Ubuntu 16.10 Isn't Going To Use Mir / Unity 8 By Default

[Tiger_Coder]

Right now I am using Kubuntu 16.04 after updating from Kubuntu 14.04(that was updated from 12.04, long run :P). The KDE 5 plasma here is totally unpolished and some obvious nasty bugs are popping here and there. It is like KDE4 starting all over again and like KDE4 many people after trying it once are leaving KDE. They did not learned from their mistake. But I guess Ubuntu does. It is a very big deal, first impression. So they should make the rough edges smooth before opening it to general public.

[Krysto]

Haha. I knew it! Canonical is such a joke. If it doesn't arrive even in 17.04 by default, then you can say goodbye to it appearing in 18.04 LTS by default, too.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Fedora has pretty much won already depending on what metric you use. Wayland is useable and stable on the current version of Fedora that's available to use now.

One can also install Ubuntu Gnome 16.04, install gnome-session-wayland package, choice Wayland in gdm, and voila...

[Xaero_Vincent]

Wayland is shaping up but there are still many bugs, random crashes back to the login manager, and a heavy dependence on XWayland for most apps to function. I doubt it will be viable for at least a couple more years.

For instance, GNOME on Wayland doesn't even yet support displaying icons on the desktop. Whats up with that?

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_t...owing_in_GNOME

That said, I did come up with a hack solution for icons on GNOME Wayland at least:

Screenshot: http://images.akamai.steamuserconten...37B1EAB6B97B2/

#!/bin/bash

# Name: waylandicons.sh
# Author: Xaero_Vincent
# Date: 5/3/2016
# Requires: GNOME 3.x, SpaceFM, Openbox, Maim, Wayland, XWayland, Xephyr
# Purpose: A script to workaround missing GNOME desktop icons on Wayland
# Usage: 'waylandicons.sh /path/wallpaper.jpg/png' 'screen resolution X' 'screen resolution Y'
# Example: ./waylandicons.sh '/usr\/share\/backgrounds\/gnome\/Road.jpg' '1600' '900' '2'
# Info: GNOME '.desktop' launcher shortcuts should use 'env DISPLAY=:0 command'
# Info: The 'resolution' arguments should be set the same as the current monitor resolution
# Info: The last argument specifies the number of icon columns needed

wallpaper=$1
resX=$2
resY=$3
columns=$4

rm /home/$USER/Pictures/waylandbackg.png
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri file:///$(echo $wallpaper | tr -d '\\')
sleep 2
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-options "stretched"
sleep 2

sed -i '17s/.*wallpaper.*/wallpaper=\'$wallpaper'/' /home/$USER/.config/spacefm/session
mkdir /home/$USER/icontmp
mv /home/$USER/Desktop/* /home/$USER/icontmp

Xephyr -title "Configuring Background..." -ac -noreset -screen $resX'x'$resY :1 &
spacefm --display=:1 --desktop &
sleep 2
DISPLAY=:1 maim -g $((125*$columns))x$(($resY-100))x0x64 /home/$USER/Pictures/waylandbackg.png
sed -i '17s/.*wallpaper.*/wallpaper=\/home\/'$USER'\/Pictures\/waylandbackg.png/' /home/$USER/.config/spacefm/session
sleep 2
mv /home/$USER/icontmp/* /home/$USER/Desktop
rmdir /home/$USER/icontmp
killall -9 Xephyr
killall -9 spacefm
sleep 2

Xephyr -title "Desktop Icons" -ac -noreset -screen $((125*$columns))x$(($resY-100)) :1 &
DISPLAY=:1 openbox-session &
spacefm --display=:1 --desktop &

[sarmad]

Well, Wayland is also still not the default. So, Canonical isn't the only one struggling. I remember the talk about Fedora 21 using Wayland by default!

[dh04000]

Will Cooke said it was mostly a quality/polish thing. It sounds like the plan is for the unity8 packages to be in the desktop meta package and installed automatically and will be available as an alternative session on the login screen, but unity7 will still be the default.

It's taken a long time for unity to get to unity7's current maturity. I think its a good plan to give unity8/mir/xmir/etc one (at least) cycle of usability and edge case testing before considering it as a default.

Thank you for responding!

So, what I suspected. It's a quality/polish thing. Canonical doesn't want to dump a turd on default.... but I think the opensource community is pretty used to DE's hitting default as beta releases (ie: kde 4, 5 gnome 3, Unity 7, ect). I'd rather they release early and let the community crash against the wall of bugs now (with this non-LTS) as that should speed up development and bug fixing. But, their distro, their choice I guess.

[Scias]

So now where are all the Ubuntu zealots who were shitting on Wayland for being too slow to come and believed every of Shuttleworth's words about Unity 8/Mir default for Ubuntu 14.04 ?

Years of useless PR later, Unity 8 on Mir didn't reach alpha-quality on desktop yet (while GNOME on Wayland is almost ready for daily use).

[cj.wijtmans]

I dont understand ubuntu. I am not a huge fan of systemds policy to absorb everything(doesnt seem very unix-like) but why does ubuntu feel the need to reinvent the wheel instead of helping development on wayland and systemd? They are just hurting themselves and linux in the end. Wayland could have been in a better state and now we have two pieces of software being slow to deliver.

[Mystro256]

Why not for F25?

Anyway, LOL for the Mir comedy.

Just a guess, but we'll see once F24 is out the door and f25 is in the planning stages.

[sjukfan]

Neither Wayland nor Mir will be defaults in the next couple of years so any guesses about which one will be first at the moment are nothing more than just guesses. It could as well be X12 or Räksmörgås. Stop with the distro politics and be happy there's more than one display server in development.