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Wow. For all the years Linux has been stuck with X, I'm impressed they've essentially replaced it in <6 months. (Disclaimer: IANAE)

by stephen 13y ago

mpyne 13y ago
Well the work done to prep for moving to Wayland has probably helped a lot for moving to any other not-X, I would imagine. E.g. Qt has a lot better abstraction capabilities now than it did for Qt 3.
- jonhohle 13y ago
  > Qt has a lot better abstraction capabilities > now than it did for Qt 3 Qt has run on not-X since the beginning. It's always been available for Windows, and has had (suboptimal) OS X support for over a decade.
  - gcr 13y ago
    GTK+ has also worked fine on Windows for ages with support for native Windows widgets.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    I'm well aware of where Qt has (and has not) been able to run. What I'm saying is that it's a lot easier to make new ports now than it was back then. This was mostly driven by Nokia's requirements, but it's still useful in the context of making a version that would run on Mir.
hollerith 13y ago
In Ubuntu 13.10, Mir will be inserted between X and the graphics drivers (roughly speaking). Although that is one step toward eventually eliminating the need for X, X will still be needed (e.g., to run Chromium or Firefox) in Ubuntu 13.10. I.e., the title of this story, "Ubuntu 13.10 to ship with Mir instead of X," (emphasis mine) is false.
- drivebyacct2 13y ago
  correction: the entire DE runs under XMir. /everything/ runs under XMir.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
asabjorn 13y ago
I believe one of the large reasons why it took so long is that the linux graphics stack had to be completely redone (KMS etc) before this could be started, and decent open source drivers had to be developed as well. I also think a sufficient number of capable people with funding had to feel like there was no hope in salvaging Xorg.
Shish2k 13y ago
> I'm impressed they've essentially replaced it in <6 months They've spent the past few years moving most of the hardware-interfacing parts into the kernel, making the gap between graphics API and functional desktop pretty small

Wow. For all the years Linux has been stuck with X, I'm impressed they've essentially replaced it in <6 months. (Disclaimer: IANAE)

by stephen 13y ago

Wow. For all the years Linux has been stuck with X, I'm impressed they've essentially replaced it in <6 months. (Disclaimer: IANAE)

mpyne 13y ago

Well the work done to prep for moving to Wayland has probably helped a lot for moving to any other not-X, I would imagine. E.g. Qt has a lot better abstraction capabilities now than it did for Qt 3.

jonhohle 13y ago
> Qt has a lot better abstraction capabilities > now than it did for Qt 3 Qt has run on not-X since the beginning. It's always been available for Windows, and has had (suboptimal) OS X support for over a decade.
- gcr 13y ago
  GTK+ has also worked fine on Windows for ages with support for native Windows widgets.
- mpyne 13y ago
  I'm well aware of where Qt has (and has not) been able to run. What I'm saying is that it's a lot easier to make new ports now than it was back then. This was mostly driven by Nokia's requirements, but it's still useful in the context of making a version that would run on Mir.

hollerith 13y ago

In Ubuntu 13.10, Mir will be inserted between X and the graphics drivers (roughly speaking). Although that is one step toward eventually eliminating the need for X, X will still be needed (e.g., to run Chromium or Firefox) in Ubuntu 13.10. I.e., the title of this story, "Ubuntu 13.10 to ship with Mir instead of X," (emphasis mine) is false.

drivebyacct2 13y ago
correction: the entire DE runs under XMir. /everything/ runs under XMir.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

asabjorn 13y ago

I believe one of the large reasons why it took so long is that the linux graphics stack had to be completely redone (KMS etc) before this could be started, and decent open source drivers had to be developed as well. I also think a sufficient number of capable people with funding had to feel like there was no hope in salvaging Xorg.

Shish2k 13y ago

> I'm impressed they've essentially replaced it in <6 months They've spent the past few years moving most of the hardware-interfacing parts into the kernel, making the gap between graphics API and functional desktop pretty small