Xfce, LXDE, & GNOME Are Running On Ubuntu XMir

[chrisb]

Pro-tip: there aren't real tech differences aside from the buffers being allocated server-side and a different API.

So there are no real tech differences. Good to know.

I've repeatedly given rational arguments why Mir is not at option for GNOME. ... Anyway, suggest to quit playing the emotional card. Mir is not an option and that is not due to Canonical hate.

Did I ever say that Gnome should use Mir? No. You are beating a strawman of your own creation. (I actually said "if Gnome and KDE require Wayland then it can be included in Ubuntu. Indeed, it will be included by default once it is in Debian.") I really don't care if Gnome doesn't run on Mir.

[dh04000]

I don't know why people are so upset about this.

Some DE will run on XMir/XWayland for awhile.

Unity will run on Mir.

Some DE will run on Wayland.

Some may run on all 3(technically 4).

All will be included in the Ubuntu repo.

*buntu flavors have the freedom to pick which option works for them based on upstream and thier own work.

Users have freedom to pick which *buntu they want to run.

The world goes on.

(I'm not trying to argue, I won't respond to any review, especially nic-picky, of this comment, its just a statement of facts as they stand.

[chrisb]

Care to name atleast one problem that Ubuntu solved? Thanks.

I'll give you several, though really it was the combination that made Ubuntu so successful.

• Marketing. Ubuntu created a brand awareness that stretched beyond existing Linux users. I know several people who switched to Linux because they heard about how great Ubuntu was. (Yes, marketing is a non-technical problem)
• Ease of install. I have used Linux for a long time (since Slackware days) and Ubuntu was the first desktop distribution that had a really easy to use graphical installer. And it correctly detected the hardware that didn't have open source drivers, and installed the necessary closed source drivers, so users didn't have to spend hours trawling the web trying to get their modem or graphics or sound working. You could literally install a desktop in 10 minutes and expect the usual pain points to not be a problem.
• Focus on the desktop. Red Hat explicitly rejected chasing desktop users ("Red Hat says no to consumer Linux desktop"). At some point, they created Fedora, which sent out the message that if you were a normal person and wanted to use Red Hat, you had to essentially become a beta-tester for their next enterprise release. Ubuntu went in the opposite direction and encouraged people to install their desktop for free, and supported it with updates and fixes. They even gave away free install CDs (back then, Red Hat used to sell their stuff as a boxed CD set).
• The latest software. People often wanted to run the latest X/drivers/apps but other distributions always seemed to be behind. This was a problem, particular for new hardware which required drivers that often weren't available in other distributions. Ubuntu gave users the latest kernel+drivers, and the desktop and apps of Debian sid, but without the problems of running a development release.

People forget what a PITA other distributions were back then. Red Hat and the other RPM-based distributions didn't even have automatic package dependency resolution ("RPM hell"), so users had to resort to finding and installing every individual package dependency from sites like rpmfind.net. Debian had apt-get, but installing Debian and configuring a desktop and getting all of your hardware working was difficult - it is admirable that they refused to ship non-free drivers, but it did make it hard for normal users to get their stuff working.

If you still honestly think that Ubuntu did nothing - then answer the question "Why didn't Red Hat, Debian, or anyone else become the top Linux desktop distribution?" When Ubuntu was released in 2004, they had 0% of the market. Debian and Red Hat were both large, respected and mature (11 year old) distributions. It wasn't just luck that enabled Ubuntu to come along and take users from them.

[bkor]

Care to name atleast one problem that Ubuntu solved? Thanks.

IIRC they introduced the libnotify stuff. Further they enabled the multiple arch stuff which now benefits Debian. They contributed to client side windows for gtk+ (needed for Wayland). Canonical paid to upgrade GNOME Bugzilla (was way outdated + heavily patched).

[bkor]

People forget what a PITA other distributions were back then. Red Hat and the other RPM-based distributions didn't even have automatic package dependency resolution ("RPM hell"), so users had to resort to finding and installing every individual package dependency from sites like rpmfind.net. Debian had apt-get, but installing Debian and configuring a desktop and getting all of your hardware working was difficult - it is admirable that they refused to ship non-free drivers, but it did make it hard for normal users to get their stuff working.

Not trying to imply anything regarding your other points, but RPM hell was solved a hell of a lot before Ubuntu existed. I've been using 'urpmi' for a very, very long time. Yum is also quite old.

Ubuntu has those specific small repositories where you can get a latest of development version of an app. That's great.

[chrisb]

False. When i first tried mandrake linux (version 9 or smth) it had GUI installer and was pretty easy to install for a complete linux newbie.

Good point. Yeah Mandrake was quite nice, I remember their disk partitioning and hardware detection stuff being pretty good. I think the reason they didn't take off was a problem of momentum and compatibility with other software - at the time a lot of external developers were building RPMs for Red Hat, and it was hard to get those RPMs installed on Mandrake due to version incompatibilities. Mandrake couldn't remain package compatible with Red Hat because their wanted to change packages, release newer versions etc, but at the same time didn't have enough users/developers to pull off having to build their own releases of everything. Ubuntu was built upon a mountain of software that already worked and had a significant user/developer community (Debian), they limited the packages that they were changing, and fed changes back upstream so they could keep regularly syncing with Debian without huge problems.

[rang501]

Care to name atleast one problem that Ubuntu solved? Thanks.

I like PPA-s.

[GreatEmerald]

I think that at least XMir and the libs used to make Mir work with android graphic drivers reuse heavily code written for their wayland counterparts.

Actually, the dev on IRC said that XMir is literally a rename of XWayland. Maybe it now has diverged, but yeah...

I like PPA-s.

I like Open Build Service repositories.

[dee.]

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...

Hmm, I don't think so. Either you have problems with reading, or comprehending what you read. Because in the post you responded to, I very clearly stated, that this isn't about Canonical. If Red Hat, Google or any other company did the same thing as Canonical is doing now, it would be equally horrible.

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 ?

I continue to be amazed at your lack of either reading or reading comprehension capability. I've tried to explain and make it simple for you, but everything I say seems to go through one ear and out the other (metaphorically speaking, since we're not actually talking to each other).

BSD, PulseAudio, SystemD and all file systems have nothing to do with display servers. They are an entirely different issue that have no relevance on whether Mir is a bad idea or not.

Or from some magic trick this rules apply only on Canonical Display Server ?

No magic tricks involved. Once again, not all software is the same. It doesn't matter if there are a 100 file systems, a 100 desktop environments, or even a 100 package managers. File systems are abstracted away from the user and applications, and they are by their very nature compatible with each other (as long as they all support permissions and stuff like that). You can easily copy all the files from an EXT4 filesystem into a ZFS, JFS or BTRFS filesystem with no compatibility issues whatsoever. Files saved in EXT4 won't suddenly stop working or being readable because they're copied to another filesystem. Heck, most applications don't even care about what filesystem is under them.

For Desktop environments, the situation is similar. An application doesn't care much what DE it is running on. I myself have Cinnamon on one machine and Xfce on another. The exact same apps, no matter if they use GTK, Qt, SDL, or something else, run just the same on either desktop. That's because there's a certain level of interoperability between them, certain set of standards that are followed, and also, because: both use the same display server.

For package managers, it's mostly a non-issue - package managers mostly only have to deal with packages straight from the repos of the distro in question, so they don't have to be compatible. If something needs to be distributed cross-distro, providing both a .deb and .rpm usually does it, as most of the package managers can deal with either. And there are also software that can convert between different package formats, so it's not an issue.

However, when we get to display servers, it's different. It's a much more fundamental part of the software stack. It's kind of like if Ubuntu made up their own executable format, and the rest of the Linux world would stay with ELF - then you would have binaries that run only on Ubuntu, and binaries that run on everything else (man, I shouldn't be giving them ideas...) What Ubuntu is doing now is creating a system that is increasingly incompatible with the rest of the Linux systems. This means that all the support and resources Ubuntu is gathering, will not benefit the other Linux distros at all. There's no point in having two different display servers, meaning that developers have to concentrate their efforts towards one or the other. If you want to develop an application, or port a game to Linux, and you can't use any of the toolkits that abstract away the display server... what options do you have left? Writing it directly against the display server API (kind of like some apps do now, writing programs directly against X).

So if we'd all move to Wayland, it'd be a non-issue - they could just write their software by using the Wayland protocol directly, and that'd work on every Linux. But now we have this competing system, Mir, so the developers in this situation will have to choose - support Mir, or support Wayland. This is obviously not good for the Linux ecosystem as a whole. That's why it's obvious that this is simply a power-grab by Canonical, they're trying to make their own OS, independent from and incompatible with the rest of the desktop Linux ecosystem.

The same applies to things like desktop environments - each DE now has to choose if they stay with X, go to Wayland or go to Mir. None of them have the resources (or in some cases it's not even possible) to support both Mir and Wayland. And Mir is made with only the needs of Unity in mind, whereas Wayland is an open project, which aims to help the entire Linux ecosystem, distro-agnosticly, to move to a better, modern 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...

Ouch, sick burn, man... seriously, that was really good! If I were like, 10 years old, I'd probably be crying now. Nice!

I notice however, that you still cannot explain how it is good for the desktop Linux ecosystem to have two competing display servers.

[chrisb]

Not trying to imply anything regarding your other points, but RPM hell was solved a hell of a lot before Ubuntu existed. I've been using 'urpmi' for a very, very long time. Yum is also quite old.

Ubuntu has those specific small repositories where you can get a latest of development version of an app. That's great.

You're right, I forgot about Mandrake and urpmi. I do remember Mandrake being a pain because third party RPMs were usually built for Red Hat. But that wasn't the fault of urpmi.

Red Hat had up2date then, they didn't ship with yum until RHEL5. I remember having problems with that, but I think it was mainly because there was a lot of software that wasn't in the official repos, so you would add an external repo, which would eventually get out of sync with the official one and cause problems. Ubuntu handled the external software situation a bit better by incorporating way more packages into the official repository - Ubuntu had 14000 packages vs Red Hat's 4000 - and by later introducing PPAs so they could host and rebuild user-contributed packages automatically.