More Details On UBports' Plans For Unity, Mir & Anbox

[GizmoChicken]

I think things turned out how they should. Mir would have caused unnecessary fragmentation even if the two display server technologies are similar. Unity 7 for Xorg and Unity 8 for Wayland should live on as forks and ported to as many distributions as possible. Anbox is exciting as it appears similar to Chrome OS's new Android layer...

Agree 100%. I'll just add that I'd like to see Unity 8 for Wayland eventually return to Ubuntu as its default desktop environment.

it appears Google has no interest in opening that technology up to conventional Linux distributions nor even Chromium OS (last I checked).

I'm not quite certain what you mean by "opening" the technology. But ARC++, which is the technology that allows Android apps to run on ChromeOS, is almost entirely open source. I say "almost" because, not surprisingly, the Android container that Google uses includes proprietary bits that, for example, allow access to Google Mobile Services. But the remaining components of ARC++ could be used with a container based on AOSP, and so, according to a Google dev, "there's nothing stopping people from implementing this approach elsewhere." In fact, as you point out, Anbox uses an approach that is very similar to ARC++.

[pal666]

On the other hand, it is 2017 and mutter can't do SSD right.

in 2017 right way to do ssd is to do csd

[pal666]

it's not fun, i expected to hear they will join forces with devuan

[skierpage]

Unity 7 for Xorg and Unity 8 for Wayland should live on as forks and ported to as many distributions as possible.

Nice use of passive voice there. Who exactly is going to do this work? It sounds like about 5,000 person hours. Ubuntu couldn't get Unity for desktops shipping after 4 years of paid work!

I wish UBPorts and Yunity the best. If they can cooperate with Plasma Mobile on common stack infrastructure (convergence apps built with QML running on Qt components on Wayland) it could help.

The sticking point in all these projects is the terribly limited set of supported mobile hardware. If only Google would demand open source drivers and firmware from all hardware vendors or it doesn't get into reference devices...

[KellyClowers]

For those who want a good Easter laugh about the sad state of KDE/Wayland just look up that Kwin dude on G+. It is 2017 and Kwin cant do Wayland or CSD right.

CSD is a sin to be avoided at all costs

[TheBlackCat]

Yeah, Mutter should apologize for not supporting obsolete crap smelling like the nineties .. How dare they move on like the rest of the industry? /sarcasm

You mean move backwards to the old windows 3.1 way of doing things.

[TheBlackCat]

It is 2017. All platforms use CSD.

Most GTK DEs don't even use CSD. But using SSD puts the user in control instead of the application developer, and that goes against the GNOME philosophy.