Mark Reiterates Mir Will Have First-Class Driver Support

[TheOne]

Well, the point was that the raspberry Pi backend stuff was not applicable to other devices. What would you suggest instead?

A ready to use implementation of wayland where you only need to hookup your graphic driver into a mature enough interface that wouldn't require you to implement the whole wayland protocol from scratch for different types of hardware.

[Nth_man]

stoned?

He lookes stoned as in that picture

When you see a website, or a tv channel, or a newspaper, etc. that chooses a picture of someone, but the latest WORST picture that they can find, you can think that they are manipulative xxxxxxxs.

[dee.]

the re-inventing, I mean. You picked mir but the OSS world is full of half-baked, replicated solutions and apps. Even the desktops- who needs so many ? I am sure the lame answer is choice, except when the choice is offered by someone that threatens my house of cards.

The OSS world?

Go take a look at the proprietary side. In *most* categories of software, there's way more superfluous proprietary apps than there are open source ones.

Desktops are a kind of special case, because most proprietary OS's don't support custom desktop environments, this is something only enabled by open operating systems and software environments.

As to your question "who needs them": the people who use them, duh.

If wayland is considered an improvement over xorg ( and I strongly disagree with it, primarily because the same people are doing both and are making the same mistakes ALREADY

What mistakes are those? Wayland is FIXING the mistakes of Xorg.

and what is worse, wayland is still not used by most projects anyway),

Wayland is used by far more projects than Mir. For most projects, there is really no need to support Wayland at this point, because it's not yet in the stage where it would be deployed for "consumer use" (except on mobile, where it's already being used in products that are being sold right now - which is again more than Mir can say). Furthermore, XWayland provides the compatibility for projects that don't support Wayland.

then Mir is xorg done right. I agree with Mark's notion of an API driven driver, rather than a collection of implemented protocols. In both cases implementations can vary but at least they can be externalized. One only has to look at the popularity of direct X and direct 3D APIs- if its design was anything like X or wayland, it is unlikely to have become popular. Apple's platform benefited from coco and openGL.

In Mir's case, implementations can not vary, because Canonical has clearly stated that if any competing Mir implementation appears, they will not bother maintaining compatibility with it. With Mir, it's canonical's implementation or nothing, and even that is designed purely for the needs of the Unity DE, not as a universal solution.

In contrast, Wayland is being developed collaboratively and for the use of all DE's, and promises stable API's for both compositors and clients.

[V10lator]

If wayland is considered an improvement over xorg ( and I strongly disagree with it, primarily because the same people are doing both and are making the same mistakes ALREADY and what is worse, wayland is still not used by most projects anyway), then Mir is xorg done right. I agree with Mark's notion of an API driven driver, rather than a collection of implemented protocols. In both cases implementations can vary but at least they can be externalized. One only has to look at the popularity of direct X and direct 3D APIs- if its design was anything like X or wayland, it is unlikely to have become popular. Apple's platform benefited from coco and openGL.

Please don't jump onto the FUD spreading bandwagon. When you say they are doing the same mistakes give examples or I think you're just repeating FUD from Marc (he told he believes wayland may copy mistakes from xorg but gave no proof - see how FUD works?). Every other FUD (wayland can't handle android drivers, wayland has buffer allocations incompatible with the way mobile devices work, ...) have already been debunked (wayland is already running on android hardware and did that even before Mir existed). There is no technical reason for mir. If you think otherwise proof me wrong.

We ALREADY have a fragmented "display server" platform, without Mir. Can you easily explain to anybody how the display stack works on linux ? And how many paths of direct and indirect rendering a client invocation can make ? And in how many places and libraries the implementation is scattered ?

Wayland was there to solve that.

I think that with an API driven approach that Mir is taking, the driver support will be better, as has been with windows (direct 3D, draw, X etc). Besides, it is unlikely to be affected by kernel upgrades or as is the case now, with (xorg) library changes.

The APIs are there: OpenGL (ES), for example. Wayland is designed to be highly flexible, use whatever API you want to render your stuff. Yes, in theory you could use the DirectX gallium state tracker for rendering. But you could also use some library (GTK, QT, cairo, ...) and it will just work. Now guess how you render on Mir... It looks to me like you're confusing rendering APIs and the display server.
But yes, wayland also has client side and server side APIs (how else should it make sure different programs (clients) can talk to different compositors/WMs (servers) ?). The difference between the Mir and wayland APIs is that waylands APIs are stable while Mir factors them around Unity (and Canonical already told they will break them whenever Unity demands that), so have fun using anything other than (the correct version of) Unity with (the correct version of) Mir.
Better driver support? Both, Wayland and Mir use EGL (or libhybris on android) to talk to the driver. So support will be equal.

[bkor]

A ready to use implementation of wayland where you only need to hookup your graphic driver into a mature enough interface that wouldn't require you to implement the whole wayland protocol from scratch for different types of hardware.

Wayland is an API specification. Weston started as a test to see if Wayland made sense, it changed into something you can rely on. I think your information regarding Weston is out of date (the shell enhancement stuff covered on Phoronix as well). Wayland/Weston is usable *now*, to a much higher degree than Mir is. There is no need for Mir. Only being able to find small pet peeves only makes that case.

You have ignored the level of support that Wayland has and that you can use it already, while at the same time saying it isn't mature. Very illogical, or maybe nice to have different levels of expectations: "having Mir is great as Wayland is not entirely mature!".. ehh, right.

[Apopas]

Actually you proved his point with this, you showed how that open source and open minded community can be petty and have difficulties accepting the fact that someone else has a different opinion.

And since when one person represents a community?

[Cerberus]

And since when one person represents a community?

It doesnt but there are more people like him, open any Linux portal that discusses Mir related news and then read the comments, you will find people that resort to name calling, and insults of all kinds. Not that different on some Linux forums either, Phoronix is a good example, anything related to Mir ends up in heated discussion, temper tantrums, often attacks on personal basis, accusations thrown from one side to another etc. It is becoming a phenomenon, majority of people dont care and discuss on a normal level, but some really love to show off how "tolerant" they are. Open Mir discussions on Phoronix and you will see the same people coming to them over and over again, always ready to use "arguments" to incite quarrels. I wont name them but they will be easy to detect. They pretend that they are not interested in Canonical and Ubuntu yet you will find them on every major Mir/Canonical thread. I am not saying they are any kind of majority in Linux community, but they are out there and they are very vocal, and my post was implying that not everything and everyone is peachy in the open source community that boasts on friendliness and open mindedness, as illustrated by the post I have quoted, nothing more and nothing less.

[bkor]

It doesnt but there are more people like him, open any Linux portal that discusses Mir related news and then read the comments

Being friendly or peachy shouldn't include pretending pretending that everything is great when it is not. I don't see the point of Mir, never understood the reason despite asking many times. You're suggesting that because I criticize the reason for Mir, that I'm not friendly/peachy. Not true at all.

The other thing that you're suggesting is that Mir is being criticized for no particular reason. That's a nice way to ignore the entire history of the incorrect statements about Wayland. Despite them retracting those, they're still being repeated again and again. As a result, you'll have other people refuting that over and over again.

Having well publicized people making claims that they have to send out corrections for or apologize after is not helping. The initial bit is repeated in loads of news stories. The apology/correction is not. What to you get: very critical comments and lack of trust.

[Cerberus]

Being friendly or peachy shouldn't include pretending pretending that everything is great when it is not. I don't see the point of Mir, never understood the reason despite asking many times. You're suggesting that because I criticize the reason for Mir, that I'm not friendly/peachy. Not true at all.

The other thing that you're suggesting is that Mir is being criticized for no particular reason. That's a nice way to ignore the entire history of the incorrect statements about Wayland. Despite them retracting those, they're still being repeated again and again. As a result, you'll have other people refuting that over and over again.

Having well publicized people making claims that they have to send out corrections for or apologize after is not helping. The initial bit is repeated in loads of news stories. The apology/correction is not. What to you get: very critical comments and lack of trust.

I didnt say Mir was not open for criticism, I was pointing to some people who make a sport of it and in very hateful ways and they dont even use Ubuntu. So what if Canonical made some erroneous statements? Will those people still criticize them for that 10 years from now? Its like beating a dead horse. When it comes to Canonical some people really love to nitpick and split hairs with everything they say, but strangely they dont criticize statements like that from Martin from KDE team that he will not support Mir for "political reasons", if Canonical said they wont support something for political reasons there would be a shitstorm that would not cease for ages. Double standards?

[TheBlackCat]

but strangely they dont criticize statements like that from Martin from KDE team that he will not support Mir for "political reasons",

Many KDE projects have strict policies against distro-specific solutions. These rules far predate Mir, or even Ubuntu.