X.Org, Mir Plans Are Made Up For Ubuntu 13.10

[phoronix]

Phoronix: X.Org, Mir Plans Are Made Up For Ubuntu 13.10

There's a virtual Ubuntu Developer Summit taking place this week to begin drafting plans for Ubuntu 13.10. This morning the initial road-map for the X.Org / Mesa graphics and display stack were discussed for the next Ubuntu Linux release...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTM3MTc

[mark45]

Basically no use case for Mir in 13.10 on the desktop, which is to be expected.

[smitty3268]

Basically no use case for Mir in 13.10 on the desktop, which is to be expected.

Yeah, it will be X on the desktop with an experimental option to install Mir, just like other distros do with Wayland.

Nothing to see here...

[uid313]

Wayland

How about Unity 8 on Wayland?

[GreatEmerald]

How about Unity 8 on Wayland?

Canonical doesn't care about Wayland, and those who do care about it don't care about Unity.

[smitty3268]

How about Unity 8 on Wayland?

The whole point of Unity 8 and Mir is to become interdependent, so those 2 will always be together, and never run separately.

Wayland creates a spec to allow compatibility between different window managers, but Canonical is bypassing all that.

[Pajn]

The whole point of Unity 8 and Mir is to become interdependent, so those 2 will always be together, and never run separately.

Wayland creates a spec to allow compatibility between different window managers, but Canonical is bypassing all that.

FUD, Unity is implemented on top of Mir trough a Mir-Unity layer. It would be equally possible to implement Gnome, KDE or whatever in the same way.

Unity is a bit like Waylands Weston but for Mir (A BIT like, not exactly).

Also Unity on Wayland is also possible although Canonical isn't going to make that happen (why should they?), however someone interested in that
could. If it's done in a bazaar branch, have good code quality and is fully tested I'm sure that it eventually would be able to merge back to main.
However that ain't going happen. If someone ports Unity to Wayland they most probably would host it on git and only have a few tests.

[MartinN]

So basically sane decisions all around. Let's see what the Canonical bashers will come up with this time....

I don't think it's Canonical people want to bash - it's just this NIH attitude/syndrome that when eliminated, could result in serious progress for Linux on the desktop.... Imagine Intel OSL + the small team at Canonical in a concerted effort to bring a brand new display server (w/X atop it). Heck, I don't care even if they all did Mir instead of Wayland - it's the unnecessary division of labor and duplication of effort for a minuscule, more philosophical than anything else type of benefit, that people get disagreeable with.

[smitty3268]

FUD

No, i really do know what i'm talking about. While what you say is theoretically possible, what i'm saying is what will practically happen.

Unity is implemented on top of Mir trough a Mir-Unity layer. It would be equally possible to implement Gnome, KDE or whatever in the same way.

Yes, that's obviously possible, but it won't happen because Mir doesn't have a stable API which means all the other desktops could break at any second if Unity decides to change something.

And i think it's a pretty safe bet that's going to happen a LOT, at least when the system is first deployed. Maybe after a few years it will settle down and allow other compositers to safely run.

Unity is a bit like Waylands Weston but for Mir (A BIT like, not exactly).

It's a fair amount similar, yes, but a lot of it hasn't even been developed yet, and hasn't been specced out either. It's just going to be whatever is simplest for Canonical that meets Unity's needs, and those haven't all been worked through yet. I believe Unity is going to combine the window manager and desktop shell, for example, which other desktop shells do not do - Kwin and the Plasma shell are separate, for example, while Unity will do both together. Will that cause a problem? Who knows? I doubt even Canonical knows yet, because they haven't gotten that far into it yet.

Also Unity on Wayland is also possible although Canonical isn't going to make that happen (why should they?), however someone interested in that could.

Yes, Mir will probably nest on top of Wayland without much work. The reverse is probably true as well, except for the API stability issues previously mentioned that make it less likely. But i'm not sure there's much point in that. You could just as easily nest them on top of X, which is probably going to remain better supported across a wider array of hardware for some time anyway.