6 ms·

But somehow canonical doesn't like it and has to implement Mir.

by stesch 14y ago

rlpb 14y ago
"Somehow"? They've given a specific list of reasons. If you're going to complain about it, at least refute their specific technical reasons if you want your complaint to have any credibility.
- alexlarsson 14y ago
  specific? They are pretty damn vague, not to mention completely wrong. See e.g. the comments from X.org/Wayland developers at: https://plus.google.com/100409717163242445476/posts/jDq6BAgdpkG https://plus.google.com/100409717163242445476/posts/jDq6BAgd...
  - Symmetry 14y ago
    Yes, they got one thing wrong though it's already been corrected in Canonical's design document. But it seems to me that the main problem Canonical had with Wayland was that they wanted to run their stack on devices that only had Android device drivers. As far as I can tell Wayland relies on things like KMS to function, and at the very least Firefox OS has no plans to use Wayland because they don't think they can get it to use the Android drivers they're planning on using.
    - Arelius 14y ago
      That seems like a very good and practical reason to me. As far as I could tell, Wayland is very much tied to KMS, and not interested in doing otherwise.
      - yepguy 14y ago
        Wayland already had a proof-of-concept Android backend that worked with Android drivers.
    - cbs 14y ago
      > As far as I can tell Wayland relies on things like KMS to function Is this a limitation of Wayland or the reference implementation? If I'm not mistaken the server needs a modesetting api, not necessarily KMS. The server runs on top of a modesetting API (kernel modesetting, OpenWF Display or similar) http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html
    - slurgfest 14y ago
      So much the worse for using Android. It's past time that we have proper Linux on phones without interposing all the Google-Java stuff.
      - wtracy 14y ago
        I believe this was referring to the Android kernel patches, not the Java-based userland.
      - drivebyacct2 14y ago
        Java, or rather Dalvik, has absolutely nothing to do with the kernel or graphics stack in Android.
- cbs 14y ago
  They've given a specific list of reasons. Reasons that mean nothing to those of us that don't understand display servers and/or composting. If you're going to complain about it, at least refute their specific technical reasons if you want your complaint to have any credibility. I can't, and I don't think any of us meaningfully can unless there are some X, Wayland or Mir developers lurking around HN. But I think the Wayland dev's google plus post [3] mailing list post [2] and IRC log [1] all give the impression that that list of reasons offered up by Ubuntu is, at least in part, bunk or could be addressed upstream in wayland. An upstream project that Ubuntu was already involved in for years and had the power to shape but never actually voiced their concerns when wayland's architecture didn't meet ubuntu's requirements. Ubuntu is free not to reveal the real reasons behind their decision, but unless they do the whole thing is dripping in Not Invented Here syndrome. In fact, it seems like from the Wayland community, the problem isn't that Ubuntu is striking it out on their own, its that they're distributing a bunch of miss-understanding about Wayland in the process. 01:16 <RAOF [Ubuntu dev]> We're not forking wayland; that's part of what krh [Wayland lead] is annoyed with? 01:17 <Prf_Jakob> RAOF: he said he was annoyed with you having a wiki page full of missunderstandings of how wayland work. [1] http://pastebin.com/KjRm3be1 http://pastebin.com/KjRm3be1 [2] http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2013-March/007777.html http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2013-Mar... [3] https://plus.google.com/100409717163242445476/posts https://plus.google.com/100409717163242445476/posts
fingerprinter 14y ago
You are literally the first comment in the entire thread and you have nothing to offer but to chide Canonical, who by the way, were not even mentioned in the article. Neither was Ubuntu. In fact, you have to go about 4-5 threads deep in the comments to see a mention of Ubuntu or Canonical (specifically). This article is about Wayland. Do you have any thoughts on Wayland? Weston? The future? X, even? Maybe some specific question about Mir and how it relates to thing things Wayland wants to do as well? The advantages of one vs the other? No? You don't have anything constructive to add? Greeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaat. It's times like these I wish I could downvote a comment more than once.
- wreckimnaked 14y ago
  Given that the Mir discussion was on the front page some hours ago, this comment does have something _constructive_ to add.
  - fingerprinter 14y ago
    There is literally _nothing_ constructive about the comment. Related to recent news? Yes. Topical? Sure. Snitty? Yup. Constructive? Nope.
    - GhotiFish 14y ago
      Who said comments need to be constructive? We don't have to be working towards a better future every single second of the day, you know.
      - nwienert 14y ago
        Welcome to HackerNews. Please read this: http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html "The most important principle on HN, though, is to make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: both civil and substantial."
        14y ago
mseebach 14y ago
Why is this a bad thing? Why is it not a cause for celebration that we have two, rather than one, parallel attempts to replace X?
- tinco 14y ago
  It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is an awkward thing. The problematic thing is that for graphics drivers to work on linux they need to interface with X. This means that the closed-source drivers are tightly coupled with X and can only be made to work with Wayland by the Nvidia and AMD teams themselves. Now Ubuntu comes along, looks at wayland and decides that it is not good enough for some reasons they _hopefully_ have thought long and hard about and starts working on an alternative. But Ubuntu actually has enough clout to convince AMD and NVidia to work with them on this new system. This means wayland is effectively shut out and might as well call it quits. So the awkward thing is that we were promised a clean, fast well architected system for years which after years of development finally reached 1.0 and seems to be quite usable. At that precise point the only company capable of making wayland real-world stuff changes his mind and decides on going all-in on some software we don't know if even exists yet and for some magical reason is better than Wayland. Everyone is just stunned :P
- rodgerd 14y ago
  1/ Mir is dependent on a proprietary Boost software license, and, should it follow Canonical's normal path, will require you to assign your work to them to contribute. Properietary dependencies and a requirement to hand over your code to a commercial entity can be considered open source, in much the same way that, say, OpenSolaris was, with similar pitfalls. For something so foundational, that's not great. 2/ NIH is a bad reason for parallel projects. 3/ The major reason that nothing has unseated X, despite its very longstanding, well-known problems, is because nothing has had momentum until Wayland. Canonical seem determined to deep-six that momentum with a piece of software that will require other Linux environments to buy into a company-owned replacement. This seems likely to fragment the effort it a toxic way, with two incompatible replacements splitting not just graphics development efforts, but splitting app developers.
  - 14y ago
Zigurd 14y ago
Mir is likely to be influenced by Canonical's experience using Surface Flinger as a compositor for Ubuntu Touch.

But somehow canonical doesn't like it and has to implement Mir.

by stesch 14y ago

But somehow canonical doesn't like it and has to implement Mir.

rlpb 14y ago

"Somehow"? They've given a specific list of reasons. If you're going to complain about it, at least refute their specific technical reasons if you want your complaint to have any credibility.

alexlarsson 14y ago
specific? They are pretty damn vague, not to mention completely wrong. See e.g. the comments from X.org/Wayland developers at: https://plus.google.com/100409717163242445476/posts/jDq6BAgdpkG https://plus.google.com/100409717163242445476/posts/jDq6BAgd...
- Symmetry 14y ago
  Yes, they got one thing wrong though it's already been corrected in Canonical's design document. But it seems to me that the main problem Canonical had with Wayland was that they wanted to run their stack on devices that only had Android device drivers. As far as I can tell Wayland relies on things like KMS to function, and at the very least Firefox OS has no plans to use Wayland because they don't think they can get it to use the Android drivers they're planning on using.
  - Arelius 14y ago
    That seems like a very good and practical reason to me. As far as I could tell, Wayland is very much tied to KMS, and not interested in doing otherwise.
    - yepguy 14y ago
      Wayland already had a proof-of-concept Android backend that worked with Android drivers.
  - cbs 14y ago
    > As far as I can tell Wayland relies on things like KMS to function Is this a limitation of Wayland or the reference implementation? If I'm not mistaken the server needs a modesetting api, not necessarily KMS. The server runs on top of a modesetting API (kernel modesetting, OpenWF Display or similar) http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html
  - slurgfest 14y ago
    So much the worse for using Android. It's past time that we have proper Linux on phones without interposing all the Google-Java stuff.
    - wtracy 14y ago
      I believe this was referring to the Android kernel patches, not the Java-based userland.
    - drivebyacct2 14y ago
      Java, or rather Dalvik, has absolutely nothing to do with the kernel or graphics stack in Android.
cbs 14y ago
They've given a specific list of reasons. Reasons that mean nothing to those of us that don't understand display servers and/or composting. If you're going to complain about it, at least refute their specific technical reasons if you want your complaint to have any credibility. I can't, and I don't think any of us meaningfully can unless there are some X, Wayland or Mir developers lurking around HN. But I think the Wayland dev's google plus post [3] mailing list post [2] and IRC log [1] all give the impression that that list of reasons offered up by Ubuntu is, at least in part, bunk or could be addressed upstream in wayland. An upstream project that Ubuntu was already involved in for years and had the power to shape but never actually voiced their concerns when wayland's architecture didn't meet ubuntu's requirements. Ubuntu is free not to reveal the real reasons behind their decision, but unless they do the whole thing is dripping in Not Invented Here syndrome. In fact, it seems like from the Wayland community, the problem isn't that Ubuntu is striking it out on their own, its that they're distributing a bunch of miss-understanding about Wayland in the process. 01:16 <RAOF [Ubuntu dev]> We're not forking wayland; that's part of what krh [Wayland lead] is annoyed with? 01:17 <Prf_Jakob> RAOF: he said he was annoyed with you having a wiki page full of missunderstandings of how wayland work. [1] http://pastebin.com/KjRm3be1 http://pastebin.com/KjRm3be1 [2] http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2013-March/007777.html http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2013-Mar... [3] https://plus.google.com/100409717163242445476/posts https://plus.google.com/100409717163242445476/posts

fingerprinter 14y ago

You are literally the first comment in the entire thread and you have nothing to offer but to chide Canonical, who by the way, were not even mentioned in the article. Neither was Ubuntu. In fact, you have to go about 4-5 threads deep in the comments to see a mention of Ubuntu or Canonical (specifically). This article is about Wayland. Do you have any thoughts on Wayland? Weston? The future? X, even? Maybe some specific question about Mir and how it relates to thing things Wayland wants to do as well? The advantages of one vs the other? No? You don't have anything constructive to add? Greeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaat. It's times like these I wish I could downvote a comment more than once.

wreckimnaked 14y ago
Given that the Mir discussion was on the front page some hours ago, this comment does have something _constructive_ to add.
- fingerprinter 14y ago
  There is literally _nothing_ constructive about the comment. Related to recent news? Yes. Topical? Sure. Snitty? Yup. Constructive? Nope.
  - GhotiFish 14y ago
    Who said comments need to be constructive? We don't have to be working towards a better future every single second of the day, you know.
    - nwienert 14y ago
      Welcome to HackerNews. Please read this: http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html "The most important principle on HN, though, is to make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: both civil and substantial."
      - 14y ago

mseebach 14y ago

Why is this a bad thing? Why is it not a cause for celebration that we have two, rather than one, parallel attempts to replace X?

tinco 14y ago
It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is an awkward thing. The problematic thing is that for graphics drivers to work on linux they need to interface with X. This means that the closed-source drivers are tightly coupled with X and can only be made to work with Wayland by the Nvidia and AMD teams themselves. Now Ubuntu comes along, looks at wayland and decides that it is not good enough for some reasons they _hopefully_ have thought long and hard about and starts working on an alternative. But Ubuntu actually has enough clout to convince AMD and NVidia to work with them on this new system. This means wayland is effectively shut out and might as well call it quits. So the awkward thing is that we were promised a clean, fast well architected system for years which after years of development finally reached 1.0 and seems to be quite usable. At that precise point the only company capable of making wayland real-world stuff changes his mind and decides on going all-in on some software we don't know if even exists yet and for some magical reason is better than Wayland. Everyone is just stunned :P
rodgerd 14y ago
1/ Mir is dependent on a proprietary Boost software license, and, should it follow Canonical's normal path, will require you to assign your work to them to contribute. Properietary dependencies and a requirement to hand over your code to a commercial entity can be considered open source, in much the same way that, say, OpenSolaris was, with similar pitfalls. For something so foundational, that's not great. 2/ NIH is a bad reason for parallel projects. 3/ The major reason that nothing has unseated X, despite its very longstanding, well-known problems, is because nothing has had momentum until Wayland. Canonical seem determined to deep-six that momentum with a piece of software that will require other Linux environments to buy into a company-owned replacement. This seems likely to fragment the effort it a toxic way, with two incompatible replacements splitting not just graphics development efforts, but splitting app developers.
- 14y ago

Zigurd 14y ago

Mir is likely to be influenced by Canonical's experience using Surface Flinger as a compositor for Ubuntu Touch.