“Mir, Ubuntu’s in-progress replacement for the X Window System, is being used internally at Ubuntu developer Canonical and will be available to all users in the next version of the operating system. Mir was announced in March, with Canonical saying that a new display server is needed to power the Unity interface across desktops, phones, and tablets.” Anyone here experience with Mir? Is it any good? any downsides?
XMir works fine for emulating X applications, but there is a noticeable performance hit. I don’t think this will be an issue for applications that use qt or gtk, as they will be abstracted out and can then run on Mir just fine. But applications that don’t use this layering and are written closely to X will definitely run slower. Unfortunately, these tend to be the more demanding programs (like games). It’s going to be a rough transition.
I wonder if that’s going to be problematic for those using Linux for scientific applications, like neuroimaging or molecular imaging– pymol in particular is one that may get hammered.
Nope. Mostly because it’s unlikely it’ll see mainstream use outside of the primary Ubuntu distribution.
That’s not a problem for Ubuntu. Ubuntu only worries for the number of users or the market share of Ubuntu, once you have the numbers, Nvidia, Intel and AMD will support Ubuntu/MIR.
The entire Unity desktop is supposed to run under XMir in 13.10, so no apps will touch Mir directly.
You know, when it’s actually been fully tested and doesn’t feel like the unfinished-in-every-way alpha product that Unity felt like at the beginning.
More fragmentation … yippie!
Kubuntu and Xubuntu won’t be using Mir.
At least they’re going to deliver, where the hell is Wayland? Right, still stuck in design by committee and mailing list.
That is true, but nobody else is going to use it, not even the distros built on it.
Distros didn’t switch from XFree86 to X.org overnight either. It’s the first public release so I don’t really expect anyone else to use it yet.
Actually they did, but only because Xorg started as a fork of the last beta of Xfree with an acceptable license. But wayland is a change on a much larger scale. And right now, gnome and kde aren´t ready to use it.
I think the point is that nobody except Ubuntu wants it. Maybe that is the point, but I remember them in 2004 having a big campaign about being friendly, community etc and tbh I think we know it is all bullshit.
It may not matter to you but I find it dishonest.
Sorry, how is it “all bullshit”? Maybe Mir will crash and burn, maybe it won’t but at least they tried to move forward.
There’s this rather strange sentiment in some parts of the Linux community; on one hand Canonical is not innovative enough and doesn’t have enough own projects but on the other hand they have all these own projects that splits the community , causes fragmentation etc etc yadyadayada.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The peanut gallery is in full effect.
At least they’re not trying to force their choice onto everyone else (ala RedHat with systemd, among other things).
The main criticism I had always noticed is that they never really given much back to the rest of the ecosystem.
Yes you are right though. I suppose it is damned if they do , damned if they don’t.
They’re going to deliver alright… a half-baked new technology, and not exactly a minor change, to their core user base of clueless people who are on the same level as Microsoft’s and Apple’s users. Can’t wait to see all the news reports of unhappy Ubuntu users when the next one is released. That seems to be a common thing to accompany Ubuntu releases, but I have a feeling it will be especially bad once Mir/XMir takes over.
I honestly can’t tell if Ubuntu really thinks inexperienced users are their target as they claim, or advanced users and developers like in the case of Fedora acting as the testbed for bleeding-edge RHEL technologies. If they really want to target inexperienced users, then I have no idea why they keep foisting unfinished, not-fully-tested crap upon their users.
I am one of those clueless people. By your definition, clueless people involves graphic designers and all those people who were using software that were available only on the Windows platform. Since you are at it, please educate us on how to use Non-Ubuntu Linux like Fedora for our production environment, or can you recommend OpenIndiana or perhaps CentOS desktops for those clueless people?
I just can’t wait for your valuable information to educate us, the clueless people in your universe.
And you think you’ve been honest with your _assertions_ above?
It is obvious Ubuntu is not for you or any other elite bsd/linux user on the planet.
I really like Fedora because of its innovative features, the one I like is the VoIP feature:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/FederatedVoIP
But it doesn’t mean this is only the best feature available.
Well, I am using Ubuntu 12.04, and it is a fully tested crap in the company.
In RebeccaBlackOS:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rebeccablackos/
It’s usable right now on several distros if you feel like installing it and last I checked both KDE and Gnome plan on supporting it natively in their next releases.
Edited 2013-07-11 23:31 UTC
Any source of this claim?
For the Gnome side https://wiki.gnome.org/ThreePointNine/Features/WaylandSupport is a good start.
http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/06/starting-a-full-kde-p… should speak volumes about how far along KDE support is.
Edited 2013-07-12 12:44 UTC
I don’t know about GNOME, but as for KDE:
http://www.muktware.com/5353/kdes-kwin-wont-support-ubuntus-mir
http://blogs.kde.org/2013/06/26/kubuntu-wont-be-switching-mir-or-xm…
http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2013/03/reply-to-all-the-face…
KWin maintainer Martin Gräßlin: “I have to ask you to keep KWin out of the pro-Mir campaign. I didn’t ask for Mir, I don’t want Mir and reading blog posts like the one which triggered this reply does lower my motivation to ever have anything to do with Mir. Mir is an answer to a question nobody asked. It’s a solution to problem which does not exist.”
It sure doesn’t look like KDE will support Mir.
GNOME will fully support Wayland by Spring 2014.
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/GNOME-plans-to-promote-Wayla…
https://wiki.gnome.org/Wayland
Did you say the same thing when MS stumbled with Longhorn?
Yes. Why? Do you have a point you’re trying to get at? I quite publicly and extensively went over exactly what was wrong with Longhorn.
Actually the Wayland project had to make a bunch of changes to enable Mir or Wayland to work. They also haven’t been out whoring up the media, preferring to wait for their project to be somewhat complete. Canonical copied what Wayland did, cooked up a couple fancy demos, and declared themselves lord and master of the almighty Mir.
As for progress, you can try GTK under Wayland in Fedora 19. And if you google images for it, you can see it actually working on Fedora 19.
Is this how you misspelled the word forked?
Edited 2013-07-15 00:09 UTC
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/07/13/1357256/wayland-120-release…
Well, to be honest GNU/Linux is only following UNIX footsteps.
Some of us, me included, already went through this before Linus even imagined writing Linux.
More healthy competition…yippie!
Focus just on the two major distributions to avoid development costs… yippie!
I understand what Ubuntu is after – the full Ubuntu experience on all devices, not phone apps vs. desktop apps. It reminds somewhat of Microsoft’s adventure with Metro (peace be upon Bill’s name) and Windows 8. They wanted the same experience for Windows users. They also threw out the past API’s and invented WinRT, etc. Microsoft changes frameworks like I change socks.
However, I think I lean towards Apple on this one. They took a few good features from iOS and merged them into OSX, but the 2 are still very distinct. I don’t want a phone interface on my desktop, laptop.
It’s not just you. KDE arrived to the same conclusion, so they have:
– Plasma Desktop: for conventional desktop PCs and notebooks.
– Plasma Active: for all types of tablets, smartphones and touch computing devices such as settop boxes, smart TVs, home automation or in-vehicle devices.
>I don’t want a phone interface on my desktop, laptop.
The desktop interface is different to the phone interface.
Different or not, Unity is a small screen interface. It was originally their netbook interface, where I thought it was a good fit. That is why so many people are using alternates such as Cinnamon and Mate.
They’ll be a totally separate os by the end of the year at this rate.
Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing, considering that most Linux packagings might as well be separate operating systems already. It’s not as though I can take a driver or an executable (unless it’s statically linked) from one distro and drop it into another and expect it to work properly. Things already have to be recompiled to work well or at all.
I’ve had exactly the opposite experience – the Linux packages just seem to work. For example, we bought an Epson WF-7510 two weeks go. Epson’s website listed 7 drivers for vsriants of Windows (XP, Vista/7, 8, 32-bit, 64-bit), 3 drivers for Macs, and 1 for Linux.
Worked fine on 3 different Linux machines.
I must be the luckiest guy in the world…
They already are. All distros are separate operating systems.
Before posting arguments on Mir and Wayland go read the Pharonix comments. There’s pages of FUD and personal attacks to wade through without repeating here.
It seems nowadays, bashing Ubuntu and Unity is the new sport.
http://myubuntublog.com/is-unity-bashing-a-hobby/
I encountered this type of people almost daily in my linux news alert. I have hiccups of using Ubuntu, continue to receive “ubuntu internal error” dialog box every now and then. However, I need a replacement of X because it seems it is very slow compared to the graphic stack of Windows XP. So I am very excited with Wayland for sooooooooooooooooooo many years waiting for it in the form Fedora or any distro, yet it did not happened. RebeccaBlackOS? Thank you, but I need usable desktop not an experimental one. I think that RebeccaBlackOS was released only because of Canonical’s announcement and roadmaps of MIR? Correct me if I’m wrong, but Wayland was developed for so long now. And now with MIR, I just want to try and use it daily. WIth more users, it can be made into a very usable state. Someone even mentioned @ the announcement of MIR that he doubts the capacity of Canonical releasing a usable display server in a very short time, made me realized that part of the motive of bashing MIR is plain jealousy.
You’re wrong.
Sure, they can create a display server, but whether it will be usable beyond simple demos is yet to be seen. It should be noted that the developers behind Wayland are far more experienced than those doing Mir.
The reasons for bashing Mir is simply the way Canonical went about developing it and the rather poor justifications they used and they way they initially bashed Wayland (and getting it mostly wrong).
Yes, X developers themselves plus Redhat employees.
To have a total control of the project is a valid justification. In Wayland, they can’t exert control to fulfill their vision. Of course some people claim here that they do copied Wayland, and that is _NORMAL_ for any OSS project, why bash for copying? It was encourage to so according to licensing. It should be noted that Canonical acknowledged their false claims about Wayland.
To be frank, Unity/MIR bashing as you call came from Canonical themselves having an extremely poor reputation of collaborating upstream. Canonical should know better having developing MIR in secret for nine months without even contributing Wayland, the display server they supposedly support back in 2010, then spread fear, uncertainly, and doubt about it on MIR wiki before retracting after being busted.
Seeing how Kubuntu and Xubuntu negatively reacted against MIR, “Ubuntu bashing” is to be expected.
Yeah, the FUD that came with the MIR announcement was really bad. They ultimately admitted that they didn’t know what they were talking about, but they wanted two things that were not easily doable with wayland.
1) Complete control over the project ( so they can ensure it works exactly like they want for Unity).
2) Compatibility with Android device drivers.
Which is fine, if that’s what they want. However, they’re kind of upset that Kubuntu won’t be joining them on Mir. All of the ?buntu derivatives are in question. They’ll work if XMir works, but slower. Not sure anyone wants to do that.
I think Ubuntu rightly sees a great business opportunity in having a single operating system on phones, tablets and desktop computers. I’m not sure if the cost is worth it though. I’d prefer something like KDE where you can have the same applications but with a different gui depending on your form factor ( Desktop, notebook, tablet).
Edited 2013-07-12 18:32 UTC
Complete control over the project was part of Canonical plan since its inception. Unfortunately, history has shown that mindset led to its downfall, ask SUN. About compatibility with Android drivers, Canonical is using Surfaceflinger which turned out to be ad-hoc hack Wayland avoids:
https://gitorious.org/android-eeepc/base/blobs/c75c4364eae030a9ea6db…
In addition, it turned out Mir is nothing more than a modified early Wayland, Wayland itself can use Android drivers through extensions:
http://mer-project.blogspot.fi/2013/05/wayland-utilizing-android-gp…
Canonical made bad business decisions in this case. Wayland already reached these goal canonical tried to reach through Jolla and Tizen. The burden will be the long term maintainance of Mir in these kind of environment especially enterprise. It seems Canonical still learned nothing from their failed webTV venture.
Edited 2013-07-12 20:03 UTC
Interesting. I had not heard how Mer planned on using Android drivers.
But I have heard that Surfaceflinger is going to be replaced by Mir in the future for Ubuntu phone. They want the same architecture as much as possible.
I agree their plan doesn’t make much sense, and stinks of NIH syndrome. From the mailing lists I’ve read, its pretty clear that it wasn’t an engineers decision to create Mir. All the questions hit a dead end at “This is what we at Canonical have decided to do”. Its clear that the engineers being grilled by Wayland/KDE, et all are a bit uncomfortable with the whole situation.
I think a big reason is that they want to control the phone/tablet platform without having OEM’s just use a “MobileMint” for free. They can do that by leveraging the GPL V3 license along with the CLA on Mir.
I don’t begrudge them for wanting to make money from open source. I think that’s a good thing (TM). But, they’re kind of screwing up the ecosystem ( by creating a different Xorg replacement) to do that. That’s not cool.
Which is really is a valid justification to create their own display server, then
Of which I will do the same if I were Mark Shuttleworth. Ubuntu bashing came before any MIR announcement. It is just the new sport of the Linux so-called elite users.
I am a customer of so many open source projects when I use their projects, my only duty is to comply with the license, not to comply to the demands of the upstream developers.
With great marketing it will be successful.
It was amusing that they basically copied the work (without attribution) jolla was doing to enable wayland to work with android drivers.
Any hope that Mir will be running on VIA chipsets?
Surprising how many replies here jump to the conclusion this is good/bad/bound for success or not…
We’ve got 2 new technologies – wayland/mir and really no way to know if one will be become mainstream or both will co-exist… how fast they replace X11 if at all.
Even all the Ubuntu derivative distro’s that say they won’t go with Mir will likely switch over if Mir eventually becomes popular/widely-used.
Im just happy we have 2 possible alternatives to X11 which is no fun to develop for :S
http://xkcd.com/927/
Too many standards? – this hardly applies for X11 alternatives. Unlike languages and file formats, a display manager needs buy-in from driver writers, widget toolkits, application developers… So I think its very unlikely we will be spoilt for choice here.
Edited 2013-07-12 12:18 UTC
The whole point is there is Mir and Wayland. It causes fragmentation.
At this point neither are far enough along to cause much fragmentation, And I expect only one will end up being the defacto-standard replacement for X11. So worth a little fragmentation to let the best one win.
Edited 2013-07-12 15:16 UTC
That maybe, but it creates uncertainty.
Edited 2013-07-12 18:48 UTC
Wayland is already anointed as X11 successor because it is made by Xorg developers themselves and backed by not only Gnome, KDE, Enlightement, but also big corporate like Intel, Samsung, Red Hat and IBM. Mir already lost the battle in that department.
And, what took them so long??? You have four tech companies.
Human factors. Everyone acts if there is always 100% clarity in inter company communications.
In this case, barring something extremely unforeseen, it’s going to cause isolation. Specifically Ubuntu’s, and in all honesty that may just be Shuttleworth’s endgame all along. Most of the rest of the Linux world has publicly aligned behind Wayland already.
The real fragmentation issues will come in between operating systems that run Wayland and those that don’t or can’t.
One man’s fragmentation is another man’s versatility. Linux was always about choice. Coming up with ONE Linux to fight the ONE Windows was never a realistic thing. You would have to have one corporation controlling it all with a big ass campus like Microsoft’s and go back in time to erase the early maneuverings of Bill to get the OEMs onboard.
A reminder for “Linux is about choice”:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg00…
This is Red Hat saying, “follow our lead. We’ll take you to the promised land.” Would you expect different from any corporation?
He appears to be justified in saying that choice is not always good. Sometimes, you need to prevent users from choosing the path that may destroy them in the end.
With end users you’re contracted to support yes, for sanity’s sake you have to standardize. That’s just common sense. Not that those users don’t still have a choice though, they can always use other services or admin their own.
He said that 5 years ago. Was it Linux or Linux users that were supposed to be destroyed by now?
not at all
he’s saying that providing, for the same given function, two or more components to choose from, implies providing and supporting a mechanism to select between them
that the complexity of the whole increases more than lineraly, as you have to guarantee that not only the components work each (as units) AND correctly interacting (or without interfering) with each other (integration)
and this should be obvious, as it is just sw design common sense, dismissing it as corporate speech is just smug, but narrowminded attitude…
“as you have to guarantee that not only the components work each….”
Your words. This is a corporate problem, thus why they’re concerned about it, but it amounts to attempts to stifle innovation (because there’s always a better way to do things) for the sake of their own convenience. There’s nothing smug or narrow-minded about it. Linux’s innate versatility is butting heads with their attempts to market a product. Their problem. They knew the risks when they got onboard this train.