not, again the company behind it has nothing to do with it. Try to think outside of your fanboyistic "us vs them" mentality. If it was Red Hat or whatever company doing the same thing, it'd be just as bad.

And yes, we have a bunch of different sound servers. That's exactly my point - do you want the Linux graphic stack to become a similar mess what the sound system is now? Can you honestly say that all the different implementations of sound systems are somehow good for Linux?

All the userland stuff - package managers, DEs - don't matter, there can be a 100 of them for all I care. We'll still have all the same software running happily together - but display server is a different issue. Is that hard for you to comprehend? That not all software is the same? In some cases, competition is good - in this case, it only causes problems and headache for everyone involved.

And yes, I used proprietary OS's as an example - not because they're superior in any way, but to highlight what a horrible business decision it would be for any OS to create two competing display servers. So instead of dismissing the argument in a stupid way, can you just tell me, why do you think it would benefit Linux to have competing display servers? What benefit do you see the desktop Linux ecosystem gaining from that competition? What benefit are users getting from it?

I read perfectly and is more absurd think I have ever see.
If red-hat do the same, all the people say ... nothing because lot of people don't do the same mental storm when Red-Hat take decisions. In Fact Google do, Mozilla do and no one cry about the end of the open source world...

You don't respond to my first question :
- So you consider BSD, PulseAudio, SystemD and all File system like absurd projects and horrible business decision ?
Or from some magic trick this rules apply only on Canonical Display Server ?

Your example of proprietary system is only here to demonstrate that you are totally wrong... But the worst, you don't realize how...

[bkor]

Since most upstream DE's have already indicated that they aren't feeling much for implementing a Mir back-end, this means that the lowest common denominator will be X. So these DE's will probably have to keep around full X compatibility for years to come or otherwise be accused of trying to kill the *buntu flavours.

So the world will keep writing to X, because both Mir and Wayland can handle that between them. It looks like the ideal of getting a next gen graphics stack is being overruled by X with a vengeance.

When GNOME defaults to Wayland, the solution is to ensure Wayland is on Ubuntu and started as such. For specific GNOME versions of Ubuntu, this means ensuring Mir doesn't run and Wayland does instead. Most of the applications use libraries such as gtk or qt. Various use some specific X calls, but "world will keep writing to X" is not the case at the moment.

Due to incompatibilities, the X support of GNOME will suffer. If a solution for Wayland also works for Mir, cool. But I don't see any reason to spend too much time on it. We cannot test it anyway (Mir being a distro-specific technology). X support is staying, but not at the same quality.

Hope you now understand why "a next gen graphics stack is being overruled by X with a vengeance" is so wrong.

[bkor]

I read perfectly and is more absurd think I have ever see.
If red-hat do the same, all the people say ... nothing because lot of people don't do the same mental storm when Red-Hat take decisions. In Fact Google do, Mozilla do and no one cry about the end of the open source world...

You're distorting things on several levels:
1. GNOME is not Red Hat
2. The problem is making a business decision (not a technical one) and not telling anyone about it
3. Another problem was all the incorrect statement about Wayland
4. They committed on Wayland, but kept it a secret when they changed their minds

I does not matter who does things like above (#2-#4). It is just bad.

[seb24]

You're distorting things on several levels:
1. GNOME is not Red Hat
2. The problem is making a business decision (not a technical one) and not telling anyone about it
3. Another problem was all the incorrect statement about Wayland
4. They committed on Wayland, but kept it a secret when they changed their minds

I does not matter who does things like above (#2-#4). It is just bad.

1 - I don't say Gnome is Red-Hat saying that red-hat take business decision and no one speak about that. I don't care too, but i'm surprised how the people can have some variable appreciation depending of the company.
2 - They say it and have all the Canonical Hater on the web doing some FUD. And as we can read here they keep going in this way, against proper rules of the free software.
3 - Yes big communication mistake here. But we can read a lot of "incorrect statement" from the community against Ubuntu project from long time ago...
4 - No they speaking about other possibility than wayland from one year I think, staying officially with Wayland. And Canonical do what they want. As red-Hat can do it the same. Is business decision.

In fact I can understand some people don't like the method but the Mir project stay a free software project and we have to judge it from a technical point of view, not from some obscur and absurd ideology.

EDIT : when I arrive in free software world 7 years ago I was really exciting to see people speaking and fighting about technical views and for the better technical solution. Now what I see is lot of crap, ideology speaking, politics and corporation fight. I'ts ugly and toxic for the community... And people as you can see before can put all the free software rules in the trash only to rant against a company or a project... I'm really sad to see that.

[erendorn]

I read perfectly and is more absurd think I have ever see.
If red-hat do the same, all the people say ... nothing because lot of people don't do the same mental storm when Red-Hat take decisions. In Fact Google do, Mozilla do and no one cry about the end of the open source world...

You don't respond to my first question :
- So you consider BSD, PulseAudio, SystemD and all File system like absurd projects and horrible business decision ?
Or from some magic trick this rules apply only on Canonical Display Server ?

Your example of proprietary system is only here to demonstrate that you are totally wrong... But the worst, you don't realize how...

Nope, dee is totally correct here. When Google introduced Android, the Gnu/Linux community was not happy, and as you can see, there are very little applications that are currently cross platforms between X/Gnu/Linux and Android, or that benefited desktop Linux.

About your second point:
- BSD in this discussion can be considered a different system altogether. There are many projects not more portable from/to BSD than from Windows or OSX. It's part of the OSS ecosystem, but not the Linux ecosystem. Not much to do in this discussion.
- Pulseaudio was an improvement to existing solutions. Even then, due to new sound API, it break loads of stuff and got undeniably high amount of hate. What do you think would happen if a company decided to develop yet another soundserver based on the same technology, but with a different API?
- systemd is an improvement to existing solutions, and more importantly doesn't require any change to the applications themselves, only their packaging. No compatibility problem, no problem.
- file systems don't require changing the applications either. Obviously, if a company decided to create a second, different kernel filesystem API just for their own use, I highly doubt it would be accepted upstream and people would be happy about it.

The key point is, for acceptance, you must either bring something better, or something compatible API/protocol-wise.
Mir is comparable or inferior technology compared to Wayland, yet incompatible.
They would have made a complete reimplementation of the wayland libs, with their own shell and compositor name "Mir", around the wayland protocol, nobody would have complained. They choose to do that, but through an undefined but incompatible protocol. Hence the mental storm (well, that plus the false promises, hidden development, lack of knowledge yet bad comments about wayland, etc.. that really did not help).

[eudoxos]

You can do that already, as there are native X-Servers for Android.

There are Linux desktops atop Android, but they all use VNC, as those X-servers IIRC either cost money, or don't perform all that well or have bugs. It will be better without Android altogether.