A Look Back At The Desktop & X.Org/Wayland/Mir Milestones Of Ubuntu

[TumultuousUnicorn]

So with that, Unity 8 (and presumably Mir) and Ubuntu Phone go the way of Ubuntu TV, Ubuntu for Android, Upstart, Ubuntu One, etc. It will be interesting to see where Ubuntu focuses on next

They plan to do a project and then to discontinue it, like all they already done.
Canonical is motivated by money, not by his community.

[bug77]

I dont get it, why permanently someone is trying so declare this or that DE dead or sh*t. Gnome is widely used, and so is Unity. Canonical stops Unity because it was made for convergence, and therefore for mobile devices. But mobile devices with Ubuntu do not stand a chance. Not because Ubuntu or Mir or Unity is bad, but because the whole mobile market is f*cked up. No small firm can compete there, and even less, if there is no open hardware, and too few user demanding it. And even big guy MS cant make a stand, there. And at some point, Canonical was too optimistic about the market environment, just like Jolla and others. So - no niche for Ubuntu phone: therefore no convergence, therefore no Unity and no Mir. Even if Canonical would have wanted/used Wayland, it would not been of any help for selling phones.

Hm, you'd think that if Unity was to be used on the desktop (among other things), it would be capable to stand on its own, regardless of the mobile situation.

[sverris]

I dont get it, why permanently someone is trying so declare this or that DE dead or sh*t. Gnome is widely used, and so is Unity. Canonical stops Unity because it was made for convergence, and therefore for mobile devices. But mobile devices with Ubuntu do not stand a chance. Not because Ubuntu or Mir or Unity is bad, but because the whole mobile market is f*cked up. No small firm can compete there, and even less, if there is no open hardware, and too few user demanding it. And even big guy MS cant make a stand, there. And at some point, Canonical was too optimistic about the market environment, just like Jolla and others. So - no niche for Ubuntu phone: therefore no convergence, therefore no Unity and no Mir. Even if Canonical would have wanted/used Wayland, it would not been of any help for selling phones.

[dungeon]

Flatpak and snappy is next... Please make a desicion what the Standard should be...

And AppImage You don't make something standard, but standard makes itself by success rate.

Standards are defined by Microsoft and Google majorly EXE and APK Basically any company is free to define their standards, so you push something and if it succeed that became the standard, whatever that is

we do Not need multiple solution For the same Problem

That is impossible Imagine we start that right from the Linux kernel itself, one official upstream kernel build for all distros around Problem solved isn't it? That way we will have GPU drivers from all the vendors let alone AMD blob even VIA or any really or you have problem with that

He, he, but that is the main feature of opensource and GNU/Linux Forking things and adopting things as you need/like is its main feature.

[bug77]

What are you talking about?
I use Windows 7 most of the time and I have shortcuts on the desktop of all the programs that I use frequently.
It's really easy and very fast to open every program that I want using the mouse.
I don't think you can beat me in efficiency by pressing the windows key an typing a few letters.
And what's the point of searching for a program every time you want to use it?
I use the keyboard only if I want to use a program that I don't frequently use and I need to search for it.
I find it more logical an efficient to to put a frequently used program's shorcut on desktop or taskbar.
But I get it, Gnome 3 is so advanced that it doesn't allows you to do that, it's not the "Gnome 3" way.

He's talking about the fact the mouse can only issue one command per second (or so) at most. Using the keyboard, if you know your shortcuts, you can easily triple that. It's why there's no mouse support in Street Fighter or Tekken

[dungeon]

I don't see nothing wrong with this Desktop metaphor approach even today Panel, start button, icons on Desktop, console, web browser, file manager... fine to me


Why i like this also is that majority of people are already familiar with this metaphor and you don't need to go around and to change peoples mind

And i mean The Desktop, not special devices even laptops someone wanna be like a tablet, tablet like a laptop, phone as Desktop, Desktop as phone, tablet as phone, embeded as phoned Desktop, etc ... shit only became true when people push this kind of convergance to solve all the problems, it is impossible to solve all that with one hit

[Danny3]

On the contrary - if I'm reaching for a mouse at all, efficiency is already wasted. On both Windows 7 and Gnome 3, I work exactly the same way - hit the Windows key, and type the first couple of letters of the program name. Far easier than taking hands off the keyboard to navigate menu hierarchies...

What are you talking about?
I use Windows 7 most of the time and I have shortcuts on the desktop of all the programs that I use frequently.
It's really easy and very fast to open every program that I want using the mouse.
I don't think you can beat me in efficiency by pressing the windows key an typing a few letters.
And what's the point of searching for a program every time you want to use it?
I use the keyboard only if I want to use a program that I don't frequently use and I need to search for it.
I find it more logical an efficient to to put a frequently used program's shorcut on desktop or taskbar.
But I get it, Gnome 3 is so advanced that it doesn't allows you to do that, it's not the "Gnome 3" way.

[Trevelyan]

Wayland != Weston/LibWeston != Kwin/QT != Mutter/GTK != Enlightenment/ELF

Wayland is a protocol definition, and not code in any language. So no C vs. C++ vs. ObjC vs. C#

Weston is a Wayland compositor implemented in C built on LibWeston. LibWeston (C code) could be reused by other Wayland compositors, but is _not_ used by the "big 3".

KWin is a Wayland compositor implemented in C++ built on QT/KDE-Foundations. i.e. Object Orientated

Mutter is a Wayland compositor implemented in (I assume) C built on GTK

E's compositor is also (I assume) implemented in C built on EFL

The are other compositor implementations, even in other OO languages, but I believe most of the smaller outfits eventually use LibWeston or QT's compositor lib.

NOTE: There is no "Wayland Server" (like X11 has) that the compositors connect or speak with. Clients connected directly to the compositor via the wayland protocol and the compositor has to deal with Input and Output hardware all on its own. (Usually via LibInput and GBM/DRI/EGL)

[devius]

Very nice retrospective!

I think the only thing missing from the article is the Ubuntu Edge crowdfunding campaign. That was pretty big news.

I actually like Unity a lot and will miss it, but I also like Gnome, and I'm used to using different DEs all the time, so I can adapt pretty easily.

[Goingdown]

I really miss original Brown color palettes of older Ubuntus. They were really nice. I never liked the new purple things.

I have been using Ubuntu on and off style from the beginning... Gnome 2, Awesome, Evilvm, Gnome 3 have had my favourite window managers. Currently I am running Fedora 25 on my work laptop, Opensuse tumbleweed on my home laptop and Ubuntu Gnome on my home desktop.