KDE Developers Continue To Be Frustrated With Canonical

[RahulSundaram]

Of course this applies to MIR too but i am sure that was not your intention. So is hard to see what your point really is , when as a matter of fact , Wayland is driven by Intel behind the scenes .

That was precisely my point in fact. Mir is driven solely by Canonical while Wayland has a broad number of companies including Intel, Red Hat etc. There is nothing behind the scenes. It is all publicly available information.

[chrisb]

I think what he tried to say is that companies are inherently interested in improving the stack that is important to them. Regarding khr (Kris Hogsberg) it was his own idea and he worked on it without modifying to the needs of Red Hat and Intel. I would think that Intel is interested mainly for the reason to push wayland on laptops and tablets powered by their chips. Also the likes of Google can benefit for their Chromebooks and auto companies for their infotainment systems.

Intel's motivation is probably to enable a mobile platform that can compete against Android on ARM. I doubt that the Linux desktop, or even Chrome OS, is a huge factor. They are investing in Linux because they have seen the huge gains of ARM/Linux via Android, and want a slice of the pie. Why not just invest purely in Android? Obviously all of their kernel work benefits there too, but I suspect they don't want another Microsoft/Windows situation where their platform is dominated by a single party, which significantly increases the cost of the overall platform, but provides no extra profit to Intel (and in the Google case, one that is already committed to predominantly ARM hardware platform).

I would be surprised if Intel is able to challenge ARM at this point. Android alone is selling over a million ARM devices every single day. Intel chips are too expensive - I don't see anything on the horizon that would enable something like a $25 Raspberry Pi style computer. Their legacy desktop advantage - x86 compatibility - has little value for embedded platforms. Their reliance on Windows in the consumer space has become a liability - Bill Gates famously predicted that hardware would become almost free but software wouldn't - for Intel, that is not a great prospect.

Otoh, this conjecture could all be wrong, and maybe Intel management really do believe that the future of desktop operating systems is Linux rather than proprietary Windows/OSX, maybe in the developing world.

It will be interesting to see the results once we get to the point where we can directly benchmark Wayland/etc vs SurfaceFlinger vs Mir on both ARM and X86.

[dee.]

Intel's motivation is probably to enable a mobile platform that can compete against Android on ARM. I doubt that the Linux desktop, or even Chrome OS, is a huge factor.

Intel makes money on the desktop, their presence on the mobile is almost nonexistent, and the mobile is a much more competitive scene, hard to make a profit. There's more profit in desktop cpu's, where the only competition is AMD - and even that is only "competition" in the sense that Intel keeps them around willingly in order to save themselves from monopoly accusations.

Intel has demoed a Tizen-based ultrabook, so it's safe to say that they are indeed interested in the Linux desktop.

They are investing in Linux because they have seen the huge gains of ARM/Linux via Android, and want a slice of the pie. Why not just invest purely in Android?

Because Android is controlled by google, and slowly being converted into a proprietary platform. Samsung and Intel want another option, because Android is totally under Google's control.

I would be surprised if Intel is able to challenge ARM at this point. Android alone is selling over a million ARM devices every single day. Intel chips are too expensive - I don't see anything on the horizon that would enable something like a $25 Raspberry Pi style computer. Their legacy desktop advantage - x86 compatibility - has little value for embedded platforms. Their reliance on Windows in the consumer space has become a liability - Bill Gates famously predicted that hardware would become almost free but software wouldn't - for Intel, that is not a great prospect.

ARM still can't compete with the performance of x86, and there are plenty of applications where that extra performance is needed. There are no real ARM desktop computers yet.

[chrisb]

Yes, the latest ones, they are pretty much teenager. The first ones, where he explains why he doesn't want to support Mir, are not.

Yeah, but he does troll Ubuntu pretty hard at times, however seems to think he is innocent:

"I have never attacked any of the Mir developers or have attacked the software in any way... I have in no way attacked Canonical, Ubuntu or Mir."

Hmmmm.

"Ubuntu has always had one of the worst graphics stack in the free software world. I can see this in the bug tracker. The quality of the Mesa stack in Ubuntu is really bad."

"You don?t even know how to write KWin"

"I didn?t ask for Mir, I don?t want Mir"

"we don?t accept patches for distro issues. Well fanboyism is a huge issue in free software. It reminds me so much of religion"

"Will KWin support Mir? No!"

"Given the extreme success of Unity on non-Ubuntu distributions I?m positively optimistic that we will never have to do the evaluation of the second question."

"Canonical sucks [Given how Canonical introduced Mir with incorrect information about Wayland I consider this as a valid approach to dismiss the technology.]"

"I was very fed up with Ubuntu at the time anyway"

"I consider TDD as utter non-sense and as a useless methodology"

"I thought about asking KDE e.V. to send an Abmahnung [written legal warning] after the statement that KWin would just work fine on Mir."

"it?s impossible to package Unity on non-Ubuntu distributions"

"It is difficult to really understand the architecture of Mir as the specification is so full of buzz-words that I don?t understand it."

"If KDE developers don?t implement Mir support, nobody will"

"it doesn?t matter whether Mir is better or not. We would be a fool to implement support."

"why should I trust anything else written by Canonical?"

"ah an Ubuntu Fanboy. Wow that took long till the first one came and put on the FUD."

"you have to fear the wrath of Mark and his legions of believers"

"[Mir is] being different for the sake of being different and because of that it doesn't get any support from my side."

"Remember: it's Canonical reinventing the wheel and changing the timeline each other day."

"recently we could observe the same kind of cognitive dissonance with the Ubuntu fanboys"

"Ubuntu is a religion"

"Ubuntu has lost it's meaning. There is no human kindness in this community any more."

"I will not reply to Canonical employees commenting on my posts. Comments on my blog will be deleted. Mails will be ignored. If there are discussions about adopting technology from Canonical I will point out that one cannot collaborate and we shouldn't use it because it's from Canonical."

"I will certainly dismiss technologies for political reasons, because it's from Canonical"

But remember!

"I have in no way attacked Canonical, Ubuntu or Mir."

[chrisb]

Intel makes money on the desktop, their presence on the mobile is almost nonexistent

Yeah, that's the point - Intel does not want to be nonexistent on mobile.

There's more profit in desktop cpu's, where the only competition is AMD - and even that is only "competition" in the sense that Intel keeps them around willingly in order to save themselves from monopoly accusations.

Yes, desktops are profitable, but sales are falling, and mobile sales are increasing. Also ARM is making moves around server CPUs. There is a risk for Intel that ARM could come to dominate the server world, particularly in large Google/Facebook-style datacenters where ability to run legacy x86 code is no advantage.

Intel has demoed a Tizen-based ultrabook, so it's safe to say that they are indeed interested in the Linux desktop.

They once demoed MeeGo hardware, how did that turn out? I doubt that Intel management thinks Linux is going to replace Windows and OS/X on desktop, or even ultrabooks. What does a normal consumer want to own - a Macbook Air or a Samsung Tizen? Even Samsung isn't fully committed to Tizen, and for good reason ("Samsung Slowing Development Of Tizen OS, Postponing Launch Of Smartphone Revision One"). Samsung would love to be the next Apple, with a complete vertical stack of OS+hardware, but I don't see it happening. Maybe I'm wrong, and in a few years Microsoft/Apple will be dying on the desktop, and Samsung Tizen will reign supreme...

ARM still can't compete with the performance of x86, and there are plenty of applications where that extra performance is needed. There are no real ARM desktop computers yet.

Whether ARM can compete with the performance of x86 depends on your application. It's not just about pure performance, but the tradeoff between power consumption, performance, and cost. There may be no real ARM desktop computers yet, but that doesn't mean there won't be in 5 years time. The latest tablets are as powerful as desktops of a few years ago. If Apple released an ARM based iOS desktop with a touchscreen that ran all the Appstore apps I'm sure they would sell. Or an ARM Macbook Air that runs for 60+ hours on batteries alone. That would sell. It's only an accident of history that they ended up with two different platforms, and it's not at all obvious that they will remain separate in future.

[mgraesslin]

nice summary, but please remove all those which are wrongly quoted (e.g. the "Canonical sucks" quote - " I cannot just say ?Canonical sucks? to discard Mir as an option") or are just facts (e.g. the graphics stack quality - sorry cannot help it, but it is bad and I can prove it) and the things which have nothing to do with Canonical (e.g. the comment on TDD - awesome in the selection, but not an attack on Canonical, Ubuntu or Mir). Please also remove everything I wrote after I wrote that statement that I have not attacked Mir, Canonical or Ubuntu (e.g. the wrath or Mark). Let's check what remains then. Is there anything left where I attack a person or insult them? Is there anything left where I would attack Mir?

[chrisb]

Why would he regret it? He's said all along that he'd reconsider the patches if Mir became more widely used in other distros.

Having Mir "in the archives" is some way short of actually being used. While it's not my decision to make, I'd say that to be considered, at least one other big-name distro should be using it as their default desktop platform, or be in the process of making it their default.

He actually said "the requirement is that it gets packaged in other major distributions... Let?s say at least Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch and Gentoo."

So even if Mir were no longer a "single distro" technology, it would not be enough - it has to be packaged in every major distribution, and now you add the constraint that it also has to be the default. Can you imagine if Linus worked the same way? "No, I won't add any source code patches for XFS to the kernel until XFS Tools is packaged on every Linux distribution, and at least two major distributions are using it as their default file-system." It would be, at the least, a very high barrier to contributors, some might even think that Linus were hostile towards XFS, even if that were not his intent.

[chrisb]

nice summary, but please remove all those which are wrongly quoted (e.g. the "Canonical sucks" quote - " I cannot just say “Canonical sucks” to discard Mir as an option") or are just facts (e.g. the graphics stack quality - sorry cannot help it, but it is bad and I can prove it) and the things which have nothing to do with Canonical (e.g. the comment on TDD - awesome in the selection, but not an attack on Canonical, Ubuntu or Mir). Please also remove everything I wrote after I wrote that statement that I have not attacked Mir, Canonical or Ubuntu (e.g. the wrath or Mark). Let's check what remains then. Is there anything left where I attack a person or insult them? Is there anything left where I would attack Mir?

I knew when I made that post I would be accused of wrongful quoting etc.

I cannot just say “Canonical sucks” to discard Mir as an option. [Given how Canonical introduced Mir with incorrect information about Wayland I consider this as a valid approach to dismiss the technology.]

It is difficult to infer from that anything other than the fact that you think "Canonical sucks". Maybe you didn't mean it, but that is how it will be interpreted when you say "Canonical sucks.. is a valid approach". Consider "I can't just say that KDE sucks to discard them as an option, even though I think that is a valid approach".

are just facts (e.g. the graphics stack quality - sorry cannot help it, but it is bad and I can prove it

That's an opinion - not a fact. Others disagree. Of course you will find bug reports if you search in a bug tracker, that's what it's there for. If you search for bug reports in Fedora, or freedesktop, you will find them there too. Ubuntu is the largest desktop, so they are likely to have more bug reports.

But that is not the point - the point is that when you say "Ubuntu has always had one of the worst graphics stack in the free software world. I can see this in the bug tracker. The quality of the Mesa stack in Ubuntu is really bad." it is obviously going to be interpreted as an attack on Ubuntu. Consider "KDE has always had some of the worst software in the free software world. The quality of KDE software is really bad." How could that not be interpreted as an attack on KDE?

the comment on TDD - awesome in the selection, but not an attack on Canonical, Ubuntu or Mir

You may not have intended it as an attack, but that is how it appears. Let's say I were writing about KDE's liberal use of C++, and I wrote "I consider C++ as utter non-sense and as a useless language". The statement by itself does not mention KDE, but given that the context was KDE using C++, most people would see it as an attack on KDE. Who would be stupid enough to use something that is "utter non-sense" and "useless"? The clear implication is that they are idiots.

edit: I understand that writing English as a non-native speaker, it can be hard to be clear and to get your point across without misunderstandings, especially on the internet. I don't actually care whether or not you support Mir in KDE or not; it doesn't matter to me. But if you honestly did not intend any of your posts to be attacks, then you should be more careful about the things that you write, and remember that the developers you are directing your posts towards are humans too, possibly also non-native speakers - and they may have a different interpretation of your words than that which you intend.

[AnonymousCoward]

I knew when I made that post I would be accused of wrongful quoting etc.

Maybe you should have concentrated more on quality than quantity when selecting the quotes then? But when Martin basically says "I never intended to insult Ubuntu in the past, but I don't care anymore now", and you then quote what he says afterwards as proof that he did in fact insult Ubuntu, it just makes you look disingenuous.

[mgraesslin]

It is difficult to infer from that anything other than the fact that you think "Canonical sucks". Maybe you didn't mean it, but that is how it will be interpreted when you say "Canonical sucks.. is a valid approach". Consider "I can't just say that KDE sucks to discard them as an option, even though I think that is a valid approach".

Yes that's certainly not how I meant it. Sorry if that was wrongly percieved. Remember English is not my native language :-) The problem here is that my main thought is that Canonical doesn't suck, the side node was intended as a remark on the false claims about Wayland in the introduction of Mir. I can see how you think it's an attack or even insult and I should have explained the side node better. Sorry about that.

That's an opinion - not a fact. Others disagree. Of course you will find bug reports if you search in a bug tracker, that's what it's there for. If you search for bug reports in Fedora, or freedesktop, you will find them there too. Ubuntu is the largest desktop, so they are likely to have more bug reports.

Unfortunately it's a fact. KDE's userbase is well spread over all distributions. We have no indications that Kubuntu has more users than other distributions (that is the fact that Ubuntu is the largest desktop is irrelevant from my perspective). Our bug tracker shows that the graphics stack of Ubuntu is the worst. I had been to one UDS to discuss that and also this year I had intense discussions with the Kubuntu team about that showing stats about it.

But that is not the point - the point is that when you say "Ubuntu has always had one of the worst graphics stack in the free software world. I can see this in the bug tracker. The quality of the Mesa stack in Ubuntu is really bad." it is obviously going to be interpreted as an attack on Ubuntu. Consider "KDE has always had some of the worst software in the free software world. The quality of KDE software is really bad." How could that not be interpreted as an attack on KDE?

I had been thinking about what you wrote and the quotes you picked. I think we need to define what we understand under an attack. I'm a person who values truth. I consider saying the truth, even if it hurts not as an attack. And here we have the difference in what I wrote and what you wrote. Your statement about KDE is clearly an direct attack, my statement would be the same if there is not the fact behind it "I can see this in the bug tracker". As said I can give references for that (published before that blog post). Thus it's for me a fact and a fact can never be an attack. That's certainly also something about culture. You know that I'm German and part of being German is being blunt and direct. You can see pretty much the same btw. with Lennart. It's no surprise, we are both very technical people :-)