Ubuntu Announces Mir, A X.Org/Wayland Replacement

[Ericg]

As for why not using Wayland/Weston, the reasons expressed are the input event handling partly recreates the X semantics, the shell integration parts of the protocol are considered prvileged.

Daniels, if you're reading this thread, can you explain that portion of the article to us? Are the X semantics actually any good? How does Wayland differ? "The shell integration parts of the protocol are considered priviledged" Huh?

[dh04000]

Holy-Sh*t, the nerd rage in this thread is so entertaining. I need a large diet coke and popcorn to read it by.

[Delgarde]

Its all GPL....... using free software components........ can I have some of those drugs your using? They sound like good stuff.

Free software components, yes - but increasingly, components built by and exclusive to Canonical. They might not have to pay money to use them, but as Ubuntu diverges from other distros, the more it costs developers to support them all.

Not a walled garden, maybe - but at least a fence encouraging people to keep out.

[zigfreed]

I recall when Apple compared itself to FreeBSD when announcing OS X, there were 3 major things they overhauled: the kernel (XNU, parts brought from NeXT), the SystemV startup scripts (launchd), and the graphical user interface (Quartz). In Linux so far, the kernel constantly changes and SystemV scripts have been replaced with Upstart and/or SystemD. X.org hasn't been completely replaced; Ubuntu's analysis of Wayland is similar to what I've read elsewhere: Wayland will be a successor to Xorg. For light weight tasks, there is DirectFB or Android. Mir appears to be bulkier than Android, but slimmer than Wayland.

[dee.]

THE FUCKING IDIOTS AAAGH

...seriously canonical, get your head out of your ass... stop fragmenting the ecosystem with this pointless bullshit!

- Mir is a new display server being developed at Canonical and it is not based on X.Org or Wayland.

Yeah, just throw away years of work from the Wayland devs, why can't they just contribute and collaborate with Wayland instead? This is stupid. Canonical tries to make Ubuntu as incompatible with the rest of the linux ecosystem as possible, and is doing a huge disservice to everyone while they're at it.

- Android graphics drivers will be supported. Existing DRM/KMS/Mesa/GBM (the open-source Linux graphics drivers) will work. Canonical is pressuring the binary blob vendors to make their drivers compatible.

Android graphics drivers, what? This just enables lazines from hardware vendors and gives them an easy way out of supporting wayland. So no matter if Wayland is better or worse, this will likely kill it because hardware makers will just support whatever they can get away with least effort.

- Canonical will natively support the GTK3 and Qt/QML tool-kits with Mir.

What about software that uses other toolkits then? Will it even run? And if it will, how well?

- Mir will be used for all form factors from Ubuntu Phones to the Ubuntu Linux desktop.

More stupidity. Why do these idiots insist on using the same tech for handhelds and 10 times larger devices? We don't use saws to bang in nails or hammers to cut boards.

[nightmarex]

At least is GPL. If Canonical pulls this off (which I doubt) others can adopt/fork it.

This is a serious bet. Either Canonical pulls this off or they're over.

My thoughts exactly. I wouldn't want to try to fix something that's poorly implemented or designed wrong. If they design it well and it's somehow awesome then I will eat my words. I would love for something good to happen with this it's just... well... It's Cononical.

[89c51]

BTW could someone explain how they support the android graphic drivers by design and why this cannot be done with Wayland??

[entropy]

Canonical tries to make Ubuntu as incompatible with the rest of the linux ecosystem as possible

I fully agree. At least they try extremely hard to make it look like that.

Is there actually any successful software project by Canonical?
Did they gave back anything of major importance to the community?
I can't think of a single example.

Meanwhile they managed to implant "GNU/Linux == Ubuntu" into the heads of many (new) users,
which is only amplified by Valve's choice of Ubuntu as their first-tier distribution.

[F i L]

Fuck you Canonical. Fuck you.

[Krysto]

Their approach seems to not fragment the driver scene for once (being able to use android and mesa open source drivers).
The unified graphics driver stuff also sounds interesting.
The minimal assumptions thing seems a sound approach.

I'm hoping the cross-pollination of features will make everything better.

I'm hoping Canonical will succeed with that unified driver model for mobile devices. It's about time someone asks for that in the Android ecosystem, because clearly Google doesn't give a damn, and just lets manufacturers do whatever the hell they want.