7 ms·

Canonical writing their own X/Wayland replacement

68 points by shadeslayer 14y ago

nuclear_eclipse 14y ago
Somehow, I'm less than surprised. I'm waiting for them to decide to roll their own browser, email client, and office suite...
- mpyne 14y ago
  Don't forget about their own programming language. :)
  - obviouslygreen 14y ago
    Rubunthy on Mails? [edit: Oops, I've jumped all the way to their own web development framework. At least this way they can also build their own DSL's.]
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- JoachimSchipper 14y ago
  > their own browser, email client, and office suite... Iceweasel, Icedove, LibreOffice? They seem to be working on it ;-).
  - dllthomas 14y ago
    Iceweasel is Debian's, not Ubuntu's; it is a patched version of Firefox. It is not called Firefox, because the license of Firefox doesn't allow you to patch it and call it Firefox. Icedove, likewise, but Thunderbird instead of Firefox. LibreOffice was OpenOffice which was StarOffice, which was developed as a commercial project, bought (along with its developers) by Sun, and released as FLOSS in 2000. The project has been through renamings and possibly reorganizations since, and I can't say whether Ubuntu has had any involvement, but to say it's an attempt by Ubuntu to develop their own office suite is grossly disconnected from reality.
- sciurus 14y ago
  It works for GNOME and KDE. ;)
  - mpyne 14y ago
    KDE started ours way before the others came along (or in the case of the browser, shortly before). :P
scarmig 14y ago
...really? X is an abomination. But why not Wayland? Anyone care to present Canonical's argument, with concrete examples of what they find so offensive about it?
- minimax 14y ago
  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec#Why_Not_Wayland_.2BAC8_Weston.3F https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec#Why_Not_Wayland_.2BAC8_Westo...
  - wmf 14y ago
    If Wayland's input handling is not good enough, why didn't they raise that on the mailing list any time in the last few years? What does "The shell integration parts of the protocol are considered privileged from our perspective" even mean?
mercurial 14y ago
You may want to go to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec if you want to read about their motivations. I don't enough about Wayland to say if their argumentation is justified or not.
IgorPartola 14y ago
Another item of note in this post is that they are moving Unity to Qt.
randallu 14y ago
Ha, I bet this one will crash and burn over Fiji too. More information here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec They don't like X for all the normal reasons, they think Wayland might be like X but haven't investigated (I think you can replace the input handling in the "compositor" plugin; maybe I'm wrong). They don't specify how they'll handle hard problems, such as: - Client vblank sync (as well as compositor vblank sync). Compiz, unity, etc, don't do this now; clients run unsynced and tear. - Switching unoccluded windows to render directly to the framebuffer instead of going through the compositor. Mandatory for good performance on something like a Nexus 10 (which has a 16MB framebuffer, so nearly 1GB/s bandwidth to deliver glClear at 60fps with no extra copies...). - Handling multiple clients that want to read gestures. They actually say in their "INPUT" section that they will handle "shell" gestures "in the server", which sounds like they're going to bake their UI into their display server. They want it to be compatible with all of the old apps too, which Wayland already does. I'm trying not to be judgemental, but it sounds like they want to write something like Wayland but without designing it first. Good luck with re-entry, guys.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  Bigger burn than reentry. You're right though, this feels a bit like not developed here syndrome. X is horrible to hack on top, and has had a good run but Wayland could be a fantastic base for them, especially given Qt has spent time working on it.
  - ithkuil 14y ago
    Is it possible that once toolkits like qt and gtk have been ported to simpler/more direct APIs like wayland (w.r.t X11), porting them to other APIs like this mir would be easier than starting from scratch?
    - nicholassmith 14y ago
      Possibly, but I've followed some of the Qt Wayland development and it looks like they've hit problems on a fairly regular basis. When you're building GUI toolkits you're also including a certain amount of understanding of the weird corner cases from the windowing system, so you're ending up porting a large chunk of code and then working out what's broken. Although, Qt might have it a bit easier as they've switched to drawing their GUI components with OpenGL.
shmerl 14y ago
Did they give any rationale why they can't use Wayland?
- saidajigumi 14y ago
  Yes. Canonical clearly lays out the project motivations, including not choosing to use Wayland, on the Mir wiki page[1]. [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec#Why_Not_Wayland_.2BAC8_Weston.3F https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec#Why_Not_Wayland_.2BAC8_Westo...
  - shmerl 14y ago
    What worries me is fragmentation of drivers. It can be a very serious problem.
    - bratsche 14y ago
      They'll probably use the same KMS and EGL drivers that Wayland and others use.
      - shmerl 14y ago
        If that's the case - it would be good. But I'm not sure about it yet.
      - binarycrusader 14y ago
        Yes, this is covered in the wiki page linked to in the email: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec
  - doublextremevil 14y ago
    from Wayland creator Kristian Høgsberg: " things they claim wayland/weston input can't be extended to support: "... adjusting and extending X's input model is difficult and supporting features like input event batching and compression, motion event prediction together with associated power-saving strategies or flexible synchronization schemes for aligning input event delivery and rendering operations is (too) complex." is already implemented and working in weston today..." https://plus.google.com/100409717163242445476/posts https://plus.google.com/100409717163242445476/posts (from other thread on Mir)
ISL 14y ago
Open source is wonderful. Good luck to Ubuntu, though I love X. As an end user of X, fluxbox, and X-forwarding over ssh, X just works. I'm not looking forward to compatibility troubles when the new fleet of X replacements arrives. Debian, please continue to maintain old stalwarts as Ubuntu and other distros flirt with the new.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  What happens to the X windows forwarded over ssh when the connection drops? Can you reattach afterwards?
  - wmf 14y ago
    No, I think the app gets killed.
    - donio 14y ago
      Depends on the app. Emacs can survive and re-attach later. A single emacs session can be connected to multiple X (and tty) sessions at a time. I use this all day, my emacs session runs for weeks or months between restarts and I just connect/disconnect to X servers or ttys as needed.
  - binarycrusader 14y ago
    If you use something like Xpra, sure: http://xpra.org/ http://xpra.org/
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  I thought we had moved beyond these gripes about Wayland. Wayland already supports a far more performant remote networking ability and XWayland gives you all the compatibility you need.
chris_wot 14y ago
I think it's just as interesting (if not more so) that they are moving away from Gnome to Qt!
- dylan-m 14y ago
  That bit is nice to see, but I'm pretty suspicious of it. They're going to have to write _a lot_ of software to fill the gaps, now, if they mean to have Qt everywhere. GNOME provides a lot of functionality beyond the UI toolkit and the shell, including myriads of small applications we take for granted. I'm curious where Canonical is going to find the engineering resources to handle all of this.
  - zanny 14y ago
    > including myriads of small applications we take for granted As someone who runs Arch with KDE and an intentionally different Gnome theme just so I can notice the apps I use running Gnome, there aren't too many. In Ubuntu-space, definitely, since their entire ecosystem was built on gnome, but in general you can easily get a gnome-less Linux.
    - codygman 14y ago
      Gnome-less debian user right here!
meaty 14y ago
They ought to fix all the pretty basic bugs and commit to actually supporting their customers before they bite this off. LaunchPad is a testament to the shit state Ubuntu is in. All the windows are broken so we'll knock half the building down and rebuild it. Doesn't work.
Zigurd 14y ago
I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet: Ubuntu was able to cobble together Ubuntu Touch running on Surface Flinger as a compositor. There are limitations to that, including lack of really working support for multiple monitors. Mir may be designed to fill in the deficiencies of Surface Flinger for use as a compositor for Ubuntu. That might make project scope controllable enough to think it could succeed.

68 points by shadeslayer 14y ago

Somehow, I'm less than surprised. I'm waiting for them to decide to roll their own browser, email client, and office suite...

mpyne 14y ago
Don't forget about their own programming language. :)
- obviouslygreen 14y ago
  Rubunthy on Mails? [edit: Oops, I've jumped all the way to their own web development framework. At least this way they can also build their own DSL's.]
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
JoachimSchipper 14y ago
> their own browser, email client, and office suite... Iceweasel, Icedove, LibreOffice? They seem to be working on it ;-).
- dllthomas 14y ago
  Iceweasel is Debian's, not Ubuntu's; it is a patched version of Firefox. It is not called Firefox, because the license of Firefox doesn't allow you to patch it and call it Firefox. Icedove, likewise, but Thunderbird instead of Firefox. LibreOffice was OpenOffice which was StarOffice, which was developed as a commercial project, bought (along with its developers) by Sun, and released as FLOSS in 2000. The project has been through renamings and possibly reorganizations since, and I can't say whether Ubuntu has had any involvement, but to say it's an attempt by Ubuntu to develop their own office suite is grossly disconnected from reality.
sciurus 14y ago
It works for GNOME and KDE. ;)
- mpyne 14y ago
  KDE started ours way before the others came along (or in the case of the browser, shortly before). :P

scarmig 14y ago

...really? X is an abomination. But why not Wayland? Anyone care to present Canonical's argument, with concrete examples of what they find so offensive about it?

minimax 14y ago
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec#Why_Not_Wayland_.2BAC8_Weston.3F https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec#Why_Not_Wayland_.2BAC8_Westo...
- wmf 14y ago
  If Wayland's input handling is not good enough, why didn't they raise that on the mailing list any time in the last few years? What does "The shell integration parts of the protocol are considered privileged from our perspective" even mean?

mercurial 14y ago

You may want to go to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec if you want to read about their motivations. I don't enough about Wayland to say if their argumentation is justified or not.

IgorPartola 14y ago

Another item of note in this post is that they are moving Unity to Qt.

randallu 14y ago

Ha, I bet this one will crash and burn over Fiji too. More information here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec They don't like X for all the normal reasons, they think Wayland might be like X but haven't investigated (I think you can replace the input handling in the "compositor" plugin; maybe I'm wrong). They don't specify how they'll handle hard problems, such as: - Client vblank sync (as well as compositor vblank sync). Compiz, unity, etc, don't do this now; clients run unsynced and tear. - Switching unoccluded windows to render directly to the framebuffer instead of going through the compositor. Mandatory for good performance on something like a Nexus 10 (which has a 16MB framebuffer, so nearly 1GB/s bandwidth to deliver glClear at 60fps with no extra copies...). - Handling multiple clients that want to read gestures. They actually say in their "INPUT" section that they will handle "shell" gestures "in the server", which sounds like they're going to bake their UI into their display server. They want it to be compatible with all of the old apps too, which Wayland already does. I'm trying not to be judgemental, but it sounds like they want to write something like Wayland but without designing it first. Good luck with re-entry, guys.

nicholassmith 14y ago
Bigger burn than reentry. You're right though, this feels a bit like not developed here syndrome. X is horrible to hack on top, and has had a good run but Wayland could be a fantastic base for them, especially given Qt has spent time working on it.
- ithkuil 14y ago
  Is it possible that once toolkits like qt and gtk have been ported to simpler/more direct APIs like wayland (w.r.t X11), porting them to other APIs like this mir would be easier than starting from scratch?
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    Possibly, but I've followed some of the Qt Wayland development and it looks like they've hit problems on a fairly regular basis. When you're building GUI toolkits you're also including a certain amount of understanding of the weird corner cases from the windowing system, so you're ending up porting a large chunk of code and then working out what's broken. Although, Qt might have it a bit easier as they've switched to drawing their GUI components with OpenGL.

shmerl 14y ago

Did they give any rationale why they can't use Wayland?

saidajigumi 14y ago
Yes. Canonical clearly lays out the project motivations, including not choosing to use Wayland, on the Mir wiki page[1]. [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec#Why_Not_Wayland_.2BAC8_Weston.3F https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec#Why_Not_Wayland_.2BAC8_Westo...
- shmerl 14y ago
  What worries me is fragmentation of drivers. It can be a very serious problem.
  - bratsche 14y ago
    They'll probably use the same KMS and EGL drivers that Wayland and others use.
    - shmerl 14y ago
      If that's the case - it would be good. But I'm not sure about it yet.
    - binarycrusader 14y ago
      Yes, this is covered in the wiki page linked to in the email: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec
- doublextremevil 14y ago
  from Wayland creator Kristian Høgsberg: " things they claim wayland/weston input can't be extended to support: "... adjusting and extending X's input model is difficult and supporting features like input event batching and compression, motion event prediction together with associated power-saving strategies or flexible synchronization schemes for aligning input event delivery and rendering operations is (too) complex." is already implemented and working in weston today..." https://plus.google.com/100409717163242445476/posts https://plus.google.com/100409717163242445476/posts (from other thread on Mir)

ISL 14y ago

Open source is wonderful. Good luck to Ubuntu, though I love X. As an end user of X, fluxbox, and X-forwarding over ssh, X just works. I'm not looking forward to compatibility troubles when the new fleet of X replacements arrives. Debian, please continue to maintain old stalwarts as Ubuntu and other distros flirt with the new.

slurgfest 14y ago
What happens to the X windows forwarded over ssh when the connection drops? Can you reattach afterwards?
- wmf 14y ago
  No, I think the app gets killed.
  - donio 14y ago
    Depends on the app. Emacs can survive and re-attach later. A single emacs session can be connected to multiple X (and tty) sessions at a time. I use this all day, my emacs session runs for weeks or months between restarts and I just connect/disconnect to X servers or ttys as needed.
- binarycrusader 14y ago
  If you use something like Xpra, sure: http://xpra.org/ http://xpra.org/
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
drivebyacct2 14y ago
I thought we had moved beyond these gripes about Wayland. Wayland already supports a far more performant remote networking ability and XWayland gives you all the compatibility you need.

chris_wot 14y ago

I think it's just as interesting (if not more so) that they are moving away from Gnome to Qt!

dylan-m 14y ago
That bit is nice to see, but I'm pretty suspicious of it. They're going to have to write _a lot_ of software to fill the gaps, now, if they mean to have Qt everywhere. GNOME provides a lot of functionality beyond the UI toolkit and the shell, including myriads of small applications we take for granted. I'm curious where Canonical is going to find the engineering resources to handle all of this.
- zanny 14y ago
  > including myriads of small applications we take for granted As someone who runs Arch with KDE and an intentionally different Gnome theme just so I can notice the apps I use running Gnome, there aren't too many. In Ubuntu-space, definitely, since their entire ecosystem was built on gnome, but in general you can easily get a gnome-less Linux.
  - codygman 14y ago
    Gnome-less debian user right here!

meaty 14y ago

They ought to fix all the pretty basic bugs and commit to actually supporting their customers before they bite this off. LaunchPad is a testament to the shit state Ubuntu is in. All the windows are broken so we'll knock half the building down and rebuild it. Doesn't work.

Zigurd 14y ago

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet: Ubuntu was able to cobble together Ubuntu Touch running on Surface Flinger as a compositor. There are limitations to that, including lack of really working support for multiple monitors. Mir may be designed to fill in the deficiencies of Surface Flinger for use as a compositor for Ubuntu. That might make project scope controllable enough to think it could succeed.