ubuntu Mir: Ubuntu's New Display Server

[f0rk_b0mb]

http://www.webupd8.org/2013/03/ubuntu-to-build-its-own-display-server.html

According to a recent announcement, Ubuntu will use its own Display Server called Mir. The reason for this is that "none of the existing solutions would allow us to implement our vision without taking major compromises which would come at the cost of user experience and quality".

Further more, Unity will be ported to Qt/QML "to make development more efficient across our wider convergent strategy".

According to the UnityNextSpec, Unity Next will be integrated on top of Mir and the UI will use Qt. The ultimate goal is to provide a seamlessly scale across multiple form factors and carry Unity's visual design and identity.

The target is to have a first level/functional integration of Mir and UnityNext by May 2013, by October 2013 to have a Mir-UnityNext code base that could be taken to product a phone and reach full convergence by April 2014.

Story developing...

I hope this puts an end to the lag on Unity once and for all. It sounds promising!

[fusi0n]

Kinda good news.. I don't like X11.. but thats just me

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Let's hope, Tyler! :p

Fus10n, j/w, what do you use for your desktop?

[LaP]

Kinda good news.. I don't like X11.. but thats just me

I don't like it either.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

if this new display server ends up successful that could mean good things for other distros as well

here's hoping they don't screw it up :)

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

here's hoping they don't screw it up :)

Again... :rolleyes:

[ViperAFK]

Interesting, I hope its good :)

[Bryan R.]

I would love to be using Ubuntu on my PC at work but it's impossible to get two video cards to work nicely extending the desktop with the current display server. If my recent adventure taught me anything, it's that Linux/Ubunutu needs a ton of work still to be taken seriously.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

I would love to be using Ubuntu on my PC at work but it's impossible to get two video cards to work nicely extending the desktop with the current display server. If my recent adventure taught me anything, it's that Linux/Ubunutu needs a ton of work still to be taken seriously.

well you have to think, X11 was never designed to be used how it is today. it's severely limiting Linux's potential.

since Wayland development is going so slow this could be just what the linux world needs

[Karl L.]

I agree with ViperAFK. While this could certainly be a good thing, if other distros don't adopt it then it will never get proper support. Considering the state of Linux graphics drivers at the moment, I don't think fragmentation is going to help. While X11 certainly has its flaws, its primary advantage is that its ubiquitous. Any display server that wants to become the next standard (whether that be Wayland, Mir, or something else) would have to become similarly ubiquitous by convincing other distros to adopt it. Responsiveness to a wide array of developers and an open development process is the way to do that. Considering Canonical's reputation and lackluster first-party project support among other distros (such as Upstart and Unity), Mir is going to have a tough time becoming the new standard. Canonical have been doing a great job recently; hopefully they learned from their past mistakes.

[yowanvista]

Ubuntu, why no NO use Wayland? Building their own stuff will only break compatibility when wayland becomes mainstream.

[Bryan R.]

well you have to think, X11 was never designed to be used how it is today. it's severely limiting Linux's potential.

since Wayland development is going so slow this could be just what the linux world needs

I will admit that I'm not too fluent in how Linux works under the hood, but in my situation I have found that Ubuntu's display server, while it may be more robust than in the past, has limited my ability to manually get a multi-display, multi-videocard setup to work. Way back when I was actually able to manually edit some config file for XOrg have it all work. My only point is that I am a bit disappointed that I'm completely out of luck here until perhaps this display server is done. One can only hope.

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

I don't get why Canonical are choosing to do this. Why didn't they just contribute to the Wayland project?

[HawkMan]

I don't get why Canonical are choosing to do this. Why didn't they just contribute to the Wayland project?

Because it's linux, and fragmenting is better than cooperating for a common goal.

this s seriously the main downfall of linux, and what keeps tripping it whenever it starts to get a good run.

[SharpGreen]

I don't get why Canonical are choosing to do this. Why didn't they just contribute to the Wayland project?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec << Go here, scroll down to the "Why not Wayland/Weston?" section. One reason (according to that link) is that the Wayland protocol has similar issues as X w.r.t to input handling since input handling in Wayland and X is done basically the same way.

Because it's linux, and fragmenting is better than cooperating for a common goal.

this s seriously the main downfall of linux, and what keeps tripping it whenever it starts to get a good run.

There's a difference between fragmenting for no reason (like in the case of the 100 million different desktop environments) and fragmenting for for valid reasons which it seems are in play with this.

[HawkMan]

They would have worked with Wayland to fix the problem there, instead of just making their own. granted that would require willing cooperation, which isn't in abundance in the linux camps where they think the only way to get something done the right way is to fork and do it yourself.

I guess they can't read the "together we stand strong" sign because of the forest...

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec << Go here, scroll down to the "Why not Wayland/Weston?" section. One reason (according to that link) is that the Wayland protocol has similar issues as X w.r.t to input handling since input handling in Wayland and X is done basically the same way.

There's a difference between fragmenting for no reason (like in the case of the 100 million different desktop environments) and fragmenting for for valid reasons which it seems are in play with this.

Thanks for the link. :)

[Noir Angel]

Interesting. X11 is clearly very dated and if they think this will improve Ubuntu I'm all for it. Anything that can help with graphical performance I'm sure will also give Ubuntu an edge as it looks as if some parts of the industry are pushing for gaming on Linux to be taken seriously. I hope they do this for Kubuntu as well though as I don't really like Gnome.

[SharpGreen]

They would have worked with Wayland to fix the problem there, instead of just making their own. granted that would require willing cooperation, which isn't in abundance in the linux camps where they think the only way to get something done the right way is to fork and do it yourself.

I guess they can't read the "together we stand strong" sign because of the forest...

While we're bashing Mir (because fragmentation) why don't we also bash Wayland for the same reason. X is clearly not dieing off any time soon, so if Wayland is to gain any real traction closed source driver devs are going to have to support 2 display servers. Plus, without fancy fiddling X apps can't run on Wayland and vice-versa. Doesn't seem to me to be any different than Mir, so why aren't people bashing it as well?

[ViperAFK]

While we're bashing Mir (because fragmentation) why don't we also bash Wayland for the same reason. X is clearly not dieing off any time soon, so if Wayland is to gain any real traction closed source driver devs are going to have to support 2 display servers. Plus, without fancy fiddling X apps can't run on Wayland and vice-versa. Doesn't seem to me to be any different than Mir, so why aren't people bashing it as well?

X apps can run seemlessly on wayland with xwayland. And most of wayland's developers are also xorg developers.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

For some reason I'm not that surprised to see Ubuntu ignore other open source projects and recreate something other people are already working on.

While we're bashing Mir (because fragmentation) why don't we also bash Wayland for the same reason. X is clearly not dieing off any time soon, so if Wayland is to gain any real traction closed source driver devs are going to have to support 2 display servers. Plus, without fancy fiddling X apps can't run on Wayland and vice-versa. Doesn't seem to me to be any different than Mir, so why aren't people bashing it as well?

Wayland uses plain OpenGL via established APIs, there's nothing extra drivers have to support, the main problem is getting apps to use it (Which isn't that hard since they've been transitioning to a client drawn model for ages.)

[Karl L.]

While we're bashing Mir (because fragmentation) why don't we also bash Wayland for the same reason. X is clearly not dieing off any time soon, so if Wayland is to gain any real traction closed source driver devs are going to have to support 2 display servers. Plus, without fancy fiddling X apps can't run on Wayland and vice-versa. Doesn't seem to me to be any different than Mir, so why aren't people bashing it as well?

Like ViperAFK noted, most of the key Xorg developers are also behind Wayland. If it becomes stable enough, Wayland may very well become X12. If you look at the history of X you will see that it iterated quickly until X11, at which point major feature development more-or-less stopped because the system was deemed stable. Wayland is an effort to revive that development by taking advantage of features available in modern graphics hardware. For that reason it shuns the classic X architecture (which has matured into X11).

As for your point about running X11 apps in Wayland, that can be done natively. In fact, the Wayland website has an article linked to from the home page briefly describing the Wayland architecture as it relates to X11. Check it out here.

Also, I don't think that either Wayland or Mir are particularly worried about supporting proprietary graphics drivers. Most open-source projects (or more properly, most open-source advocates) take the position that proprietary drivers are a tolerable evil. They won't do anything to intentionally break proprietary drivers (most of the time), but they also don't consider those drivers suitable release blockers. This is the right position IMHO.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

So from reading, Mir wants to use OpenGL via EGL as well (just like Wayland), and they're going to adapt the main 2 toolkits (GTK and Qt) to support rendering to Mir natively (Same is happening/already happened with Wayland, like I said they've been moving away from server rendering for a while, so there's barely any difference between handing X11 a bitmap buffer or Wayland/Mir one), so to the end user they won't really see any difference, and neither will most app developers.

But of course it does add duplication, and only difference between Mir and Wayland seems to boil down to input handling, which seems a pretty silly reason to create a whole new project over (They could have just changed Wayland to handle input the way they wanted)

[n_K]

Not really interested in this MIR, seen other ubuntu projects and they've never created anything I've foudn worthwhile.

MIR does seem like a throw-the-dummy-out-the-trolly reply to wayland which is a shame.

Anyway, X11 might be dated, but I can stream a single window over the net from my server! Try doing something like that using windows ;).

[HawkMan]

Not really interested in this MIR, seen other ubuntu projects and they've never created anything I've foudn worthwhile.

MIR does seem like a throw-the-dummy-out-the-trolly reply to wayland which is a shame.

Anyway, X11 might be dated, but I can stream a single window over the net from my server! Try doing something like that using windows ;).

That is apparently why we switched from a great working TS syste at work to Citrix' with its horrible jpeg artifacts and non existing shared computer support without using the web client... Office management monkeys...