5 ms·

Mir – Ubuntu's new display server

56 points by mnazim 14y ago

mnazim 14y ago
(OFF TOPIC: OP here. Mir is my family/last name. My friend sent me the link with subject line - "You are Ubuntu's new display server".)
- themstheones 14y ago
  That's a classic. You should print out that email and frame it!
- yuhong 14y ago
  I still remember reading about why Linus chose the git name, which ended up conflicting with GNU Interactive Tools.
keithpeter 14y ago
"a beautiful and lean user experience" Yes please! Especially the lean bit. Saves all those older laptops and PCs filling up the landfill. Do I really need something more powerful than a Cray 1 to run a noddy spreadsheet or an R script? "Tightly integrated with the Unity shell, fulfilling the shell’s requirements while at the same time not dictating any sort of semantics up the stack." Does that mean that Linux graphical applications will 'just work' on the Unity/MIR platform? "we wanted to decouple the way the shell works on top of the display server from the application-facing protocol" That sounds like what I was asking above. E.g. LibreOffice will 'just work' "We are in active conversations with GPU vendors to enable Mir on those drivers/GPUs, too" oh-oh; nvidia not on board so back to Debian from the one after Wheezy... It will be fun to watch... possibly on the sidelines if they don't sort nvidia drivers
fosap 14y ago
>Tailored towards an EGL/GL(ES) world. Oh no. Enabling compositing in metacity lets my accu die one hole hour earlier (about 30% earlier). In the age of mobile you please stop assuming "There is enough GPU/CPU power anyway"? Yes there is, but it consumes electricity. On the other hand I'm looking forward to a x11 replacement. A display server in the spirit of x11 with lots of features thrown out. Fonts are rendered in the program anyway today. And less network round-trips. And allow me the change the output server or even just the display of a running program.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  Yup, see: Wayland. :(
- wmf 14y ago
  Don't Windows, OS X, and all phones get fine battery life with compositing?
  - meaty 14y ago
    Only by turning the display and controller off after 20-30 seconds.
Thev00d00 14y ago
Interesting that they decided to "reimplement" stuff again. Nice to see them going with Qt though.
- dman 14y ago
  In six months they will be reimplementing parts of Qt that dont fit what they are trying to do effectively driving a wedge between that community.
- eloisant 14y ago
  People on the Linux Desktop have been talking about getting rid of X for years, literally. Everyone agrees that X was designed in a very different world from today, and with its client/server architecture it's pulling back the Linux Desktop more that anything else. But nothing ever comes out of it. In the mean time: * MacOSX used a Unix kernel but they didn't use a line of X11 * Android is based on Linux but again, no X. Ubuntu is the first distro with a clear plan to actually get rid of that crap. And now people are bashing them? What do you think they should do, start discussing with Debian, Fedora and the others about the best think to do? But people have been talking about getting rid of X for years already! Here is how it works: 1. Get shit done 2. If other people find it useful/interesting, they'll use it and maybe work with you to improve it. Never try to do 2. before 1. in Open Source, it doesn't work.
  - shmerl 14y ago
    People get things done - Wayland. Comes along Canonical and creates their own stuff just because Wayland is not controlled by them. Must be so fun to fragment Linux even more.
    - icarus_drowning 14y ago
      To be fair, they give other reasons for dropping Wayland. You might not believe them, but you're hardly giving them much of an argument.
      - 14y ago
meaty 14y ago
Yay more "not invented here". The list of OS's is going to be: MacOS X, windows, Linux and completely separately Ubuntu by time they've replaced everything. Canonical are turning into a 1990's style Unix vendor. We haven't forgotten that crock of shit yet.
- leetrout 14y ago
  "We haven't forgotten that crock of shit yet." Ahahaha. That's great. I was coming here to post the same thing as a question... Because I feel like they're on a mission to replace all the core components for the look and feel. Is this a stated mission? Have they replaced anything else "major" other than the window manager?
  - wmf 14y ago
    Upstart.
    - DannoHung 14y ago
      Seems like Upstart had decent adoption as an initd modernization effort until systemd becamse popular. Why was systemd accepted as non-fragmentary?
      - wmf 14y ago
        People hate on systemd as much or more than Upstart, so I wouldn't say it's any better or worse. But init is an example of something that the neckbeards thought Ubuntu didn't need to fix.
        meaty 14y ago
        Neckbeard here. We don't mind it being fixed. But we'd prefer it was fixed with something which was better engineered and fitted into the entire ecosystem. For example, the *BSD's have a completely different init system and dependency chain resulting in a large "WTF" moment now that everything suddenly has crap loads of dbus in it as a core dependency.
tiglionabbit 14y ago
Perhaps this will make it easier to handle multi touch?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
drivebyacct2 14y ago
So, where does GNOME fit into this? Unity is still very much layered on top of GNOME services. With Unity Next heavily utilizing Qt5/QML2, I'm very curious if they want to remove their dependence on GNOME for other system services. THAT is something I'd love to see someone work on. Switching between KDE/GNOME is frustrating because there is so insanely much duplicated between the two with slightly different feature sets. Mir, meh. I'm guessing it has most to do with being able to target existing Android devices. Most of the design rationale applies to Wayland as well, (including the things they seem to mark against Wayland, strangely)
troymc 14y ago
I wince at the choice of name. Mir, the space station, didn't help anyone get to the Moon. It was eventually crashed into the ocean, on purpose.
- MaysonL 14y ago
  Мир(Mir), in Russian, is either "world", or "peace", not merely the name given to the space station.
  - troymc 14y ago
    From the post: "The project was born and we decided to name it Mir (as in the space station), as it would be our outpost that finally enables us to reach our goal of arriving at the moon, providing a seamless and beautiful user experience spanning multiple form-factors."
csense 14y ago
More comments are available on this HN thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5319434 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5319434

56 points by mnazim 14y ago

(OFF TOPIC: OP here. Mir is my family/last name. My friend sent me the link with subject line - "You are Ubuntu's new display server".)

themstheones 14y ago
That's a classic. You should print out that email and frame it!
yuhong 14y ago
I still remember reading about why Linus chose the git name, which ended up conflicting with GNU Interactive Tools.

keithpeter 14y ago

"a beautiful and lean user experience" Yes please! Especially the lean bit. Saves all those older laptops and PCs filling up the landfill. Do I really need something more powerful than a Cray 1 to run a noddy spreadsheet or an R script? "Tightly integrated with the Unity shell, fulfilling the shell’s requirements while at the same time not dictating any sort of semantics up the stack." Does that mean that Linux graphical applications will 'just work' on the Unity/MIR platform? "we wanted to decouple the way the shell works on top of the display server from the application-facing protocol" That sounds like what I was asking above. E.g. LibreOffice will 'just work' "We are in active conversations with GPU vendors to enable Mir on those drivers/GPUs, too" oh-oh; nvidia not on board so back to Debian from the one after Wheezy... It will be fun to watch... possibly on the sidelines if they don't sort nvidia drivers

fosap 14y ago

>Tailored towards an EGL/GL(ES) world. Oh no. Enabling compositing in metacity lets my accu die one hole hour earlier (about 30% earlier). In the age of mobile you please stop assuming "There is enough GPU/CPU power anyway"? Yes there is, but it consumes electricity. On the other hand I'm looking forward to a x11 replacement. A display server in the spirit of x11 with lots of features thrown out. Fonts are rendered in the program anyway today. And less network round-trips. And allow me the change the output server or even just the display of a running program.

drivebyacct2 14y ago
Yup, see: Wayland. :(
wmf 14y ago
Don't Windows, OS X, and all phones get fine battery life with compositing?
- meaty 14y ago
  Only by turning the display and controller off after 20-30 seconds.

Thev00d00 14y ago

Interesting that they decided to "reimplement" stuff again. Nice to see them going with Qt though.

dman 14y ago
In six months they will be reimplementing parts of Qt that dont fit what they are trying to do effectively driving a wedge between that community.
eloisant 14y ago
People on the Linux Desktop have been talking about getting rid of X for years, literally. Everyone agrees that X was designed in a very different world from today, and with its client/server architecture it's pulling back the Linux Desktop more that anything else. But nothing ever comes out of it. In the mean time: * MacOSX used a Unix kernel but they didn't use a line of X11 * Android is based on Linux but again, no X. Ubuntu is the first distro with a clear plan to actually get rid of that crap. And now people are bashing them? What do you think they should do, start discussing with Debian, Fedora and the others about the best think to do? But people have been talking about getting rid of X for years already! Here is how it works: 1. Get shit done 2. If other people find it useful/interesting, they'll use it and maybe work with you to improve it. Never try to do 2. before 1. in Open Source, it doesn't work.
- shmerl 14y ago
  People get things done - Wayland. Comes along Canonical and creates their own stuff just because Wayland is not controlled by them. Must be so fun to fragment Linux even more.
  - icarus_drowning 14y ago
    To be fair, they give other reasons for dropping Wayland. You might not believe them, but you're hardly giving them much of an argument.
    - 14y ago

meaty 14y ago

Yay more "not invented here". The list of OS's is going to be: MacOS X, windows, Linux and completely separately Ubuntu by time they've replaced everything. Canonical are turning into a 1990's style Unix vendor. We haven't forgotten that crock of shit yet.

leetrout 14y ago
"We haven't forgotten that crock of shit yet." Ahahaha. That's great. I was coming here to post the same thing as a question... Because I feel like they're on a mission to replace all the core components for the look and feel. Is this a stated mission? Have they replaced anything else "major" other than the window manager?
- wmf 14y ago
  Upstart.
  - DannoHung 14y ago
    Seems like Upstart had decent adoption as an initd modernization effort until systemd becamse popular. Why was systemd accepted as non-fragmentary?
    - wmf 14y ago
      People hate on systemd as much or more than Upstart, so I wouldn't say it's any better or worse. But init is an example of something that the neckbeards thought Ubuntu didn't need to fix.
      - meaty 14y ago
        Neckbeard here. We don't mind it being fixed. But we'd prefer it was fixed with something which was better engineered and fitted into the entire ecosystem. For example, the *BSD's have a completely different init system and dependency chain resulting in a large "WTF" moment now that everything suddenly has crap loads of dbus in it as a core dependency.

tiglionabbit 14y ago

Perhaps this will make it easier to handle multi touch?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

drivebyacct2 14y ago

So, where does GNOME fit into this? Unity is still very much layered on top of GNOME services. With Unity Next heavily utilizing Qt5/QML2, I'm very curious if they want to remove their dependence on GNOME for other system services. THAT is something I'd love to see someone work on. Switching between KDE/GNOME is frustrating because there is so insanely much duplicated between the two with slightly different feature sets. Mir, meh. I'm guessing it has most to do with being able to target existing Android devices. Most of the design rationale applies to Wayland as well, (including the things they seem to mark against Wayland, strangely)

troymc 14y ago

I wince at the choice of name. Mir, the space station, didn't help anyone get to the Moon. It was eventually crashed into the ocean, on purpose.

MaysonL 14y ago
Мир(Mir), in Russian, is either "world", or "peace", not merely the name given to the space station.
- troymc 14y ago
  From the post: "The project was born and we decided to name it Mir (as in the space station), as it would be our outpost that finally enables us to reach our goal of arriving at the moon, providing a seamless and beautiful user experience spanning multiple form-factors."

csense 14y ago

More comments are available on this HN thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5319434 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5319434