Mir vs. Wayland & effect on Linux "Ecosystem"?

[Gyokuro]

Thanks, guys. I believe the dependencies for both will probably be satisfied in the repos. But I'm just wondering how it will work practically. Both Mir and Wayland are going to completely take the place of X, right? And right now, X is started before LightDM, GDM, KDM, or whatever, right? So if you install Ubuntu, it's going to start Mir before it loads up LightDM, where you choose your Desktop Environment. So then Mir is already started, and what happens if you choose Gnome Shell?

They're going to have to think these things through, or it's going to be a major mess. Having choices is only good when it's not detrimental to the overall experience.

They will replace X when they are ready and distributions use them not sooner - X will stay for a very long time and I will repeat what I have already wrote in the forums - MIR is only Canonicals requirment to bring on their vision of unity everywhere. Now to your question - yes in case of X11 but you forgot the kernel modules (nvidia, intel, amd driver). In case of MIR: you need XMIR do rune GNOME which is not there or Canonical have to send MIR patches to Gnome devs and they have to accept them - also not there and I think very unlikeley that this will happen in the next time as Gnome devs already have wayland patches in and the roadmap is public that they go the wayland road. Nothing secret here, nothing new and I'm not aware that somebody is working on a MIR/wayland backend server (checked the released MIR code) and Mir/Spec Wiki (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mir/Spec?act...direct=MirSpec). In my opinion the rest of projects could work relaxed and make sane technical decisions and if MIR fails there are other routes to go and they are already available.

[tartalo]

I don't have a clue about how that could be done, but I love to speculate:

KDE is considering replacing the Display Manager, KDM probably won't make it in the transition to Wayland. The alternatives they are considering are LightDM and SDDM: http://aseigo.blogspot.com.es/2013/0...kspaces-2.html

LightDM is Canonical's work and it's integration with KDE was going quite well until the Mir announcement, this is what the KDE front-end maintainer said: http://www.sharpley.org.uk/blog/lightdm-mir-wayland

It's now clear that Canonical won't add Wayland support to LightDM themselves but, according to Aaron Seigo, LightDM developers are open for a collaboration, the reticence comes from some KDE developers and downstreams: the trust in Canonical has suffered, there are some license issues...

On the other hand, SDDM is written in QML and it's very promising but it needs a lot of work, so the decision is not easy.

If KDE decided to use LightDM and join efforts with Canonical, there might be a little hope for a sane solution for Wayland/Mir coexistence in the same installation. However this is only interesting for Ubuntu users that use Unity plus another DE, and this collective is probably not a priority for anyone involved in the decision.

[JDShu]

Thanks, guys. I believe the dependencies for both will probably be satisfied in the repos. But I'm just wondering how it will work practically. Both Mir and Wayland are going to completely take the place of X, right? And right now, X is started before LightDM, GDM, KDM, or whatever, right? So if you install Ubuntu, it's going to start Mir before it loads up LightDM, where you choose your Desktop Environment. So then Mir is already started, and what happens if you choose Gnome Shell?

They're going to have to think these things through, or it's going to be a major mess. Having choices is only good when it's not detrimental to the overall experience.

Hats off to you for illustrating the problem so clearly, I was having trouble explaining that "choice is not always better".

I think worst case scenario, you can run Shell in X mode, and then run that on XMir. Ridiculous, but it would work.

[forrestcupp]

If KDE decided to use LightDM and join efforts with Canonical, there might be a little hope for a sane solution for Wayland/Mir coexistence in the same installation. However this is only interesting for Ubuntu users that use Unity plus another DE, and this collective is probably not a priority for anyone involved in the decision.

I'll bet there are a lot of people who install Ubuntu and then use a different DE. I know there are a lot of people who like to be able to choose from several different DEs, and Ubuntu is the obvious starting point. If it doesn't get worked out, then Ubuntu will no longer be the obvious starting point, and I think they'll suffer for it. But I'm sure it will be a while before they just switch over, and I'm sure they'll figure all of this out before making such a drastic move in a release.

In my opinion, going rogue with a replacement for X is about as ridiculous as switching to the HURD kernel.

Hats off to you for illustrating the problem so clearly, I was having trouble explaining that "choice is not always better".

I think worst case scenario, you can run Shell in X mode, and then run that on XMir. Ridiculous, but it would work.

I just wonder about this because I'm currently using Gnome Shell, and for various reasons, I like installing it from Ubuntu rather than installing one of the vanilla Gnome variants. Hopefully if it ends up being your worst case scenario, they'll come up with a way to automate all of that so that the average user doesn't have to mess with that kind of headache.

[lykwydchykyn]

Of course it may be perfectly possible to run X, Wayland, and Mir simultaneously on the same box in different VT's. I'm not saying it will be, but considering that most of the code involved hasn't even been written yet, who knows?

[neu5eeCh]

RedHat makes some of the most used Linux's around seeing how redhat had a Revenue of $1.13 billion 2012 vs canonica's Revenue around $30 million a year + RedHat is a major Developer of Linux Kernel Drivers Packages etc
Redhat Also Gives the most to Linux Community as well http://community.redhat.com/ if it was not for them Linux may have been a dead fish in the water a long time ago

Ya'll confuse revenue with relevance. When anybody without tape on their glasses knows who RedHat is, when we see a Redhat or Suse Tablet or smart phone, then I might start thinking you're even remotely correct.

They're just not relevant to anyone outside of the Linuxverse. Steam didn't didn't come to "linux" because they were all het up about Redhat's popularity on the desktop. And SUSE who? They almost went down the drain not too long ago.

When Ubuntu says they're going with MIR, folks sit up and take notice. If Redhat decided they were going to use [insert acronym], so what? What's important here is where third party software developers (whose revenue is based on the eyes of the general public) see a return on investment. They couldn't give a rat's butt about Suse or Redhat.

[kaldor]

Ya'll confuse revenue with relevance. When anybody without tape on their glasses knows who RedHat is, when we see a Redhat or Suse Tablet or smart phone, then I might start thinking you're even remotely correct.

They're just not relevant to anyone outside of the Linuxverse. Steam didn't didn't come to "linux" because they were all het up about Redhat's popularity on the desktop. And SUSE who? They almost went down the drain not too long ago.

When Ubuntu says they're going with MIR, folks sit up and take notice. If Redhat decided they were going to use [insert acronym], so what? What's important here is where third party software developers (whose revenue is based on the eyes of the general public) see a return on investment. They couldn't give a rat's butt about Suse or Redhat.

Because obviously the desktop is the only relevant platform.

[cariboo]

RedHat and Canonical have different target audiences, RedHat is the Linux desktop in enterprise, and as we all know most enterprise want a locked down desktop, hence the direction that Gnome, backed by Redhat is going. Canonical wants to have Ubuntu on every desktop, as well as on as many other devices as possible

[montag dp]

RedHat and Canonical have different target audiences, RedHat is the Linux desktop in enterprise, and as we all know most enterprise want a locked down desktop, hence the direction that Gnome, backed by Redhat is going. Canonical wants to have Ubuntu on every desktop, as well as on as many other devices as possible

Hence the increasingly locked-down nature of Unity, err, wait...

[neu5eeCh]

Because obviously the desktop is the only relevant platform.

Right. You're making my point.

RedHat and Canonical have different target audiences, RedHat is the Linux desktop in enterprise, and as we all know most enterprise want a locked down desktop, hence the direction that Gnome, backed by Redhat is going. Canonical wants to have Ubuntu on every desktop, as well as on as many other devices as possible

Exactly. And that's the reason companies like Suse and RedHat are irrelevant when it comes to anything like wider adoption. If Ubuntu's MIR is successful, then that's what 3rd party software developers, interested in the broader market, are going to develop for.