Unity 8 Is Now Available For Testing In Ubuntu 13.10

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Unity 8 Is Now Available For Testing In Ubuntu 13.10

A very early version of the Unity 8 user-interface for phones and mobile devices is now available for testing on Ubuntu 13.10 without needing to use any special package repositories or other complicated steps...

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

[entropy]

The Unity 8 mode for traditional desktops isn't also yet in a good state with
Canonical developers being very focused on the mobile experience at this point.

The desktop part will probably mean additional work.
So far it seems Canonical needs to maintain the EGL platform downstream.

The request to add the MIR EGL platform to upstream Mesa by raof did not receive a single reply.
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archive...ly/042133.html
All other patch sets in July did.

[Malizor]

The request to add the MIR EGL platform to upstream Mesa by raof did not receive a single reply.
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archive...ly/042133.html
All other patch sets in July did.

I find it quite strange.
I was expecting either no reply at all or a normal review process, but not "reviews on the driver patches but nothing on mesa patches".
Especially when mesa patches are the only "merge-able" (not draft) ones and that a big part of them (14/15) could also be useful for the Wayland platform (AFAIK).

Maybe there were some chats about it on IRC?

[Ishayu]

Does that sound like what I think it does? Sabotaging Mir?

Oh man, this community...

[LinuxGamer]

Does that sound like what I think it does? Sabotaging Mir?

Oh man, this community...

na Mir's trying to Sabotage Desktop Linux
any ways it's not going to be hard for them to maintain downstream so why put it into the Main Code Base at all when it's going to be Mir Only if you even look at the patches you can see that most if not all of them are going to be Mir/Ubuntu only and has a Canonical ? on it

[entropy]

I find it quite strange.
I was expecting either no reply at all or a normal review process, but not "reviews on the driver patches but nothing on mesa patches".
Especially when mesa patches are the only "merge-able" (not draft) ones and that a big part of them (14/15) could also be useful for the Wayland platform (AFAIK).

Maybe there were some chats about it on IRC?

Don't know.

As for the driver patches - just a guess:

IIRC, only developers employed by intel and AMD replied.
It might be of strong interest of those companies to make Mir run properly on their hardware.
The motivation can be different for the rest of the Mesa community.

Sabotaging Mir:

Don't think so. There are good reasons not to include those patches upstream and leave it to
Canonical to maintain it downstream. I agree that it would be definitely nicer to reply.
But even without the "emotional issues" in this debate, the answer would probably be "no way" - in a kind way.

[mrugiero]

Just to comment (I didn't want to look for the older threads) that XMir is in far better shape right now. They released a new version a few days ago and both speed and memory use issues (the latter were marginal, anyway) are gone, and the extra cursor as well. It still logs key strokes (which is not good), and text input on a text editor still show artifacts.

As for Unity on the desktop, it makes sense to focus on the phone version since this will be the first to be officially released.

On sabotaging, that's not what it looks like to me. It's just a "we don't care about your in-house solutions". Sabotaging would be, for example, making it check if it runs on Mir to make it stop working (I heard Unity checks if running on other distros, Arch people had to remove this code for obvious reasons to use it). As long as: they are the ones maintaining the code (and they should be, since they are the only ones using it), there isn't anything on upstream stopping it from being applied or making it unnecessarily harder, and obviously it being Canonical only, there is no point in merging upstream. Not for mesa, not for Canonical, even (except if they want others to maintain it for them, which would be just nonsense, they choose to go on their own, it's their responsibility), they can be maintained downstream. It's extremely impolite and unkind from mesa devs to not answer (they should just tell them they don't care, if they don't), but seriously calling it a sabotage is ridiculous, IMO. Actually taking the time of reading the code and making comments on its quality (it takes time to make insightful comments, since the obvious are usually spotted by the one who commits the patch before it's sent), on the other hand, is something they have no need to do if they think it shouldn't be merged for being distro specific; still, if that's the case someone should answer the mail telling them. The community doesn't need to lose time on Canonical's (or anyone else that doesn't really care about working with the community) whims.

[mrugiero]

if you even look at the patches you can see that most if not all of them are going to be Mir/Ubuntu only

Well, that's the point of those patches: adding support for Mir, not implementing any feature on mesa. That's why I wouldn't count it as an actual contribution upstream until (if) some other distro shows interest on Mir.

has a Canonical ? on it

Is there anything wrong with that? Other commits come with $AUTHOR ? on it.

[blackout23]

Someone should just fork the Unity repo and make it a wayland compositor.
That would troll the shit out of them.

[Malizor]

Someone should just fork the Unity repo and make it a wayland compositor.
That would troll the shit out of them.

You can turn Mir into a Wayland compositor. This is even suggested on the project home page.