Intel Reverts Plans, Will Not Support Ubuntu's XMir

[phoen1x]

people use the most commercial produts ofc. ask for a lot a people if they know who kernel uses android... linux needs more commercial use and canonical is the one who do it, red hat gives up many years ago, arch is good but for advanced users, etc etc

L O L. First, learn some basic english. Second, are you willing to pay Canonical for using their distribution? Third, get the F out.

[dee.]

finally the called opensource devs took the mask off. opensource is only open when they want, mir is choice for canonical, but the called "opensource community" don t want. (this look stupid and hypocrite only for me?), microsoft don t need help to destroy linux desktop

What the hell are you even talking about. Do you even know what is being discussed here, or do you just respond with a knee-jerk reaction to the words "not support ubuntu's mir" in the topic without actually even knowing what is going on?

There is absolutely no reason why Intel should take over the maintainership for a one-distro solution. Maybe if mir was made in a way that it could be useful to the entire community instead of just Canonical, Intel could see a reason to maintain support for it. But wait - such a display protocol already exists: Wayland!

This has nothing to do with "choice". Canonical made the choice to create their own private solution, now they have to go all the way and do the maintaining for it themselves. Why shouldn't they? If you want to do a one-distro solution that no one else can use, don't expect others to do the work of maintaining the necessary patches for it.

Heck, I can go right now code my own pageflipper and call it "Smir", and it can only be used in my "Bubuntu" distro with my "Funity" desktop environment, but then I'll demand that intel, nvidia, AMD, GTK, Qt and everyone else take up the task of maintaining support for this new standard so that my distro can function. Do you think they'd agree? Do you think they should? Or should they just tell me to do it myself if I want to use my own private solution? There's already a supported option there, Wayland, and if I want the support of the community, I'd use that. The same applies to Canonical, they don't get any special privileges, just the same as everyone else.

[TheBlackCat]

I found this quote very telling:

Canonical’s Alan Pope explained the impact to us in a tweet earlier: “[This decision] just means more work for us (Canonical) to keep integrating xmir patches into x with each release/update.”

So the Mir devs are flat-out saying the reason they did this was to move the maintenance burden onto the Intel developers. Someone is going to have to do this sort of work whether the patches are accepted or not. Canonical has said they didn't want it to be them, so it would have been Intel.

So I think Intel's move was completely appropriate. It is not their job to keep Mir working properly, it is Canonical's.

[mrugiero]

finally the called opensource devs took the mask off. opensource is only open when they want, mir is choice for canonical, but the called "opensource community" don t want. (this look stupid and hypocrite only for me?), microsoft don t need help to destroy linux desktop

??

The source code is still there, in the commit. And, Intel, nor anyone else, is obliged to go along with Canonical choices. If the only one free to make choices is Canonical, then there is no freedom.
Canonical's been using out of tree patches since the beginning of time, so this actually just means a statement from Intel about not supporting them, nothing else. Also, it only mentions XMir, so it might as well not be about the competition Wayland/Mir, but about the half assed idea of running a DE on a compatibility layer. Supporting officially means they'll get bug reports about such a stupid idea, so the management choose not to let their devs waste their time on it.

chris willson is a boss? how much shares he have?

The management gave the reasons.

[johnc]

If we're talking about the reasons why Linux has such a (relatively) low share on the desktop, the reason is simple: lack of OEM preinstalls. Sure, you can order hardware from a few specialized stores - system76, ZaReason, Thinkpenguin come to mind - but besides that, if you walk into a random consumer electronics store that sells computers, chances are they're 100% windows machines. And why is that? Because of microsoft partnerships. Microsoft enforces strict monopolistic rules on their partners that penalize them for offering alternative operating systems. Microsoft penalizes OEM's for offering alternate OS's.

It's not the 1990s anymore. This excuse held some water in the past, but no longer. You can buy a Dell with Linux. Nobody wants it. There's no market for desktop Linux.

[dee.]

This time BO$$ is right, Ubuntu is very important for non-technical people. Canonical should consider very carefully their choices, and intel too.. who is really going to use Wayland? Don't answer "red hat", because 99,999% of RHEL installations doesn't even have a display server installed.

Who is really going to use Wayland? Try Everyone, except Canonical. And Canonical too, eventually, when they see what a horrible mistake Mir was and how they don't have the capability to maintain all the things they need to maintain to keep it going. Mir is a one-distro solution, no DE except for Unity supports it, no DE will support it, and everyone else is going to use Wayland.

So even if Ubuntu has a third of the marketshare of desktop Linux, that means there will be twice as many Wayland-users than Mir-users. Do the math.

Also, what is your source for that claim about RHEL? Sounds like plain old bullshit to me.

[johnc]

L O L. First, learn some basic english. Second, are you willing to pay Canonical for using their distribution? Third, get the F out.

Did it occur to you that maybe English isn't his first language?

[valeriodean]

The guy who merged it in the first place IS the mantainer.
If anyone would ask anyone if they could merge it then
the person to ask would be him.

I wounder if there is a management problem inside Intel
when someone apperntly tells the mantainer what he
should and shouldn't do.

If so Intel will get big problems soon.

Of course the management can tell to the dev what he should do or not.
That is not a technical debate, it's not a issue about how you call a function inside one of your patches, it's about to make your competitor's life more easier.
If you see to the commit's message, the motivation has nothing to do with coding style or regression or whatever, the reason is about the company interest and then the management have all right to request a change of direction.
That is summarize as "who pay who for doing what".

[dee.]

It's not the 1990s anymore. This excuse held some water in the past, but no longer. You can buy a Dell with Linux. Nobody wants it. There's no market for desktop Linux.

I just went to a local electronics store the other day, when I was buying new headphones (AKG headphones, great sound quality, comfortable on the head too). I walked past the computer section, guess what OS I saw? In all of the laptops: windows 8. Not a single Dell with Linux anywhere. And I live in the country where Linux was invented, even.

Don't kid yourself. The average consumer doesn't even know that there's an option to buy a computer with anything other than windows. They don't know about Dell w/Ubuntu. It's not being marketed anywhere. You have to dig it up to find it. There are some online stores that offer computers with RHEL or Ubuntu, but the ratio to windows-machines is very slim.

Tizen on ultrabooks might be something that finally brings Linux to the reach of the average consumer, but that's still only a possibility for now.

[TheBlackCat]

It's not the 1990s anymore. This excuse held some water in the past, but no longer. You can buy a Dell with Linux. Nobody wants it. There's no market for desktop Linux.

Go to the http://www.dell.com/ click "Desktops & All-in-One Computers", then click "operating system". See what your choices are. Walk into Best Buy. How easy is it to find a Linux PC? Yeah, you can find a Linux system if you know what you are looking for and search for it, but a random consumer who is looking for a new desktop or laptop and isn't already familiar with Linux isn't going to get much of a hint that it is even an option from pretty much any physical or online store, including Dell.