Trying Out Unity 8 + Mir On Ubuntu 17.04

[Cerberus]

To launch Firefox and other X applications you need to use XMir manually at this moment, as for Unity 8 it progressed a lot within the past year and there is still more than a year until 18.04 LTS, I believe they can polish it to be ready, but I have more doubts about Mir, without proprietary driver support you cant use it as default, though using the term default is a bit misleading, Fedora ships Wayland as default but many people need proprietary drivers and even with open source drivers it is not working properly for all people so its hardly a true default experience, more like half way there and only for certain users. I believe Unity 8 and Mir will be "default" for 18.04 LTS pretty much in the same way Fedora made Wayland default, if your open source drivers work fine and you are ok with using only open source drivers then you can use it as default, otherwise you will choose the second preinstalled option with Unity 7 and X.org or Unity 8 on X.org if it can run on that.

[JPFSanders]

Jaw on the floor literally... after all the years this is being in development this is all they have to show? really? what is this a joke? this is even worse than wayland, and wayland is no fun party either (although it is a bit more complete imho).

What a joke.

[A-Singh]

That what happens when we reinvent the wheel, it seems not usable for users.
The double toolbars is ugly, and the look of black toolbar proves Mir is a proof-of-concept. I don't talk about the rest.

Oh, yes, writing a new protocol was easier, why they should use Wayland? Too easy bro, ho ho.
Please, let's continue yours projects Canonical, alone, staying in your own world, that's too funny.

[/Hater_post]

The double toolbars aren't intentional. Also, Mir is a display server not a protocol.

[jacob]

The double toolbars aren't intentional. Also, Mir is a display server not a protocol.

That doesn't matter, the point is to always have something to hate Canonical for. It used to be that Ubuntu was evil because it was based on Debian, then because it used upstart and not systemd, then because it moved to systemd, now because it has mir and not wayland... *IF* mir proves a total donkey it will be Evil Canonical getting what they deserve for daring not using Holy Wayland at the first place; *IF* on the other hand Unity 8/Mir turns out to be a great desktop and becomes seamlessly adopted by current Ubuntu users, it will be Evil Canonical standing in Wayland's way with their "illegitimate" Mir. With some people, it's stack I win, face you lose.

[Delgarde]

That doesn't matter, the point is to always have something to hate Canonical for. It used to be that Ubuntu was evil because it was based on Debian, then because it used upstart and not systemd, then because it moved to systemd, now because it has mir and not wayland... *IF* mir proves a total donkey it will be Evil Canonical getting what they deserve for daring not using Holy Wayland at the first place; *IF* on the other hand Unity 8/Mir turns out to be a great desktop and becomes seamlessly adopted by current Ubuntu users, it will be Evil Canonical standing in Wayland's way with their "illegitimate" Mir. With some people, it's stack I win, face you lose.

Well, there's some truth to that... a lot of the criticism is somewhat less than rational.

But with Mir, at least, it's largely earned. And it's nothing to do with the merits of Mir vs Wayland - it's about the actions of Canonical when they launched it. When they abruptly switched from being enthusiastic Wayland backers to running their own competing project, it surprised everyone, but that wasn't the problem. What *was* a problem was that they tried to justify their decision by making a bunch of demonstrably false claims about supposed deficiencies in Wayland. Unsurprisingly, that sort of backstabbing - from a company everyone thought was a big Wayland supporter - upset a lot of people...

And so there's a certain amount of satisfaction in seeing their pet project drag on, still nowhere near production-ready several years later...

[SpyroRyder]

The shame is that Unity 8 as a desktop doesn't look terribly designed, just that the technology behind it (mir) isn't working well. If they'd gone with Wayland and just written a wayland compositor (or resused one) they'd possibly be much further along and may even have a great functioning desktop to go with it

[Bleep]

As a user of Ubuntu Touch, this all looks very familiar.
And it's good ( performance aside) on a phone. A touchscreen is a clunky input device and a chunky interface makes it more usable.
Putting that interface on a device with a keyboard and mouse though is the kind of thing that looks good in a promo video, but gets frustrating the moment you try to actually use it. Is Canonical's UI design team comprised of people who use nothing but phones and/or are graphic designers just wanting to make something pretty to put in their portfolio?

[jacob]

Well, there's some truth to that... a lot of the criticism is somewhat less than rational.

But with Mir, at least, it's largely earned. And it's nothing to do with the merits of Mir vs Wayland - it's about the actions of Canonical when they launched it. When they abruptly switched from being enthusiastic Wayland backers to running their own competing project, it surprised everyone, but that wasn't the problem. What *was* a problem was that they tried to justify their decision by making a bunch of demonstrably false claims about supposed deficiencies in Wayland. Unsurprisingly, that sort of backstabbing - from a company everyone thought was a big Wayland supporter - upset a lot of people...

And so there's a certain amount of satisfaction in seeing their pet project drag on, still nowhere near production-ready several years later...

Certainly it's more about Wayland backers/enthusiasts' feelings than anything else. It's interesting, but totally unsurprising, that many of the most vocal Mir haters are also banging like mad against systemd on the grounds that supposedly we must have a "choice" between a zillion of incompatible and variously defective init systems, but for some reason developing a display server is Verboten. I remember when Canonical initially announced they would move to Wayland, some were roaring that it was a "betrayal" of Xorg, of Linux and whatnot. That point of view is still somewhat popular among BSDers, mind you.

[TumultuousUnicorn]

We're not calling them evil... we're calling them incompetent. Their decision to try to do everything themselves instead of working with the wider community is hurting them - they announced back in 2013 that they'd be shipping Unity 8 on Mir as default within a year, but several years later, it's obvious that they're still at least another year away from being ready. And these are the same people who rejected Wayland in part because it was progressing too slowly...

Yes, that's what I wanted to say. But without any doubt, you say that better than me.

[bitman]

All this hate... Why do you people even care? Do you want to be ubuntu user but mir will be a show-stopper? Probably not. They are free to do their own thing. Everyone is praising how awesome linux is because it is all about choice. Now you are given more choice and you go like "omg nooo choice nooooooo". Wayland having some competition is a good thing. Do not believe me? Remember how firefox (just like any other browser) sucked in pre-chrome era? When chrome came around all of the sudden firefox started improving in giant leaps. Same thing is happening to gcc due to clang being a serious competition. Xorg did not have a serious competitior. Add that to all the legacy and it turned into that sad ball of code that somehow and somewhat works. Really we should just mind our own business because it is not our place to tell what company XYZ should do.