9 ms·

This blog seems to explain some of the reasoning (http://blog.cooperteam.net/ http://blog.cooperteam.net/), but IMO I don't think Mir is worth the fragmentation

This blog seems to explain some of the reasoning (http://blog.cooperteam.net/ http://blog.cooperteam.net/), but IMO I don't think Mir is worth the fragmentation it will create.

D9u 13y ago
That fragmentation is exactly why I chose FreeBSD nearly a year ago. As the old adage goes: FreeBSD is what you get when Unix developers get together and create a Unix-like system for the PC platform. Linux is what you get when PC developers get together and create a Unix-like system for PC.
- jbrechtel 13y ago
  Are you using FreeBSD on a laptop?
  - 3825 13y ago
    Are you referring to this xkcd? http://xkcd.com/349/ http://xkcd.com/349/
    - hillbillyjack 13y ago
      I doubt he is, it has been hard to get FreeBSD working on any laptop that isn't specifically supported by someone. You can see many non-working things here: http://laptop.bsdgroup.de/freebsd/ http://laptop.bsdgroup.de/freebsd/ from no sound to can't boot. Power management is also notoriously bad so you need your laptop to be plugged in. It is reminiscent of Linux a few years ago when everyone with brand new laptops tried to install it. FreeBSD is still fine on desktop systems and even works quite well for a desktop in some cases, but Linux is just so big at this point that it supports more things, while FreeBSD has always seemed more server oriented.
      - D9u 13y ago
        FreeBSD is still fine on desktop systems and even works quite well for a desktop in some cases, but Linux is just so big at this point that it supports more things, while FreeBSD has always seemed more server oriented. Apparently you have not tried FreeBSD on an Acer Aspire One netbook, because if you did you would realize that your last paragraph is outdated by at least 3 minor version iterations. I first tried PC-BSD 8.x in 2009, and with KDE as the default DE it unusably slow, but when I tried FreeBSD 8.x last year I was pleasantly suprised with how well the system ran on my little netbook. Then, when I upgraded to 9.0 I realized that I had finally found what I had been searching for all these years. Now, with 9.1 the system is even better.
      - synchronise 13y ago
        I used to run a PC-BSD system and it pretty much worked out of the box, that is until I got an AMD 6* series video card but I hear the radeon driver is being developed and very close to being integrated into FreeBSD 10 and backported to 9. Yes, FreeBSD lacks some features that Linux has, but it's still being developed and it has its uses outside of the server market too. For example, Sony is reportedly using it as the core OS for the new PS4 and there's a project that is aiming to create a HUD device which is also based on FreeBSD, http://hmdviking.blogspot.jp/ http://hmdviking.blogspot.jp/
      - asveikau 13y ago
        A few years ago I ran OpenBSD on a Thinkpad. Worked well. It was a lot like Linux used to be in the late 90s though... I tried to put it on a few other machines with less success.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - jbrechtel 13y ago
      Haha, no. I was just curious about the feasibility these days of FreeBSD on a laptop.
  - D9u 13y ago
    I've been running FreeBSD on my netbook since last autumn and it's more responsive, and noticeably faster than #!, which I tried out last month. (I just reinstalled FBSD last night) Crunchbang just doesn't compare as far as speed goes. I tested both OS' with Xfce4.1, as well as no DE with dwm & dmenu. In each case FreeBSD blows crunchbang away, and this is on an Intel Atom N270 with 1 GB RAM. The only thing #! has going for it is ease of setup, but FreeBSD isn't that hard to setup and use, and all questions I've had are easily answered by reading the FreeBSD Handbook. Some will decry FBSD's support for suspend/hibernate, but since I never use those features it's a non issue for me. That said, I do believe that suspend, etc, is working for some laptops, although YMMV.
    - pyre 13y ago
      | Some will decry FBSD's support for | suspend/hibernate, but since I never | use those features it's a non issue for me. This is how most people use a laptop. While that may be perfectly fine for you, that doesn't work for a lot of people.
      - D9u 13y ago
        A 12 cell battery lasts a long time on this little netbook. But you're right, I'm not most people.
        jlgreco 13y ago
        How do you pack up your laptop and bring it somewhere else without it melting down in the bag? Just make sure nothing is burning CPU, pack it up, and hope for the best?
        hobs 13y ago
        I assume he uses the shut down feature.
        D9u 13y ago
        Of course. Why does the netbook have to stay running if I'm not using it? Sometimes the simplest things are so abstruse to some of us.
- zanny 13y ago
  So don't take consideration for Dragonflybsd, OpenBSD, or the biggest elephant in the bsd fork room, OSX. FOSS will fragment because people have different opinions and are passionate about the choices they make in the software to create and use. There is no alternative, because in free software the developer has last say. There is no school of "the one way" of how to do anything in foss, the only possible proxy being the popularity of the software created.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    Don't forget NetBSD.
- gwu78 13y ago
  I like that old adage. I actually had never heard it. I think BSD's success with i386 has brought the stark pragmatism of the "server" to the PC. The dream of BSDI. The reliability, robustness and the uniformity. Maybe BSD UNIX is not as "fun" as MS and Apple, but it _works_ the best. Relatively minimal bloat. And things can be removed relatively easily. Getting small is not frowned upon or ignored as a worthy objective. "The hero is the negative coder." (credit: Doug McIlroy, one of the original UNIX developers) Linux OTOH (a horde of wannabe kernel hackers and a gazillion idiosyncratic GNU programs) has brought the chaos of the PC[1] to the idea of "UNIX". There is bloat and endless tweaking around every corner. The vigilance and skill it takes to make your Linux small and simple and actually keep it that way is, IME, quite the burden. The respect for the user also differs. Man pages? I guess the assumption is we'll just read the code when we have a question. But then there's also an expectation we'll use binary packages. Linux just makes my head spin. I'm just not smart enough to use it. I wish I was... because they have better hardware support. Based on what I've seen, I doubt many a Linux developer would think "The hero is the negative coder." Linux just keeps growing and becoming more complex and unwieldy. And so by comparison, IMO, Linux less embodies the idea of UNIX than BSD. 1. The Windows experience of constantly searching for some non-MS program to do some task that base Windows itself can't even begin to handle... and you end up with an ad hoc mess of programs that barely do what you need, and most of them poorly written by who knows who.
  - Ologn 13y ago
    I had an appreciation for FreeBSD. They were smart about some things. Especially circa 1996 era. It was an easy install. Pop in a 3.5" disk and do a network install. It had drivers and automagic support for obscure ethernet cards which Linux did not support at that time. It even had an easy modem install. When I needed a small server quick I'd buy a PC from a store, pop a disk in it and network install FreeBSD. Get up a DNS, mail or web server in no time. Making the install process easy can help an OS get out there a lot. The servers were sturdy and good too. A nice ports system for applications - better than dpkg or rpm at the time. It just worked. The install itself was a thing of beauty - no hassles. FreeBSD 1996 beats Gentoo 2013 in that department. As far as bloat, some BSDs are more elegant, but I do not think Linux is that bloated. It is small enough to succeed on embedded systems and Androids. The device driver section is bloated, but the core system is not as bad. Yes, Ubuntu is not small and simple, but Debian is if you want it to be.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  I've dropped Fedora and switched to Debian stable in anticipation of avoiding Wayland/Mir for as many years as possible. I'm not worried about fragmentation, I'm just tired of being an early adopter.
  - ludoo 13y ago
    +1
  - chris_wot 13y ago
    I must be missing something. My understanding is that they implement the X protocol via a wrapper layer. Aside from a display manager/compositor, what is going to fragment?
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Well now there is Mir, Wayland, and X, instead of just X. Just right there you now have three codebases instead of one, so that is fragmentation in itself. Is it harmful fragmentation? I think that remains to be seen. I'm not worried about fragmentation though. My position is that currently X "Just Works" for me and I am not willing to sacrifice this stability so that I can test out the pet projects of a bunch of Red Hat and Canonical employees. I figure I have at least 3 years, hopefully 5, before I will be forced to switch. (3 years left on wheezy, and hopefully 2 more years with jessie assuming X is still the default and viable). 3-5 years to let them work out all of the kinks? Yes please, I'll take that. The dust sure as hell better be settled by 2018.
      - bkor 13y ago
        A lot of the Wayland developers are X developers. It basically is X12, just that calling it X results in a lot of unneeded steps (loads of people will have a say into the spec, etc). Daniel Stone explained this in a video.
        jlgreco 13y ago
        Whatever it is, I want nothing to do with it until everyone else has had and solved the problems.
synchronise 13y ago
Every FOSS project has the possibility of creating fragmentation, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. Greater software selection allows more choice and offers a better environment for competition. Some will win over others, some will find a niche market to cater, and others will be in continual completion with each other with an almost split marketshare. And while you may feel as though Mir's only aim is to fragment the Linux community, keep in mind that Ubuntu will be using QML extensively and that will be compatible with Wayland, and through the use of libhybris both Mir and Wayland can target the same display driver.
- ewzimm 13y ago
  Thank you. I am tired of people telling developers to stop making things, especially other developers. This is how evolution works. You have to try multiple approaches and see what works. If you have the money and developers to scratch an itch the way you want to, do it. If it works out, everyone benefits. If it doesn't work, everyone benefits by learning what went wrong. Those advocating that everyone pick one standard and stick to it are missing the point of distributed development.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    The old guys here know how the UNIX wars ended up. Supporting the idea of the jour has development costs.
    - jessaustin 13y ago
      ...how the UNIX wars ended up. I'm sorry, how was that? My recollection seems to be that they all got stale and overpriced, and then GNU/Linux ate their lunch.
      - pjmlp 13y ago
        It ended up with fragmentation everywhere, code full of #ifdef spaghetti to cater for all UNIX variants that one needs to support and increased development costs.
anonymous 13y ago
I'm thinking that before too long there will be WayMir and MirLand shims to let you run wayland-only programs on mir and vice-versa. Then you can run Unity in Mir in XMir through MirLand on Wayland on XWayland on WayMir on Mir on Mir (the international space station).
- tudborg 13y ago
  did you just refer to ISS as Mir? Really?
  - akiselev 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir
qznc 13y ago
Fragmentation has a cost, because higher levels (Qt,Gtk,etc in this case) must use portability layers. However, staying in one project also has costs: much more discussion and politics.
- vidarh 13y ago
  Both Qt and Gtk has long had explicit support for different backends. Whether or not the user uses an X backend or a Wayland backend or a Mir backend should have minimal impact.
  - bkor 13y ago
    In practice, Gtk+ will have to deprecate a few things to better support Wayland. See https://wiki.gnome.org/Wayland/GTK%2B https://wiki.gnome.org/Wayland/GTK%2B and https://wiki.gnome.org/Wayland/Gaps https://wiki.gnome.org/Wayland/Gaps. Mir and Wayland seem to be pretty related though. Same gaps that Wayland has (needing development time) also are with Mir AFAIK. So once fixed for Wayland, Mir will have it easy :P Note that real Mir support is only planned for 14.10. At the moment it is just XMir, which is totally different from the what is going on with Wayland (goal is native, this is way more difficult). I have seen the development that is needed to get Wayland really working, Mir seems way behind on this though they probably can copy what was done for Wayland and pretend they did it :P
rbanffy 13y ago
> I don't think Mir is worth the fragmentation it will create "Fragmentation" is another name for "diversity". Diversity and selection are key factors for healthy evolution and a key advantage of open-source.
- laumars 13y ago
  Some things are better to be standardised than diversified. eg networking protocols and display managers.
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    AFAIK, a program written for X will run unmodified on an Ubuntu box running Mir.
    - laumars 13y ago
      Not exactly. X can run atop of Mir, but then you're adding additional bloat to what is already a rather bloated distro of Linux.

This blog seems to explain some of the reasoning (http://blog.cooperteam.net/ http://blog.cooperteam.net/), but IMO I don't think Mir is worth the fragmentation it will create.

D9u 13y ago

That fragmentation is exactly why I chose FreeBSD nearly a year ago. As the old adage goes: FreeBSD is what you get when Unix developers get together and create a Unix-like system for the PC platform. Linux is what you get when PC developers get together and create a Unix-like system for PC.

jbrechtel 13y ago
Are you using FreeBSD on a laptop?
- 3825 13y ago
  Are you referring to this xkcd? http://xkcd.com/349/ http://xkcd.com/349/
  - hillbillyjack 13y ago
    I doubt he is, it has been hard to get FreeBSD working on any laptop that isn't specifically supported by someone. You can see many non-working things here: http://laptop.bsdgroup.de/freebsd/ http://laptop.bsdgroup.de/freebsd/ from no sound to can't boot. Power management is also notoriously bad so you need your laptop to be plugged in. It is reminiscent of Linux a few years ago when everyone with brand new laptops tried to install it. FreeBSD is still fine on desktop systems and even works quite well for a desktop in some cases, but Linux is just so big at this point that it supports more things, while FreeBSD has always seemed more server oriented.
    - D9u 13y ago
      FreeBSD is still fine on desktop systems and even works quite well for a desktop in some cases, but Linux is just so big at this point that it supports more things, while FreeBSD has always seemed more server oriented. Apparently you have not tried FreeBSD on an Acer Aspire One netbook, because if you did you would realize that your last paragraph is outdated by at least 3 minor version iterations. I first tried PC-BSD 8.x in 2009, and with KDE as the default DE it unusably slow, but when I tried FreeBSD 8.x last year I was pleasantly suprised with how well the system ran on my little netbook. Then, when I upgraded to 9.0 I realized that I had finally found what I had been searching for all these years. Now, with 9.1 the system is even better.
    - synchronise 13y ago
      I used to run a PC-BSD system and it pretty much worked out of the box, that is until I got an AMD 6* series video card but I hear the radeon driver is being developed and very close to being integrated into FreeBSD 10 and backported to 9. Yes, FreeBSD lacks some features that Linux has, but it's still being developed and it has its uses outside of the server market too. For example, Sony is reportedly using it as the core OS for the new PS4 and there's a project that is aiming to create a HUD device which is also based on FreeBSD, http://hmdviking.blogspot.jp/ http://hmdviking.blogspot.jp/
    - asveikau 13y ago
      A few years ago I ran OpenBSD on a Thinkpad. Worked well. It was a lot like Linux used to be in the late 90s though... I tried to put it on a few other machines with less success.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - jbrechtel 13y ago
    Haha, no. I was just curious about the feasibility these days of FreeBSD on a laptop.
- D9u 13y ago
  I've been running FreeBSD on my netbook since last autumn and it's more responsive, and noticeably faster than #!, which I tried out last month. (I just reinstalled FBSD last night) Crunchbang just doesn't compare as far as speed goes. I tested both OS' with Xfce4.1, as well as no DE with dwm & dmenu. In each case FreeBSD blows crunchbang away, and this is on an Intel Atom N270 with 1 GB RAM. The only thing #! has going for it is ease of setup, but FreeBSD isn't that hard to setup and use, and all questions I've had are easily answered by reading the FreeBSD Handbook. Some will decry FBSD's support for suspend/hibernate, but since I never use those features it's a non issue for me. That said, I do believe that suspend, etc, is working for some laptops, although YMMV.
  - pyre 13y ago
    | Some will decry FBSD's support for | suspend/hibernate, but since I never | use those features it's a non issue for me. This is how most people use a laptop. While that may be perfectly fine for you, that doesn't work for a lot of people.
    - D9u 13y ago
      A 12 cell battery lasts a long time on this little netbook. But you're right, I'm not most people.
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        How do you pack up your laptop and bring it somewhere else without it melting down in the bag? Just make sure nothing is burning CPU, pack it up, and hope for the best?
        hobs 13y ago
        I assume he uses the shut down feature.
        D9u 13y ago
        Of course. Why does the netbook have to stay running if I'm not using it? Sometimes the simplest things are so abstruse to some of us.
zanny 13y ago
So don't take consideration for Dragonflybsd, OpenBSD, or the biggest elephant in the bsd fork room, OSX. FOSS will fragment because people have different opinions and are passionate about the choices they make in the software to create and use. There is no alternative, because in free software the developer has last say. There is no school of "the one way" of how to do anything in foss, the only possible proxy being the popularity of the software created.
- vidarh 13y ago
  Don't forget NetBSD.
gwu78 13y ago
I like that old adage. I actually had never heard it. I think BSD's success with i386 has brought the stark pragmatism of the "server" to the PC. The dream of BSDI. The reliability, robustness and the uniformity. Maybe BSD UNIX is not as "fun" as MS and Apple, but it _works_ the best. Relatively minimal bloat. And things can be removed relatively easily. Getting small is not frowned upon or ignored as a worthy objective. "The hero is the negative coder." (credit: Doug McIlroy, one of the original UNIX developers) Linux OTOH (a horde of wannabe kernel hackers and a gazillion idiosyncratic GNU programs) has brought the chaos of the PC[1] to the idea of "UNIX". There is bloat and endless tweaking around every corner. The vigilance and skill it takes to make your Linux small and simple and actually keep it that way is, IME, quite the burden. The respect for the user also differs. Man pages? I guess the assumption is we'll just read the code when we have a question. But then there's also an expectation we'll use binary packages. Linux just makes my head spin. I'm just not smart enough to use it. I wish I was... because they have better hardware support. Based on what I've seen, I doubt many a Linux developer would think "The hero is the negative coder." Linux just keeps growing and becoming more complex and unwieldy. And so by comparison, IMO, Linux less embodies the idea of UNIX than BSD. 1. The Windows experience of constantly searching for some non-MS program to do some task that base Windows itself can't even begin to handle... and you end up with an ad hoc mess of programs that barely do what you need, and most of them poorly written by who knows who.
- Ologn 13y ago
  I had an appreciation for FreeBSD. They were smart about some things. Especially circa 1996 era. It was an easy install. Pop in a 3.5" disk and do a network install. It had drivers and automagic support for obscure ethernet cards which Linux did not support at that time. It even had an easy modem install. When I needed a small server quick I'd buy a PC from a store, pop a disk in it and network install FreeBSD. Get up a DNS, mail or web server in no time. Making the install process easy can help an OS get out there a lot. The servers were sturdy and good too. A nice ports system for applications - better than dpkg or rpm at the time. It just worked. The install itself was a thing of beauty - no hassles. FreeBSD 1996 beats Gentoo 2013 in that department. As far as bloat, some BSDs are more elegant, but I do not think Linux is that bloated. It is small enough to succeed on embedded systems and Androids. The device driver section is bloated, but the core system is not as bad. Yes, Ubuntu is not small and simple, but Debian is if you want it to be.
jlgreco 13y ago
I've dropped Fedora and switched to Debian stable in anticipation of avoiding Wayland/Mir for as many years as possible. I'm not worried about fragmentation, I'm just tired of being an early adopter.
- ludoo 13y ago
  +1
- chris_wot 13y ago
  I must be missing something. My understanding is that they implement the X protocol via a wrapper layer. Aside from a display manager/compositor, what is going to fragment?
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Well now there is Mir, Wayland, and X, instead of just X. Just right there you now have three codebases instead of one, so that is fragmentation in itself. Is it harmful fragmentation? I think that remains to be seen. I'm not worried about fragmentation though. My position is that currently X "Just Works" for me and I am not willing to sacrifice this stability so that I can test out the pet projects of a bunch of Red Hat and Canonical employees. I figure I have at least 3 years, hopefully 5, before I will be forced to switch. (3 years left on wheezy, and hopefully 2 more years with jessie assuming X is still the default and viable). 3-5 years to let them work out all of the kinks? Yes please, I'll take that. The dust sure as hell better be settled by 2018.
    - bkor 13y ago
      A lot of the Wayland developers are X developers. It basically is X12, just that calling it X results in a lot of unneeded steps (loads of people will have a say into the spec, etc). Daniel Stone explained this in a video.
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        Whatever it is, I want nothing to do with it until everyone else has had and solved the problems.

synchronise 13y ago

Every FOSS project has the possibility of creating fragmentation, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. Greater software selection allows more choice and offers a better environment for competition. Some will win over others, some will find a niche market to cater, and others will be in continual completion with each other with an almost split marketshare. And while you may feel as though Mir's only aim is to fragment the Linux community, keep in mind that Ubuntu will be using QML extensively and that will be compatible with Wayland, and through the use of libhybris both Mir and Wayland can target the same display driver.

ewzimm 13y ago
Thank you. I am tired of people telling developers to stop making things, especially other developers. This is how evolution works. You have to try multiple approaches and see what works. If you have the money and developers to scratch an itch the way you want to, do it. If it works out, everyone benefits. If it doesn't work, everyone benefits by learning what went wrong. Those advocating that everyone pick one standard and stick to it are missing the point of distributed development.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  The old guys here know how the UNIX wars ended up. Supporting the idea of the jour has development costs.
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    ...how the UNIX wars ended up. I'm sorry, how was that? My recollection seems to be that they all got stale and overpriced, and then GNU/Linux ate their lunch.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      It ended up with fragmentation everywhere, code full of #ifdef spaghetti to cater for all UNIX variants that one needs to support and increased development costs.

anonymous 13y ago

I'm thinking that before too long there will be WayMir and MirLand shims to let you run wayland-only programs on mir and vice-versa. Then you can run Unity in Mir in XMir through MirLand on Wayland on XWayland on WayMir on Mir on Mir (the international space station).

tudborg 13y ago
did you just refer to ISS as Mir? Really?
- akiselev 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir

qznc 13y ago

Fragmentation has a cost, because higher levels (Qt,Gtk,etc in this case) must use portability layers. However, staying in one project also has costs: much more discussion and politics.

vidarh 13y ago
Both Qt and Gtk has long had explicit support for different backends. Whether or not the user uses an X backend or a Wayland backend or a Mir backend should have minimal impact.
- bkor 13y ago
  In practice, Gtk+ will have to deprecate a few things to better support Wayland. See https://wiki.gnome.org/Wayland/GTK%2B https://wiki.gnome.org/Wayland/GTK%2B and https://wiki.gnome.org/Wayland/Gaps https://wiki.gnome.org/Wayland/Gaps. Mir and Wayland seem to be pretty related though. Same gaps that Wayland has (needing development time) also are with Mir AFAIK. So once fixed for Wayland, Mir will have it easy :P Note that real Mir support is only planned for 14.10. At the moment it is just XMir, which is totally different from the what is going on with Wayland (goal is native, this is way more difficult). I have seen the development that is needed to get Wayland really working, Mir seems way behind on this though they probably can copy what was done for Wayland and pretend they did it :P

rbanffy 13y ago

> I don't think Mir is worth the fragmentation it will create "Fragmentation" is another name for "diversity". Diversity and selection are key factors for healthy evolution and a key advantage of open-source.

laumars 13y ago
Some things are better to be standardised than diversified. eg networking protocols and display managers.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  AFAIK, a program written for X will run unmodified on an Ubuntu box running Mir.
  - laumars 13y ago
    Not exactly. X can run atop of Mir, but then you're adding additional bloat to what is already a rather bloated distro of Linux.