Canonical Shows Legacy X11 Apps Running On Mir With Unity 8

[Passso]

Tizen IVI, Jolla phones. Wayland is out there in the wild.

You're right, I meant "not in production for desktop".

[Meteorhead]

It has been a long time since I dug into the matter of display servers, compositors and what not, so please forgive me if certain terminology is misused in this comment.

Last time I checked on the matter I got the impression, that Mir along with Unity 8 aims on providing better interoperation than anything that were available when development started. By having both the display server and the compositor developed in house, their communication can be as seamless as it is on Windows. Please, only start flaming if you have ever written code to open a Window with an OpenGL canvas with native OS bindings. With WinAPI, it is as easy as 1-2-3, and with X and GLX, it is practically a joke. Ultimately it all boils down to how well the display server and the compositor play together. If you develop both in-house, you can come up with a far better API, than trying to be a generic, flexible and all library.

I took a glance at Wayland a long time ago, when I was looking to writing a small OpenGL windowing library, and thought Wayland will be my salvation out of XHell. Having implemented the Windows side in 200 LoC, when the X version reached 800, I abandoned it and went for Wayland. I peeked into the documentation, and very visible "WTF" signs were floating above my head. Why do I have to jump through fiery hoops to obtain a ****ing OpenGL context?!

If you ask me, Linux would do way better if there were some centrallized power behind it. Sure Linus has bad manners from time to time, but even with his unifying work, Linux kernel development could do better, and depending on the kernel is no joy. X is an archaic library, but the way out of this should not be a jack of all trades library, but something with strong cohesis. Linux is fragmented enough, and Ubuntu building an OSX for itself might not be the best choice, but building a unified software stack atop the current linux tools is simply not possible. I hope Mir will be complete in a timely manner and that they will make the best of it.

[tajjada]

I believe Mark Shuttleworth wants to be the Linus Torwalds of the higher level software stack. But thats just a personal impression and will hopefully never happen.

More like the Lennart Poettering of the higher level stack.
He sees that there is already something that works fine, but still wants to replace it with something of his own, which he thinks is better.

[Cerberus]

If you ask me, Linux would do way better if there were some centrallized power behind it. Sure Linus has bad manners from time to time, but even with his unifying work, Linux kernel development could do better, and depending on the kernel is no joy. X is an archaic library, but the way out of this should not be a jack of all trades library, but something with strong cohesis. Linux is fragmented enough, and Ubuntu building an OSX for itself might not be the best choice, but building a unified software stack atop the current linux tools is simply not possible. I hope Mir will be complete in a timely manner and that they will make the best of it.

There are too many big egos in the Linux community to ever make something "unified". I like what Canonical is trying to do, Snappy base with greater security, separation of OS and applications, snap packages that will enable always up to date applications (that does not mean debs are going away completely), sandboxed applications (X applications will work via LXC container), easier to upgrade and downgrade the OS, some form of rollback for the OS will exist too, convergence etc. Sure it is a big project but they are getting there. With Snappy base, snap packages (which are easy to build) and convergence Ubuntu will become more flexible, secure and with an overall better user experience.

But Linux world is no stranger to irony, remember how that guy from KDE refused Mir patches because of "political reasons"? But wait! Now we have Plasma Mobile project that ironically uses technologies from Ubuntu Touch (that runs their much hated Mir display server) and is based on Kubuntu. And they gave about ZERO credits to Canonical for that, see for yourself:

https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Mobile

https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Mobile/General

https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Mobile/FAQ

http://plasma-mobile.org/technology/

Admitting they adopted something from Canonical would cause too much butthurt for them it seems.

[mgraesslin]

remember how that guy from KDE refused Mir patches because of "political reasons"?

I assume you mean me. Well I don't know where this meme comes from that I refused Mir patches, because well there are none. There was never a patch which I could have refused. Also we don't refuse patches for "political reasons"

But wait! Now we have Plasma Mobile project that ironically uses technologies from Ubuntu Touch (that runs their much hated Mir display server) and is based on Kubuntu. And they gave about ZERO credits to Canonical for that, see for yourself:

Fun fact: we removed that "hated Mir display server" and replaced it by Wayland. Of course we gave credit to Ubuntu for the phone. Maybe not in the amount some people would have loved to see. But that's simple: we build that phone on the shoulders of giants. One of the giants we built upon is Ubuntu, others are Wayland, Qt, Linux, Android, libhybris, GNU, etc. etc. This is a team effort. If I would want to credit one project we built upon especially it would be libhybris. On the other hand it gives people something to complain about. That's nice.

[mgraesslin]

remember how that guy from KDE refused Mir patches because of "political reasons"?

That would be me! Awesome how this fact is spread given that I never refused Mir patches, because there are none which could be refused.

But wait! Now we have Plasma Mobile project that ironically uses technologies from Ubuntu Touch (that runs their much hated Mir display server) and is based on Kubuntu. And they gave about ZERO credits to Canonical for that, see for yourself:

Right as you say yourself it runs on Kubuntu as the reference platform. I'm pretty sure we mentioned it's running on Kubuntu and gave credit to that. Otherwise: it's not using Mir, but Wayland (even XWayland so X applications work). Yes, we might have provided more credit, but that applies to all the other projects we built upon.

But given the hatred comments of people like you I think it's a good idea to change to e.g. Debian as the reference platform.

[Krejzi]

Does Wayland run Steam?

You can run Steam on Wayland through XWayland, no problem. There are some visual issues here and there (probably due to using some crazy stuff) but it runs. The problem are the games themself. I could run Half Life, but it was unplayable due to missing pointer lock and containment feature in Wayland itself.

[F i L]

They want a display server. Wayland is designed not to have one. There's been speculation that you could use the Wayland protocol to build a display server, but noone has shown one yet, so it's just a hypothesis. Wayland is designed for client side buffer allocation, whereas Mir is designed for server side buffer allocation. That's as opposite as it gets. It's not obvious that using Wayland for this would've been beneficial.

In other words, there are two completely different approaches. Mir is a new display server built using the same underlying tools that Wayland uses. Wayland skips the display server altogether. One benefit of having a display server is that you can throttle apps so that, for instance, a video player is not allowed to paint video while the window is minimized and this memory and processing time can be given to other windows that are visible.

Wtf.. where are you getting this? You tell a guy to stop spreading rumors about Mir's CLA and then in the next comment you say things like this?

Wayland Display Servers are far from just "hypothesis".. I use one on Gnome Shell all the time and it's far beyond Mir, and soon to be much better with v3.18. Not to mention the other ones used for Tizen, Sailfish, etc.. Also, Wayland itself has nothing to do with client-side vs server-side buffer management (if I even understand what you're getting at by that).. that's entirely up to how the specific Wayland Server/Compositor handle Window Decorations (for instance KDE's Kwin's Wayland backend will handle decorations server-side last I heard, while Gnome's and Weston do it all client-side). And Wayland Compositors can be just as optimizationed as any Mir Compositor can. The only real difference is that one is designed to be an extensible protocol useful to more than just a single group's desktop environment. Please take your own advice and stop spreading rumors.

[AJSB]

You can run Steam on Wayland through XWayland, no problem. There are some visual issues here and there (probably due to using some crazy stuff) but it runs. The problem are the games themself. I could run Half Life, but it was unplayable due to missing pointer lock and containment feature in Wayland itself.

...and you just confirmed that NONE of the alternatives to X is ready....and possibly will never will for older (including AAA) games (i.e. ET:QW) that will NEVER be ported to Wayland or Mir.

I will keep using Linux distros that use X for as long as possible, thank you.


PS: ...and did i forgot to mention, again, almost ad nausea , that xWayland was considered a TEMPORARY solution and would be DITCHED sooner or later ?
That what was said in the begin of the project in some slides of a presentation.

[Cerberus]

That would be me! Awesome how this fact is spread given that I never refused Mir patches, because there are none which could be refused.

I found your exact quote:

"So far I always pointed out that I do not hate Canonical and that there are no political reasons. I'm not sure that I can say this again, after what happened. In future I will certainly dismiss technologies for political reasons, because it's from Canonical and I do not care anymore whether Canonical succeeds or fails."

I might be wrong about the patches back then, but you stated you will refuse Canonical's technologies for political reasons, that is your right but a good example at why Linux wont have a unified experience ever, too many political reasons in all camps. Now I ask you, if Canonical would now offer Mir patches for KDE would you accept it upstream? Or would they still be refused for political reasons?

Right as you say yourself it runs on Kubuntu as the reference platform. I'm pretty sure we mentioned it's running on Kubuntu and gave credit to that. Otherwise: it's not using Mir, but Wayland (even XWayland so X applications work). Yes, we might have provided more credit, but that applies to all the other projects we built upon.

But given the hatred comments of people like you I think it's a good idea to change to e.g. Debian as the reference platform.

I checked the links, Kubuntu is mentioned once with no reference to Canonical, I also didnt find any references to Canonical for technologies from Ubuntu Touch which are said (some of them) to be used for Plasma Mobile. I know it runs on Wayland.

It is not hatred it is biased behavior in a certain part of Linux community that bothers me, if Canonical took stuff from KDE for its mobile OS and didnt give any proper credit, there would be a shitstorm on the Internet and Canonical bashing would go on for months, Plasma Mobile took stuff from Ubuntu Touch and it is based on Kubuntu, with about zero credits given to Canonical, and the said part of the community doesnt care. See my point? Double standards. Canonical gets bashed for anything and everything, yet when others do the same they get away with it, nobody bashes them around. But it is not hatred, I have nothing against Plasma Mobile, the more open source platforms out there the better. I dont even care much about your credits to Canonical, but I took Plasma Mobile as a good example of something that would be severely criticized if done by Canonical yet others can do it and receive very little, if any, criticism.