MIR will be the new display server, and Unity will be ported to Qt

[Mikeb85]

Unless Canonical hired a whole bunch of devs away from Microsoft or Apple, I don't see this ending well. The move to QT is a good one, they should have done that from the beginning though. Mir? Reminds me of the space station. Not a good omen.

But what's even worse for Canonical is this: Ubuntu is not stable. I've had a ton of issues with both 12.04 and 12.10, and I have fairly standard hardware, and don't mess with things. They have no vendors for their smartphone and tablet OS yet. They have no major vendor for the desktop OS.

I'm typing this on openSUSE 12.3 right now. KDE 4.10 is great, and SUSE 12.3 is great. Fast and stable (on my Thinkpad). And it's not officially released yet. But already giving me less trouble than Ubuntu.

I'm afraid Ubuntu will more than likely underwhelm on every platform, if I were to place a wager that anything could rival Apple and MS, it would be that no desktop Linux will truly rival them, and the only mobile Linux operating system with a shot at the iOS/Android duopoly is Sailfish by Jolla. Desktop Linux is nothing more than a developer platform these days (and maybe a niche gaming OS in the future), and I think that will become more apparent as time goes by...

[VeeDubb]

Most software development isn't targeted for X, it is written using a particular toolkit such as GTK or QT.

But, don't GTK and QT toolkits save those headaches to the app developers? How many user apps talk directly to X?

Very true, and I stand corrected on that score. That said, I still see doom for Ubuntu as one of the two most likely outcomes. As for whether doom or glory is more likely, I still think the jury is out.

Wayland is ready but there are still no binary drivers for it (from nVidia and AMD)

And for MANY end users, myself included, this is an absolute deal breaker. In fact, this 'may' be one of the things that pushes Mir/Ubuntu to the forefront. If they're in talks with AMD and nVidia, they may be able to get working drivers out first. Of course, they still have several years of catch-up to do, including the aforementioned GTK/QT support.

[Paqman]

"A video by one of the Mir developers shows Unity running on Mir. But it's running Unity through an X Server via the "XMir" project. [...] XMir is to Mir as XWayland is to Wayland. [...] XMir is basically an in-session root-less X Server running atop Mir. This is how legacy X11 applications will continue to be supported by Mir and is the same approach that Wayland developers did for running X applications on their display server."

Source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTMxODQ


I'm no expert on the issue, and this is probably not the best way to phrase it, but perhaps you could say that what they really are demonstrating is an X emulator? In that case they are far from having a "working prototype".

Ah. That seems like a bit of a fudge then.

However, having X compatibility as an early milestone seems like a sensible thing to do.

I'm not quite so sure why there's such a lot of loyalty to Wayland from folks. Why does it matter if Canonical develops their own display server? Google did the same when they took a Linux base to make Chrome and Android, and Apple did the same for BSD/Darwin to make OS X. It seems like a new display stack is something several major software engineering companies have independently decided needs to be done. X is clearly not good enough, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of support behind Wayland yet either.

[georgelappies]

I too wonder what will become of Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, and Ubuntu Studio when Ubuntu makes the move to Mir. Not only that, what will become of the tons of Ubuntu-based distros out there, especially Linux Mint? I know Ubuntu will still support X for those apps that require it,but how long will it continue to support X before all those distros have to decide? Are they going to go with Mir as well? And that brings forth another question... will Mir support all the different desktop environments (GNOME, KDE, Xfce, LXDE, E17, Pantheon, Openbox, etc.) out there like X currently does? If it will, and there's enough legacy support for older hardware, older software, etc.... then there shouldn't be too much to worry about. But for now, there are far FAR more questions, lots of FUD, etc. regarding Ubuntu's decision to develop their own display server.

There are definitely some big changes ahead for all of the Linux community in light of this news... way bigger than even the implimentation of systemd in some of the big distros (i.e. Fedora and Arch). Wayland was already promising itself to be the next big thing, possibly as the replacement for X. That in itself was going to be a big step in the evolution of Linux. Now the problem is we have Canonical bringing out Mir, another display server thrown into the fray, making Linux even more fragmented than it already is. The problem is: When Mir does take off, where will software and hardware support development go and who will they favor? Will it lean more toward Ubuntu and thus Mir, will it lean toward Wayland if it does finally take off, or will it stick with X? The biggest questions as far as software development and hardware support will definitely be aimed straight at AMD and NVidia. Are they going to end up choosing a side, and thus dictate which direction the Linux community goes, or will it support multiple display servers? And in addition to that... will they still support older hardware on whatever display server they decide to favor? I know AMD already doesn't support their older hardware with their newest Linux drivers.

It'd be quite interesting to see what happens to the Linux community whenever Mir takes off. Though I do wonder:

What does Linus Torvalds think about all this?

Good post. Personally I hope that Mir does take off and that it is succesfull. Linux has to move on and not just keep trying to play catch-up when it comes to multimedia input / output. Seeing Canonical commit to starting this new technology is encouraging.

[georgelappies]

Ah. That seems like a bit of a fudge then.

However, having X compatibility as an early milestone seems like a sensible thing to do.

I'm not quite so sure why there's such a lot of loyalty to Wayland from folks. Why does it matter if Canonical develops their own display server? Google did the same when they took a Linux base to make Chrome and Android, and Apple did the same for BSD/Darwin to make OS X. It seems like a new display stack is something several major software engineering companies have independently decided needs to be done. X is clearly not good enough, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of support behind Wayland yet either.

+1 Rather then fighting those who attempt to inovate, join a side and make it happen.

[capink]

Unless Canonical hired a whole bunch of devs away from Microsoft or Apple, I don't see this ending well. The move to QT is a good one, they should have done that from the beginning though. Mir? Reminds me of the space station. Not a good omen.

There has been some hints in the past months that Ubuntu is not going to depend on Wayland. Yet, they delayed the annoucement until now, why? I think they did not want to make an announcement without being sure they can deliver. So they assembled a team to work on their new display server. And after some months of develoments, when they saw encouraging signs from their work, they went ahead and made the annoucement. I still think that April 2014 is very optimistic though.

[alexfish]

Our distro, our choice. Well, really Marks choice, as Ubuntu isn't a democracy.

Nor is this


Today we have a system based on so many layers , so your tying down the cpu time and development time to produce a result

Front end , user input .

get the info ,

render it to pixbuff using lib-a

take pixbuff-a and render it using lib-b

take pixbuff-b render it using lib-c

get root permision to render - ok

server gives permission to send pix-buff , ok , send pixbuff ,

Oops - Display Manager - forgot about this one - "also decides what you can render"

server then renders to the gpu -

gpu then renders to screen - What ?

[Dry Lips]

Here is an interesting article:


LightDM Caught Off-Guard By Mir, Plans For Wayland
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTMyNTg

[Sableyes]

Mir, something to be super excited about, a fresh new display server that may be better than Wayland. I imagine though every distro outside of Ubuntu will be to busy laying the hate on Canonical and in-fighting to make the move to Mir. Can anyone honestly imagine all the distro's saying 'Yeah lets use that new awesome display server 'made by canonical' that replaces X, which we all know badly needs replacing'.

[ZarathustraDK]

Mir, something to be super excited about, a fresh new display server that may be better than Wayland. I imagine though every distro outside of Ubuntu will be to busy laying the hate on Canonical and in-fighting to make the move to Mir. Can anyone honestly imagine all the distro's saying 'Yeah lets use that new awesome display server 'made by canonical' that replaces X, which we all know badly needs replacing'.

As it stands now that phrase might as well be "Yeah lets use that new awesome display server 'that can run games' that replaces X, which we all know badly needs replacing'.

It really is an even matchup, Ubuntu may be alone compared to the community, but they got numbers and amd/nvidia-support. Lots of stuff can happen that'll influence the outcome in either direction, although amd/nvidia switching allegiance is not one of them, as that would entail them bending to intels and red hats whims, as I understand it.