The Performance Penalty Of Xfce/Xubuntu On XMir

[LinuxGamer]

How can you call Mir "vaporware" any more than Wayland? I'm not sure what makes your posts more unreadable - the (lack of) basic punctuation/grammar or incessant hate-spewing on any topic vaguely related to Ubuntu/Mir.

No one likes getting f***ed over, Canonical is F*** Over the FOSS community, by doing a Vendor Lockin, that's 100% what Mir is and, this is only going to hurt the FOSS community, it is doing Damaging it now, and it's Showing down Development of the Linux Desktop, by adding low level fragmentation we don't need at all, Developers 100% hate fragmentation, The Android-like style of Development is one of the Worst things to ever happen to the Linux Desktop in year's in not the Worst, and you can use Wayland now btw as it ship's on more then one OS, shipping = non Vaporware, in Xmir you can't really use Mir so it = Vaporware,

[bwat47]

Last I knew, xmir didn't have composition bypass working yet, so worse performance in games would be totally expected. Once xmir is "finished" performance should be nearly identical (here is a link from a mir/xmir dev explaining why performance is currently worse, and the work that is being done to fix it: http://blog.cooperteam.net/2013/07/x...rformance.html).

And to those saying running a DE on xmir has zero advantages, that is just FUD. In the case of XFCE, it addresses the video tearing issue, since unity-system-compositor is handling page-flipping (XFWM has no opengl compositing so running on just X it tears like crazy). I would agree that running a desktop that has a window manager that supports opengl compositing on top of xmir doesn't have much (if any) advantage though, so it makes sense that kubuntu isn't considering it. But since there *are* some advantages for xubuntu it is a good thing that they are evaluating it. It should also be noted that they are just testing/evaluating it, to see if it will work well for them or not, they may not even end up using Xmir. They are taking a pragmatic approach and should not be criticized for that.

There are way too many trolls and fanboys on phoronix, on both the mir and wayland sides making ridiculously stupid comments. I like some of the news this site has, but man the comments here are always so stupid and immature.

[jayrulez]

No, not exactly. Wayland is a protocol, with a library (libwayland) that contains all the interfaces which define the protocol. Wayland does have an API, in libwayland. This library allows developers to write Wayland clients and Wayland compositors, so that they all use the libwayland library in order to implement the Wayland protocol. The Wayland protocol has a stable API with guaranteed backwards compatibility, this means if you write any wayland program (client or compositor) that uses the Wayland protocol as it is now, it will work with all future versions of Wayland.

I read yesterday on Wayland's IRC channel, krh saying that they are making breaking changes in Wayland (libwayland-server.so specifically) that will break current compsitors. So no, the API is not stable as it is now.

[jrch2k8]

I read yesterday on Wayland's IRC channel, krh saying that they are making breaking changes in Wayland (libwayland-server.so specifically) that will break current compsitors. So no, the API is not stable as it is now.

well libwayland-server.so is stable[1.2.0 release] API for current releases, the break could affect KDE-5.1/gnome-3.12 not the current versions since it won't land until next major release 1.3.0, which is pretty normal until major DEs push it enough to have most issues tackled, weston only can test that much

[jrch2k8]

I read yesterday on Wayland's IRC channel, krh saying that they are making breaking changes in Wayland (libwayland-server.so specifically) that will break current compsitors. So no, the API is not stable as it is now.

worth noting that server side API is not finalized yet and is not used widely either, the OP reffered to the client side and compositor API that has been marked as finalized and will pretty much be backward compatible from now on.

note im not sure what is this server API used for exactly since you can do all normal desktop with the other 2 API, so i guess is for server side control or to standarize servers side allocation IPC?? is not clear to me yet

[Delgarde]

"AFAIK, Wayland is a finished product (as finished as software can be), just there are mesa and kernel changes not already there, and some things to polish on compositors. But Wayland itself is already complete, AFAIK."
in the comsumer eyes its not finished untill its running some kind of DE (my opinion).
the kind of benchmark i would want to see is weston running a full DE vs xmir.

But keep in mind that the same is true of Mir. Currently, no desktop runs on that either... running unmodified X11 desktops on top of XMir doesn't count, since a) it's kind of pointless, and b) it's already achievable on XWayland.

[V10lator]

this is in dev yet lol ofc the perfomance is not good as normal X. do the same with wayland, ups wayland not works i forgett

Wayland works, it just doesn't work to run a full DE on top of XWayland cause the devs didn't accept patches to allow that with a reason like "are you completely stupid? Nobody really wants to do that!". Well, they where wrong, Canonical is using exactly these rejected patches for XMir.

and while mir is younger and less supported by the community, it's catching up really fast.

*rofl* yea, relying on the years of preparing the graphics stack for wayland and even stealing code from it is catching up fast... Go give Canonical the graphic stack we had 5 years ago and see how fast they are able to catch up (without copying code made for wayland).

this is not true, theres a good reason to run the DE on mir (for what i understand), drivers! the software layer will be X.org and drivers will be mir (X+Mir=xmir) wich means x.org no longer manages the drivers mir does.

When you use a X DE on top of XMir Mir isn't really doing anything. 98% of work is done by XMir, so in fact by X.org. That means 98% of the work is done by X.org drivers. Ofc. it's really important to test that small part of the (not existing!) Mir drivers...

intel, ati and nvidia work with the opensource drivers.

Their repositories show otherwise. :P Yes, canonical has patches, but they will never be accepted upstream.

canonical claims they should have the closed source ones before 14.04

Does nvidia or amd back this statement up? Links please...

my only question remaning is if we can use a mir windows on top of xmir + mir, like... ubuntu 13.10 will be runing the DE on xmir can we open a mir window inside the DE runing xmir? wouldnt that put the mir window hiding behing the DE since the DE is runing like a window in full screen?

Than won't be possible. Well, at least not untill canonical develops the worst thing ever: MirX... So you run Mir on top of X (Xmir) on top of Mir... Mirception o.O

i see ppl talking about wayland, mir its not needed because wayland... well where is wayland? where is working wayland?

As other said: It's on Rebecca Black OS, Tizen, Sailfish, ... on the other hand: Where is working Mir? Real Mir, not that hack called XMir?

i thing the real probleam for the people who don t wants mir is their on "asses". stop with destructive criticism and wait to see what will come out of there.

The thing is: We already know what will come out of this. Open your eyes and you'll notice, too.

making a DE that only runs with EGL (wayland/mir) is forcing them, what canonical is doing is better, they offer both so they can ease into it (not forcing) wich means wayland is the one forcing it :P

Wtf? Wayland is the successor of X.org, the plan is to use X.org till everything (including drivers) is ready for Wayland. Where exactly are they forcing you to use it?

testing the drivers is the moust importante thing i belive, if the drivers are ready they can then easly make it run with unity 8 without messing with the drivers at all.

So they start testing the non existing drivers? And from them they test only 2% to see if they are production ready? And they do that with a LTS release? Great work!

And to those saying running a DE on xmir has zero advantages, that is just FUD. In the case of XFCE, it addresses the video tearing issue, since unity-system-compositor is handling page-flipping (XFWM has no opengl compositing so running on just X it tears like crazy). I would agree that running a desktop that has a window manager that supports opengl compositing on top of xmir doesn't have much (if any) advantage though, so it makes sense that kubuntu isn't considering it. But since there *are* some advantages for xubuntu it is a good thing that they are evaluating it. It should also be noted that they are just testing/evaluating it, to see if it will work well for them or not, they may not even end up using Xmir. They are taking a pragmatic approach and should not be criticized for that.

No, it's not FUD, it's the truth. the page-flipping handled by Mir (not unity-system-compositer...) doesn't make anythign better as the compositing is still done by XFWM and X, and that's where the tearing happens. Giving the teared image to Mir won't magically fix it.

I read yesterday on Wayland's IRC channel, krh saying that they are making breaking changes in Wayland (libwayland-server.so specifically) that will break current compsitors. So no, the API is not stable as it is now.

Now that's interresting. Do you have any link to back this up? Cause then they are clearly breaking their rules.

[jayrulez]

Now that's interresting. Do you have any link to back this up? Cause then they are clearly breaking their rules.

No. I can't find any links to the IRC logs either.

I guess you could always ask at the channel if needs be.

[djdoo]

Capital Profit Rules! Sadly...

Canonical should be thrown away of FOSS community and not allowed to use the Linux Kernel for their products, cause it behaves as a multinational company who wants to grow and eat everything else!!

Well I can remember a similar situation... How did they call it back then...
Oh I 've remembered! Microsoft!! Yes!
Oh and another one... Pear? No.. Apple!! Yes! BSD licence rocks for sharks!

Now seriously NOONE has the right to steal community work and develop products for own profit let alone bring flame wars to the whole community, create fanboys and as a result also great haters!

If they like to steal and ''develop'' their ''own'' software under their own licence just for them they should just make their completely in house kernel as well as their own drivers etc...

Linus said the F word for nVidia, I would say it for Canonical too! I believe they have won the trophy fairly!

The irony is that they called it Mir=Peace in Russian! I think Πόλεμος=Polemos=War in Greek would be a better name fit for it!

[johnc]

Canonical should be thrown away of FOSS community and not allowed to use the Linux Kernel for their products, cause it behaves as a multinational company who wants to grow and eat everything else!!

Well I can remember a similar situation... How did they call it back then...
Oh I 've remembered! Microsoft!! Yes!
Oh and another one... Pear? No.. Apple!! Yes! BSD licence rocks for sharks!

Now seriously NOONE has the right to steal community work and develop products for own profit let alone bring flame wars to the whole community, create fanboys and as a result also great haters!

If they like to steal and ''develop'' their ''own'' software under their own licence just for them they should just make their completely in house kernel as well as their own drivers etc...

Linus said the F word for nVidia, I would say it for Canonical too! I believe they have won the trophy fairly!

The irony is that they called it Mir=Peace in Russian! I think Πόλεμος=Polemos=War in Greek would be a better name fit for it!

I don't believe that Canonical has violated any license requirements as far as I can see. If you have a problem with the Linux license in effect, take it up with Linus. It was designed to allow specifically these purposes.

When are we going to start seeing the vociferous condemnations of ChromeOS and Android here like we do of Ubuntu?