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It's such a shame they insisted on their timing schedule for this release. It means the biggest Linux distro is committed to running X applications natively for

by tinco 13y ago

It's such a shame they insisted on their timing schedule for this release. It means the biggest Linux distro is committed to running X applications natively for the 6 years to come. Imagine how good it would have been for the Linux community as a whole if they would have been able to exclude X from this release. We came so close to finally shaking up the Linux user interface stack. I wonder if they've had a discussion about moving the LTS down half a year or perhaps a year, just for Mir. edit: To help a bit with the imagination part, if we'd have Mir in this release, then a whole bunch of big UI products could say in ~3 years that about 80% of their users are running Mir enabled desktops. That could aid them to consider moving to a native Mir stack, the increase of work on this layer would not only benefit Mir but also Wayland as a side effect. An even more beneficial side effect would the assistance of big companies like NVidia and AMD and perhaps Valve be to this process, if things go according to plan their drivers on Linux could benefit a lot from more well defined/thought out interfaces, something which again could benefit Wayland also.

Spittie 13y ago
I don't agree. An LTS release is not the place to introduce such an huge change. An LTS is a stable release, and should include only stable, well-tested software. I, for one, hope they'll introduce Mir in the "right" way (to be honest, I hope they'll just drop it and switch to Wayland, but that's another story), which mean a release with only X and alongside a Developer Preview with Mir, then a release with both X and Mir installed, but with X the default and an easy way to switch for the user, and then a release with Mir by default (but X still available). After that, we can talk about an LTS with Mir. And, even assuming Mir is ready for the desktop (it isn't), the support everywhere is missing. No toolkit has official Mir support, there are only some downstream patch by Canonical for Qt (and maybe Gtk3? I'm not sure). There is pretty much no driver support for Mir (I think only the Intel driver has what they consider stable support, and even there is all downstream). What's the point of shipping with Mir if it mean using XMir for every single application (and XMir is not ready for the desktop as well), a subpar experience for users since it's not well tested, and it would have to failback to X for most configurations anyway.
notatoad 13y ago
LTS is supported for 6 years, but they release a new LTS every two years. pushing LTS back a year to wait for Mir doesn't really make sense when the next LTS is due only a year after that. And from what i've seen of Mir/Wayland, i suspect that one year is a pretty optimistic timeframe for actually moving away from X in a stable, production quality OS.
- desas 13y ago
  LTS is supported for 5 years
yxhuvud 13y ago
It was probably the other way around - I'd guess they pushed Mir forward because they didn't want to release an early version of Mir in a LTS release. X will be with the Linux community for the foreseeable future anyhow since there are plenty of distros that insist on using outdated^Wstable versions of applications.
copx 13y ago
Ubuntu recently decided to phase out its homegrown upstart init system in favor of systemd, which is backed by all other major Linux distros. Right now Ubuntu is trying to go against the grain again, this time with Mir. I think the most likely scenario is that Ubuntu will eventually drop it too and switch to Wayland. Ubuntu is big, but not big enough to break compatibility with everyone else in such a major way. Thus it is good that they did not put Mir in a LTS release. It is a dead-end technology if you ask me.
newman314 13y ago
They also decided on a 3.13 franken-kernel instead of a 3.14 kernel which is kind of a bummer. I still feel that distributions should start thinking about moving to update their kernels and security packages much more frequently. Specifically, I would like to use a LTS release with up to date kernels, openssl and openssh.
- gmartres 13y ago
  For LTS releases, Ubuntu provides optional updates of the kernel and the graphics stack: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack
fulafel 13y ago
They were never going to "exclude X" at this stage, it was just about switching the default on supported hardware. Fortunately.

by tinco 13y ago

Spittie 13y ago

I don't agree. An LTS release is not the place to introduce such an huge change. An LTS is a stable release, and should include only stable, well-tested software. I, for one, hope they'll introduce Mir in the "right" way (to be honest, I hope they'll just drop it and switch to Wayland, but that's another story), which mean a release with only X and alongside a Developer Preview with Mir, then a release with both X and Mir installed, but with X the default and an easy way to switch for the user, and then a release with Mir by default (but X still available). After that, we can talk about an LTS with Mir. And, even assuming Mir is ready for the desktop (it isn't), the support everywhere is missing. No toolkit has official Mir support, there are only some downstream patch by Canonical for Qt (and maybe Gtk3? I'm not sure). There is pretty much no driver support for Mir (I think only the Intel driver has what they consider stable support, and even there is all downstream). What's the point of shipping with Mir if it mean using XMir for every single application (and XMir is not ready for the desktop as well), a subpar experience for users since it's not well tested, and it would have to failback to X for most configurations anyway.

notatoad 13y ago

LTS is supported for 6 years, but they release a new LTS every two years. pushing LTS back a year to wait for Mir doesn't really make sense when the next LTS is due only a year after that. And from what i've seen of Mir/Wayland, i suspect that one year is a pretty optimistic timeframe for actually moving away from X in a stable, production quality OS.

desas 13y ago
LTS is supported for 5 years

yxhuvud 13y ago

It was probably the other way around - I'd guess they pushed Mir forward because they didn't want to release an early version of Mir in a LTS release. X will be with the Linux community for the foreseeable future anyhow since there are plenty of distros that insist on using outdated^Wstable versions of applications.

copx 13y ago

Ubuntu recently decided to phase out its homegrown upstart init system in favor of systemd, which is backed by all other major Linux distros. Right now Ubuntu is trying to go against the grain again, this time with Mir. I think the most likely scenario is that Ubuntu will eventually drop it too and switch to Wayland. Ubuntu is big, but not big enough to break compatibility with everyone else in such a major way. Thus it is good that they did not put Mir in a LTS release. It is a dead-end technology if you ask me.

newman314 13y ago

They also decided on a 3.13 franken-kernel instead of a 3.14 kernel which is kind of a bummer. I still feel that distributions should start thinking about moving to update their kernels and security packages much more frequently. Specifically, I would like to use a LTS release with up to date kernels, openssl and openssh.

gmartres 13y ago
For LTS releases, Ubuntu provides optional updates of the kernel and the graphics stack: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack

fulafel 13y ago

They were never going to "exclude X" at this stage, it was just about switching the default on supported hardware. Fortunately.