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Mark Shuttleworth Talks Up The Phone's Bottom Edge On Ubuntu

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  • #21
    Gestures

    You need a visual que. An icon should be present somewhere on the screen to represent the object necessary to enable the program that needs to be executed.

    Why do you think there are so many wrecks involving distracted drivers?

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    • #22
      Originally posted by cynical View Post
      Actually, it's not. If you look at the history of init systems Upstart came before systemd

      In the case of replacing X, Wayland came first.
      That's entirely beside the point. I'm talking about the situation right now.
      You said:
      they put a lot of work into it but were willing to sacrifice it once they realized the rest of the community was going in a different direction because they can get the same functionality from systemd

      So what's different with Mir? They put a lot of work into it (check), the rest of the community is going in a different direction (check), they can get the same functionality from Wayland (check).

      The main reason they don't want to adopt Wayland is not because there's anything wrong with it, they just don't like the fact that shell behavior is defined by the protocol.
      It's not. The protocol is extensible, there's nothing they can do with Mir that they couldn't do with Wayland. Protocol not support some Unity-specific feature they need? Write an extension. Simple as that. It's a great system, because if it turns out the extension is something that would benefit other DE's, it can be absorbed into the main protocol. If the extension is something that no one else has use for, they can just keep using it as Unity-specific extension, and since no one else has use for it, it won't cause any compatibility problems either.

      They want something that is more flexible; My assumption is because they fear being limited in some way.
      Wayland is as flexible as you can get. You don't get more flexibility by reimplementing everything yourself, making yourself incompatible with standards everyone else uses. All you get is isolation, reinvention of the wheel, reimplementation of things that shouldn't have to be reimplemented in the first place. A lot of pointless repetition of work for no real gain. In other words: wasted resources. Which is something a small company like Canonical definitely should not do. If they were as big as Google or Apple, I could understand how Mir would make sense for them. I still wouldn't like it, but I'd understand it. As it is, they're just shooting themselves in the foot.

      I'm not going to pretend to know exactly what they are concerned about, and they could certainly be wrong, but since they clearly have competent people working there (just look at the Debian mailing list debate, everyone who commented on Upstart praised the code quality even when voting for SystemD) I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they know what is best for their platform. I think the init system situation demonstrates that they are willing to work with the community but not if they think it will hinder what they are trying to accomplish.
      I feel like this is a good time to quote again my friend, Past Mark Shuttleworth:



      Originally posted by Shuttleworth 2010
      We considered and spoke with several proprietary options, on the basis that they might be persuaded to open source their work for a new push, and we evaluated the cost of building a new display manager, informed by the lessons learned in Wayland. We came to the conclusion that any such effort would only create a hard split in the world which wasn?t worth the cost of having done it. There are issues with Wayland, but they seem to be solvable, we?d rather be part of solving them than chasing a better alternative. So Wayland it is.
      Those were good reasons. That actually made sense. So what's changed now?

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      • #23
        Originally posted by dee. View Post
        That's entirely beside the point. I'm talking about the situation right now.
        You said:
        they put a lot of work into it but were willing to sacrifice it once they realized the rest of the community was going in a different direction because they can get the same functionality from systemd

        So what's different with Mir? They put a lot of work into it (check), the rest of the community is going in a different direction (check), they can get the same functionality from Wayland (check).
        What do you mean, "entirely besides the point"? You said that, "It's the exact same situation...", and I'm pointing out how the situations are different. If systemd had come before Upstart, Upstart would probably have never existed. It was only created to fill a need that wasn't being filled by anything else at the time, so when Debian (their parent distro) clearly decided in favor of systemd, they simplified things for themselves by following them. Clearly, Wayland already existed before Mir. So logically, the simple route would be to follow the rest of the community and adopt it. Since they aren't doing that, clearly they think it won't fit their needs in one way or another.

        Originally posted by dee
        Wayland is as flexible as you can get. You don't get more flexibility by reimplementing everything yourself, making yourself incompatible with standards everyone else uses. All you get is isolation, reinvention of the wheel, reimplementation of things that shouldn't have to be reimplemented in the first place. A lot of pointless repetition of work for no real gain. In other words: wasted resources. Which is something a small company like Canonical definitely should not do. If they were as big as Google or Apple, I could understand how Mir would make sense for them. I still wouldn't like it, but I'd understand it. As it is, they're just shooting themselves in the foot.
        Well, they don't agree.

        Originally posted by dee
        Those were good reasons. That actually made sense. So what's changed now?
        That blog post is dated November 2010, so basically 2011. It's now 2014. In it, Shuttleworth estimated that Ubuntu would run Wayland within a year, and that it would take five years to really move the ecosystem. To quote from the blog post:

        Progress on Wayland itself is sufficient for me to be confident that no other initiative could outrun it, especially if we deliver things like Unity and uTouch with it.
        And yet now Mir exists. So clearly within the last few years they realized they were wrong, and that it won't fit their requirements. How can you say otherwise?

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        • #24
          Originally posted by cynical View Post
          Since they aren't doing that, clearly they think it won't fit their needs in one way or another.
          And? That's pretty much like saying "my dog just peed on the carpet so clearly he felt that he had to pee".

          Point is, they haven't given any valid reasons for Mir. They're clearly not doing what is best for their users.

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          • #25
            Originally posted by dee
            And? That's pretty much like saying "my dog just peed on the carpet so clearly he felt that he had to pee".
            No, that's exactly what I'm saying.


            Originally posted by dee. View Post
            Point is, they haven't given any valid reasons for Mir. They're clearly not doing what is best for their users.
            How could you possibly know that? You don't know why they decided to make Mir, and your opinion that they should have went with Wayland is irrelevant. Unless you work for Canonical I don't see how you are in any position to say what is best for them. Originally, I hated their decision to create Unity. It was buggy and slow and I couldn't imagine why they would actually waste resources on it when they could have just improved Gnome. Several iterations later, I prefer it to every other desktop environment out there.

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            • #26
              Originally posted by cynical View Post
              No, that's exactly what I'm saying.
              So you're saying nothing at all.

              How could you possibly know that? You don't know why they decided to make Mir, and your opinion that they should have went with Wayland is irrelevant. Unless you work for Canonical I don't see how you are in any position to say what is best for them. Originally, I hated their decision to create Unity. It was buggy and slow and I couldn't imagine why they would actually waste resources on it when they could have just improved Gnome. Several iterations later, I prefer it to every other desktop environment out there.
              Flawed comparison. Desktop environment is not the same thing as a display server. Mir is already causing problems and waste of resources.

              Current desktop environments don't matter all that much. You can take any software (as long as it's well developed) and run it on any DE, without any kind of compatibility magic. There's no real problem in developing a new DE, as long as it keeps compatibility with all of the existing software.

              It's entirely different with Mir. Just wait until we're in a situation where we have 3 different display systems in use in different distros - Mir, X and Wayland. We could have had a strong Linux desktop, finally providing a proper competition to the proprietary alternatives. Instead we get fragmentation and incompatibility. Think of small software developers, wanting to migrate their software from windows to Linux - do you think this mess of 3 competing standards is going to seem enticing to them? Easier to just stay with Windows. With Wayland/XWayland, things would have been simple, everyone could have collaborated - Canonical could have been part of building a great future for the Linux desktop. Instead, they build an isolated island around them, use an inhouse solution that is incompatible with everyone else.

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