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You can have both if both eventually exists. The problem is that a graphic server is a really hard software to make, integrate and maintain. We kept X for decad

You can have both if both eventually exists. The problem is that a graphic server is a really hard software to make, integrate and maintain. We kept X for decades for this reason. Trying to build and make a standard of a new one is hard enough. Spending resources for a 3rd one, that we all knew has less chance of succeeding, was considered a waste by many. As a community, some like me analyzed that Mir was a bad strategic move and just said it. There is nothing wrong with expressing this opinion. It's not stealing your freedom away. Turns out we were right. Mir was too big of a project to chew for canonical, and the effort, that could have been invested in getting a better wayland sooner, was wasted. This is a repeating problem in open source. It's hard to find the balance between innovation and playing as a team. Given the fantastic track record of canonical though, we can't blame them. They tried. I'm glad they have this spirit, they made the Linux desktop better. I'm also glad the Mir fad is over.

justin66 10y ago
Fragmentation isn't just a repeating problem in open source, it's a repeating problem for Unix.
- baldfat 10y ago
  > Fragmentation I have learned to hate this term. Sometimes it means choice other times it means different solutions to the same problem. I much rather have choice then be placed in a box. > repeating problem in open source, it's a repeating problem for Unix Since Open Source and Linux aka *Unix has won I fail to see your point. The big issue was they went with their own solution and didn't add to Wayland which is something they could have done this wasn't fragmentation. "When Mir was started we needed a mechanism for client-server communications (and Wayland wasn’t in the state it is today). We did something that worked well enough (libmirclient) and, because it’s just a small, intentionally isolated part of the whole, we could change later."
  - sametmax 10y ago
    But there is such a thing as the paradox of choices. This is a big problem on Linux because if you want to do a software, you first have to handle this diversity for UI, bus communication, configuration storage, dir layouts, init systems, packaging... It's a nightmare. Compare to releasing the same thing for windows or mac. Starting Mir after and if investing on Wayland failed would have been much wiser.
    - pekk 10y ago
      Windows packaging isn't all it's cracked up to be. There is no standard package repository, the norm is just to distribute executables of various kinds, the process of building installers is not that simple... "Starting deb after and if investing on rpm failed would have been much wiser" except that Debian developers already knew rpm didn't meet their needs. But these arguments are always selectively applied to certain parties (e.g. Canonical) and not others (e.g. Red Hat).
      - sametmax 10y ago
        Try to create an executable that works for windows 7, 8 and 10. Now try to do the same for centos, ubuntu and gentoo. Or 3 LTS of Ubuntu. Besides, deb/rpm is the perfect example of our failure as a community. To the end user, having both standards bring nothing. Neither are better than the other for 99% of use cases, and we ends up needing twice the tool, documentation and community effort that we should. And because it's such pain, any languages created their own package managers. gem, pip, goget, npm... Now we are replaying the same with flatpak/snap.
      - justin66 10y ago
        > Windows packaging isn't all it's cracked up to be. There is no standard package repository, the norm is just to distribute executables of various kinds, the process of building installers is not that simple... After dealing with the various walled gardens and their concomitant limitations, and after dealing with any system of linux package management, the Windows way feels like some sort of joyous escape from captivity.
  - justin66 10y ago
    > Since Open Source and Linux aka *Unix has won I fail to see your point. I don't know what you mean, but I can make my point a little more explicit: Unix has fragmented the graphics stack in the past and it just hurt the software ecosystem for no particular benefit. In the eighties, users had to choose between mutually incompatible desktop environments. Later, users had to choose between sort-of compatible desktop environments like kde and gnome (progress!). Looking beyond desktop environments to the rest of the system, there are plenty of more specialized bits that administrators and developers (and end users, if linux can truly be said to have those) have to choose between, even though no sane person should have to care. And that's basically fine. This kind of stuff is why desktop linux is mostly just a tool for developers and students, while the real world uses Windows, iOS, and Android for everything. It's a little inconsistent for Canonical to be fragmenting the ecosystem, however, since they (maybe I'm wrong about this?) aim to bring about The Year Of Linux On The Desktop.
    - baldfat 10y ago
      Linux Desktop is a small part of what Linux is as a whole. > Unix has fragmented the graphics stack in the past Yes I remember these days. We were just having different solutions to the same problem. It got settled fairly fast, but I never had the issue of I paid for this Unix and now I have to decide what display manager was going to be. Each vendor pretty much made the choice already for you. > Later, users had to choose between sort-of compatible desktop environments like kde and gnome (progress!). I have been a KDE guy forever, but I could always use whatever programs I wanted. They might not look decent but they all worked together with a few tiny exceptions in the early 2000s. Today I mostly use a tiled window manager but I still use KDE programs with my command line programs. I don't ever get the issue with mutliple of Desktops since that is a strong plus for people to discover what works best with their workflow. > developers (and end users, if linux can truly be said to have those) WHAT???? You mean the people that developed Mir???? > the real world uses Windows, iOS, and Android for everything http://google.com http://google.com is Linux, Android is Linux. MacOS is a Unix. The web is majority Linux. People use Linux everyday and I guess your one of the people that doesn't realize it or it doesn't count? But the vast majority of CPU ticks on this planet are all Linux ticks. You keep trying to make Linux Desktop = Linux and while desktop is a part of Linux. Your mixing and matching to make a point that is inconsistent.
  - abstractbeliefs 10y ago
    >I have learned to hate this term. Sometimes it means choice other times it means different solutions to the same problem. Anyone framing these issues as fragmentation is using it as a buzzword. Fragmentation isn't a thing when you're comparing three things that provide meaningfully different pros and cons. Fragmentation is an issue when it means having the same 6 solutions to the problem, all poorly implemented, compared to 3 good solutions.
- boomboomsubban 10y ago
  This is the display server, the pre-Wayland fragmentation is basically OpenBSD using a patched version of X11. Hell of a problem there.
addicted 10y ago
The Mir fad is only over because the Linux on Mobile "fad" is over.
- andoon 10y ago
  What made Wayland unsuitable to be used on mobiles?
  - gribbly 10y ago
    I'd say nothing, Wayland is used on mobile and embedded, the reason Canonical made Mir was so that the had full control/ownership of the display solution and thus could charge a license fee to proprietary vendors who wanted to use it. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but for someone outside of Canonical it's hard to be interested in a competing solution which only exist in order to pad Canonical's bottom line. Which was also the reaction from the rest of the Linux ecosystem.
    - sametmax 10y ago
      Why though ? They can just licence Ubuntu the way they want, they could do that with the distrib already.
      - gribbly 10y ago
        Because they had Mir under a CLA which meant Canonical (and only Canonical) could offer it under different terms, which included proprietary licences. They can't license Ubuntu any way they want, because Ubuntu is 99% software which comes from (and are owned by) other sources, not Canonical.
        andoon 10y ago
        I don't understand. Mir is under the GPLv3, what stops anybody from using it any way they want? How was Canonical supposed to profit from it?
vbezhenar 10y ago
You have to try different solutions before you'd find best. It's not a waste, it's a competition and it's necessary in a free market.
- sametmax 10y ago
  Yes but you usually enter a competition when you either have a chance to win, provide something the other won't or do it for experience (if you have resources to waste). In the case or Mir: - it's like creating an alternative linux kernel. Very few chances it will succeed. - even they roadmap didn't list anything wayland couldn't do. - canonical doesn't have that much cash to waste. I would have get Mir if they would have said: - we will do X that wayland clearly can't do and that we can't contribute to wayland; - we have tons of cash and devs and can spare a few to experiment. It's just not the case here. This is open source, we all want a better linux desktop, not a war. Mir felt more like starting a battle than solving a problem.
  - pekk 10y ago
    By this logic, BSD developers should just work on the Linux kernel. Or is it the other way around? And nobody should ever make anything new. But this reasoning would have said not to make Linux to begin with, because there was already e.g. MINIX and Linux wasn't contributing to MINIX and didn't do anything that MINIX could not do. In fact, Linux wasn't even a microkernel! And few of the abilities which make it Linux as we know it today were on any "roadmap" (hahahaha). In open source, making your own project is not starting a war. This kind of flaming and demanding to control other people's allocations of resources is what makes a battle.
    - sametmax 10y ago
      There is no flaming. We are just sharing our opinions as active members of the community. Since I spend easily 50 hours every year on the Ubuntu project and give to the project, I think I have the right to post a comment on HN saying "I disagree". That's not a too much to ask is it ? Especially since people disagreeing ending up being right.
pekk 10y ago
"Spending resources for a 3rd one" 1. Doubling the number of people on a project does not double the speed of its production. It may actually hurt matters. This is the classic problem of estimating with man-hours and ignoring coordination costs 2. They aren't your resources to spend. Canonical doesn't tell Red Hat what it can do, so why the other way around?
- sametmax 10y ago
  > Doubling the number of people on a project does not double the speed of its production. Resources are not just for dev. You have documentation, integration, adaptation of dependencies, packaging... But even if you just don't spend the resources on wayland nor mir, then you can use them for stuff the users want. Like fixing external monitor handling, wifi and battery life . Having basic features working on your project should be a more important priority than building an alternative compositor anyway. Even more when one is already on it's way and in good shape. > They aren't your resources to spend. Canonical doesn't tell Red Hat what it can do, so why the other way around? Just because they aren't my resource doesn't mean I can't express my view on it. I'm not actively preventing canonical to do anything. But as an Ubuntu user with priorities, as an active member of the community doing bug reports and trying beta software, as an Ubuntu evangelist spending personal time to sell Ubuntu/install it/maintain it on my relative laptops and as somebody who gives financial support to the project, it's fair that I express my thoughts on the matter. I don't even know why I have to tell that to you. It should be obvious. It's a community. Communities communicate. Also since, me and the others like me, where right about it (that mir would fail and waste resources), I'd say I wished we would have been listened to. I'm not playing the blame game. I'm certainly not questioning Canonical competence and I'm not angry at them. I love the company and the product. I just happen to disagree with their politic on this particular decision. I'm now very glad they choose to invest in wayland. I will miss unity, which was a project I liked. So it's a not just about "reinventing the wheel" and "competition". I like gnome shell less than unity, but I think it's a good decision to work on it instead for the community.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- 10y ago
MertsA 10y ago
The waste of working on Mir isn't the problem IMHO. Canonical has a ton of market share, at the time Mir was released it was already looking like getting AMD and Nvidia were going to take a while to support Wayland. Splitting the ecosystem for no technical reason came across as inconsiderate of Canonical.

justin66 10y ago

Fragmentation isn't just a repeating problem in open source, it's a repeating problem for Unix.

baldfat 10y ago
> Fragmentation I have learned to hate this term. Sometimes it means choice other times it means different solutions to the same problem. I much rather have choice then be placed in a box. > repeating problem in open source, it's a repeating problem for Unix Since Open Source and Linux aka *Unix has won I fail to see your point. The big issue was they went with their own solution and didn't add to Wayland which is something they could have done this wasn't fragmentation. "When Mir was started we needed a mechanism for client-server communications (and Wayland wasn’t in the state it is today). We did something that worked well enough (libmirclient) and, because it’s just a small, intentionally isolated part of the whole, we could change later."
- sametmax 10y ago
  But there is such a thing as the paradox of choices. This is a big problem on Linux because if you want to do a software, you first have to handle this diversity for UI, bus communication, configuration storage, dir layouts, init systems, packaging... It's a nightmare. Compare to releasing the same thing for windows or mac. Starting Mir after and if investing on Wayland failed would have been much wiser.
  - pekk 10y ago
    Windows packaging isn't all it's cracked up to be. There is no standard package repository, the norm is just to distribute executables of various kinds, the process of building installers is not that simple... "Starting deb after and if investing on rpm failed would have been much wiser" except that Debian developers already knew rpm didn't meet their needs. But these arguments are always selectively applied to certain parties (e.g. Canonical) and not others (e.g. Red Hat).
    - sametmax 10y ago
      Try to create an executable that works for windows 7, 8 and 10. Now try to do the same for centos, ubuntu and gentoo. Or 3 LTS of Ubuntu. Besides, deb/rpm is the perfect example of our failure as a community. To the end user, having both standards bring nothing. Neither are better than the other for 99% of use cases, and we ends up needing twice the tool, documentation and community effort that we should. And because it's such pain, any languages created their own package managers. gem, pip, goget, npm... Now we are replaying the same with flatpak/snap.
    - justin66 10y ago
      > Windows packaging isn't all it's cracked up to be. There is no standard package repository, the norm is just to distribute executables of various kinds, the process of building installers is not that simple... After dealing with the various walled gardens and their concomitant limitations, and after dealing with any system of linux package management, the Windows way feels like some sort of joyous escape from captivity.
- justin66 10y ago
  > Since Open Source and Linux aka *Unix has won I fail to see your point. I don't know what you mean, but I can make my point a little more explicit: Unix has fragmented the graphics stack in the past and it just hurt the software ecosystem for no particular benefit. In the eighties, users had to choose between mutually incompatible desktop environments. Later, users had to choose between sort-of compatible desktop environments like kde and gnome (progress!). Looking beyond desktop environments to the rest of the system, there are plenty of more specialized bits that administrators and developers (and end users, if linux can truly be said to have those) have to choose between, even though no sane person should have to care. And that's basically fine. This kind of stuff is why desktop linux is mostly just a tool for developers and students, while the real world uses Windows, iOS, and Android for everything. It's a little inconsistent for Canonical to be fragmenting the ecosystem, however, since they (maybe I'm wrong about this?) aim to bring about The Year Of Linux On The Desktop.
  - baldfat 10y ago
    Linux Desktop is a small part of what Linux is as a whole. > Unix has fragmented the graphics stack in the past Yes I remember these days. We were just having different solutions to the same problem. It got settled fairly fast, but I never had the issue of I paid for this Unix and now I have to decide what display manager was going to be. Each vendor pretty much made the choice already for you. > Later, users had to choose between sort-of compatible desktop environments like kde and gnome (progress!). I have been a KDE guy forever, but I could always use whatever programs I wanted. They might not look decent but they all worked together with a few tiny exceptions in the early 2000s. Today I mostly use a tiled window manager but I still use KDE programs with my command line programs. I don't ever get the issue with mutliple of Desktops since that is a strong plus for people to discover what works best with their workflow. > developers (and end users, if linux can truly be said to have those) WHAT???? You mean the people that developed Mir???? > the real world uses Windows, iOS, and Android for everything http://google.com http://google.com is Linux, Android is Linux. MacOS is a Unix. The web is majority Linux. People use Linux everyday and I guess your one of the people that doesn't realize it or it doesn't count? But the vast majority of CPU ticks on this planet are all Linux ticks. You keep trying to make Linux Desktop = Linux and while desktop is a part of Linux. Your mixing and matching to make a point that is inconsistent.
- abstractbeliefs 10y ago
  >I have learned to hate this term. Sometimes it means choice other times it means different solutions to the same problem. Anyone framing these issues as fragmentation is using it as a buzzword. Fragmentation isn't a thing when you're comparing three things that provide meaningfully different pros and cons. Fragmentation is an issue when it means having the same 6 solutions to the problem, all poorly implemented, compared to 3 good solutions.
boomboomsubban 10y ago
This is the display server, the pre-Wayland fragmentation is basically OpenBSD using a patched version of X11. Hell of a problem there.

addicted 10y ago

The Mir fad is only over because the Linux on Mobile "fad" is over.

andoon 10y ago
What made Wayland unsuitable to be used on mobiles?
- gribbly 10y ago
  I'd say nothing, Wayland is used on mobile and embedded, the reason Canonical made Mir was so that the had full control/ownership of the display solution and thus could charge a license fee to proprietary vendors who wanted to use it. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but for someone outside of Canonical it's hard to be interested in a competing solution which only exist in order to pad Canonical's bottom line. Which was also the reaction from the rest of the Linux ecosystem.
  - sametmax 10y ago
    Why though ? They can just licence Ubuntu the way they want, they could do that with the distrib already.
    - gribbly 10y ago
      Because they had Mir under a CLA which meant Canonical (and only Canonical) could offer it under different terms, which included proprietary licences. They can't license Ubuntu any way they want, because Ubuntu is 99% software which comes from (and are owned by) other sources, not Canonical.
      - andoon 10y ago
        I don't understand. Mir is under the GPLv3, what stops anybody from using it any way they want? How was Canonical supposed to profit from it?

vbezhenar 10y ago

You have to try different solutions before you'd find best. It's not a waste, it's a competition and it's necessary in a free market.

sametmax 10y ago
Yes but you usually enter a competition when you either have a chance to win, provide something the other won't or do it for experience (if you have resources to waste). In the case or Mir: - it's like creating an alternative linux kernel. Very few chances it will succeed. - even they roadmap didn't list anything wayland couldn't do. - canonical doesn't have that much cash to waste. I would have get Mir if they would have said: - we will do X that wayland clearly can't do and that we can't contribute to wayland; - we have tons of cash and devs and can spare a few to experiment. It's just not the case here. This is open source, we all want a better linux desktop, not a war. Mir felt more like starting a battle than solving a problem.
- pekk 10y ago
  By this logic, BSD developers should just work on the Linux kernel. Or is it the other way around? And nobody should ever make anything new. But this reasoning would have said not to make Linux to begin with, because there was already e.g. MINIX and Linux wasn't contributing to MINIX and didn't do anything that MINIX could not do. In fact, Linux wasn't even a microkernel! And few of the abilities which make it Linux as we know it today were on any "roadmap" (hahahaha). In open source, making your own project is not starting a war. This kind of flaming and demanding to control other people's allocations of resources is what makes a battle.
  - sametmax 10y ago
    There is no flaming. We are just sharing our opinions as active members of the community. Since I spend easily 50 hours every year on the Ubuntu project and give to the project, I think I have the right to post a comment on HN saying "I disagree". That's not a too much to ask is it ? Especially since people disagreeing ending up being right.

pekk 10y ago

"Spending resources for a 3rd one" 1. Doubling the number of people on a project does not double the speed of its production. It may actually hurt matters. This is the classic problem of estimating with man-hours and ignoring coordination costs 2. They aren't your resources to spend. Canonical doesn't tell Red Hat what it can do, so why the other way around?

sametmax 10y ago
> Doubling the number of people on a project does not double the speed of its production. Resources are not just for dev. You have documentation, integration, adaptation of dependencies, packaging... But even if you just don't spend the resources on wayland nor mir, then you can use them for stuff the users want. Like fixing external monitor handling, wifi and battery life . Having basic features working on your project should be a more important priority than building an alternative compositor anyway. Even more when one is already on it's way and in good shape. > They aren't your resources to spend. Canonical doesn't tell Red Hat what it can do, so why the other way around? Just because they aren't my resource doesn't mean I can't express my view on it. I'm not actively preventing canonical to do anything. But as an Ubuntu user with priorities, as an active member of the community doing bug reports and trying beta software, as an Ubuntu evangelist spending personal time to sell Ubuntu/install it/maintain it on my relative laptops and as somebody who gives financial support to the project, it's fair that I express my thoughts on the matter. I don't even know why I have to tell that to you. It should be obvious. It's a community. Communities communicate. Also since, me and the others like me, where right about it (that mir would fail and waste resources), I'd say I wished we would have been listened to. I'm not playing the blame game. I'm certainly not questioning Canonical competence and I'm not angry at them. I love the company and the product. I just happen to disagree with their politic on this particular decision. I'm now very glad they choose to invest in wayland. I will miss unity, which was a project I liked. So it's a not just about "reinventing the wheel" and "competition". I like gnome shell less than unity, but I think it's a good decision to work on it instead for the community.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
10y ago

MertsA 10y ago

The waste of working on Mir isn't the problem IMHO. Canonical has a ton of market share, at the time Mir was released it was already looking like getting AMD and Nvidia were going to take a while to support Wayland. Splitting the ecosystem for no technical reason came across as inconsiderate of Canonical.