18 ms·

Interview: Thomas Voß of Mir

105 points by mksaunders 12y ago

NickPollard 12y ago
The headline here is attention grabbing, but this is actually a very solid interview with an expert developer talking about the pitfalls of protocol and API development, and the issues both technical and political of such a huge change of something like a Display Server. It was good perspective, and I look forward to seeing where both Mir and Wayland end up.
- mkesper 12y ago
  What about changing to the original: "Interview: Thomas Voß of Mir" or maybe "Interview: Thomas Voß of Mir (Wayland competitor)"
toyg 12y ago
> at the heart of convergence lies the fact that you want to scale across different form factors I have this feeling one day we'll look back at this and laugh. "Do you remember when they all tried to shove the same interface on all devices? What were they thinking?!"
- nextos 12y ago
  I don't think this is that silly. For example, tiling window managers scale extremely well all the way from a small netbook with 8 or 9 inches to multiple 27 or 30 inch monitors.
  - valarauca1 12y ago
    The problem isn't so much the 8 to 80 inch gap. We've solved that problem. The problem is the 8 to 1 inch gap. Tilling window managers start to fail on smart phone/tablet size screens.
    - morsch 12y ago
      Phones and tablets just run all windows full screen, each on their own workspace. A few let you split the screen in half and run one app each. Sounds like a tiling window manager to me. A few apps -- on Android anyway -- have a floating mode, where they occupy some space over other apps, always on top. This is another thing tiling window managers do.
      - jackalope 12y ago
        Indeed. In fact, that's one of the reasons I switched to Windows Phone 8: It was the closest I could get to the linux+dwm environment where I do most of my computing. Why would anyone want a desktop metaphor on a phone, complete with tiny icons and illegible drop-shadowed text?
- Shish2k 12y ago
  I'm still hoping it won't be long until "Remember when computers had physical interfaces, we didn't just think about what we wanted and had it happen?"...
  - XorNot 12y ago
    "Remember when every thing was 2D, and you had to put all those huge monitors on desks?"
    - rmchugh 12y ago
      Remember the Internet? Wow that was great.
    - embolalia 12y ago
      Well, we're already saying the second part.
    - Redoubts 12y ago
      The bow in my desk remembers.
- taejo 12y ago
  We might want different interfaces for different devices, but it's still preferable to have a uniform API across these devices at the level of display server.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  I agree, but I don't think Canonical is really trying to do that. Ubuntu Touch, besides the side taskbar, has quite different interface than desktop Ubuntu. But there should be a common design language across platforms, even if they are optimized differently to take advantage of the screen size or form factor.
- Pxtl 12y ago
  Have you seen Windows 10? It looks doable. Windows 8 is just the confused mid-step.
- phkahler 12y ago
  >> toyg 3 hours ago | link > at the heart of convergence lies the fact that you want to scale across different form factors I have this feeling one day we'll look back at this and laugh. "Do you remember when they all tried to shove the same interface on all devices? What were they thinking?!" Umm but even phones have HD displays and 1GHz 64bit processors. Why should that be any different that a desktop system with a 5K display these days?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jbb555 12y ago
I don't really want to use wayland or mir. I'd rather keep using the current perfectly fine software.
- scrollaway 12y ago
  This isn't relevant to users, it's relevant to developers. Getting rid of X11 is important, and if you don't know why it's not relevant to you.
  - cwyers 12y ago
    It's a big mistake to think that way. If you can't come up with a compelling reason for users to upgrade, it's a lot harder to get the install base large enough where developers can confidently switch over.
    - jiggy2011 12y ago
      Users will switch over when their distro starts using it by default, the same as they would for a new version of the kernel , a new init system or any other lower level software. The fact is that the design of X is archaic and not well designed for the needs of the modern era. The benefit to end users is that rich multimedia software becomes much easier to develop for Linux so they get more of it.
    - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
      Wayland's design as such is that every window manager implements their own compositor. Your regularly scheduled updates will get you on board, though I assume it'll be in compatibility mode with XWayland for quite some time.
    - hahainternet 12y ago
      > If you can't come up with a compelling reason for users to upgrade I'd like to use keycodes > 255 please.
  - mahkoh 12y ago
    >This isn't relevant to users Wayland has crippled customizability compared to X11. This customization is much more important to the user because, as you said, the improvements of Wayland are not relevant to the user.
antimagic 12y ago
I don't know if it's the same for everybody, but this page is loading really slowly for me. Here's the Google cache version if you're having trouble: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ouh2mtFQHvIJ:www.linuxvoice.com/interview-thomas-vos-of-mir/+&cd=1&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=fr http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ouh2mtF...
mariuolo 12y ago
Quite frankly I don't care who arrives first, as long as we get there.
- peatmoss 12y ago
  I always found the backlash against this project somewhat baffling. The display server problem goes back a long ways. We've had a couple of distinct groups of opinions: a) people who think X is just fine b) people who think replacing X is a worthy task, and who've started to explore the topic in earnest. What we've been lacking was c) people who can articulate a pressingly urgent use case where a new display server is on the critical path, AND have the resources to code it up. Canonical is, as far as I know, the first in that category. I agree with the supposition that, IF Wayland/Westland represented a suitable head start on meeting the goals that Canonical has with Mir, that Canonical would do well to invest its resources there. Outside of Canonical, there has been a lot of debate as to whether the "Wayland/Westland is the right direction for Canonical" supposition is true. At the end, I tend to give more weight Canonical's opinion in this matter. They are, after all, urgently developing a project in which a new display server is on the critical path. The risk in foregoing the head start offered by Wayland/Westland is primarily on them. From the vantage point of this casual observer, Mir has lit a fire for the Wayland/Westland project. That's great! If unifying against a common threat is what pushes the project along at a faster rate, that's okay. But I still tend to think that Canonical is going to win this race by virtue of them having something to strive for on the other side of building a display server.
  - jdub 12y ago
    Sure, but that's "the resources of Canonical" (more like a small amount of Canonical's already relatively meagre development resources, on a project that is not exactly a crucial enabler or breadwinner) vs. practically everyone else in the Open Source industry and community.
    - peatmoss 12y ago
      In my experience, "practically everyone else in the Open Source industry and community" only means the developers are N > 0. I like to believe that N -> Infinity, but I think very many projects N -> 0. There are few open source projects where even one or two talented, dedicated, full-time developers would not represent a substantial increase in labor. There was just an article posted a day or two ago talking about how people would be surprised if they knew how small some teams at Apple really were. This isn't to disparage F/OSS development. I still believe in the development model more than others. I just think we need to be realistic about project resources. Open source isn't magic in this regard.
fithisux 12y ago
A "mine is bigger than yours" headline. I hope both are here to stay with an Xming-like implementation of Xorg (even for Haiku-OS).
tormeh 12y ago
Jonathan Blow posted this on Twitter: "I kind of don't understand what's the big deal with these 'modern' "display servers" like Wayland / Mir / etc. it ought to be kind of simple actually, because we now have all this experience with drawing graphics and we know how it should go. So I wonder if it's just being made more complicated than it really needs to be, the same way GUI libraries always are. GUI libraries are generally terrible, but this is self-perpetuating as people making new GUI libs absorb bad assumptions from the old ones. There's an interview up with a Mir developer who mentions Mir is structured as communication via a protocol over sockets. And, like, I have literally NO IDEA why you would build a window system like that in 2014. It makes no sense to me at all. (But if you do decide that's how things should go, things become a lot more complicated, so that's at least part of the problem.) A major reason computers are so unreliable and un-fun to use is because software is now a massive pile of overcomplication. When it comes to a core thing like a window system, that many programs will interface with, simplicity should be a high design priority. Because every bit of complication that goes into the window system propagates. EVERY SINGLE PROGRAM becomes more complicated. Every piece of software becomes harder to develop. The toll in man-years becomes HUGE very quickly. Yet for some reason people don't learn. I think there is some Stockholm Syndrome happening: programmers can't even imagine how much more they would get done if the underlying systems were as simple, reasonable and solid as they should be." I'm curious about HN's opinion on this.
- Shish2k 12y ago
  Is this the same Jonathan Blow who said "Braid physically cannot be ported to Linux, the sound APIs simply can't handle it"? :P (Braid was later ported to Linux by a third party and runs fine, IIRC) Regardless, the answer is "everything is simple when you imagine a single use-case", which as far as I know is what he is doing. I would suggest that people with experience building multi-use-case display servers would know best, those building single-use-case display servers second best, and everybody else is essentially working on guesswork and imagination. That said, if he wants to go ahead and prove us all wrong by writing a small, elegant display server which fulfils everybody's needs without compromise, I wish him luck and can't wait to start using it :)
- spb 12y ago
tgandrews 12y ago
Looks like they have lost their www DNS record. > linuxvoice.com Server: 8.8.8.8 Address: 8.8.8.8#53 Non-authoritative answer: Name: linuxvoice.com Address: 104.28.6.18 Name: linuxvoice.com Address: 104.28.7.18 > www.linuxvoice.com Server: 8.8.8.8 Address: 8.8.8.8#53 Non-authoritative answer: * Can't find www.linuxvoice.com: No answer
- benev 12y ago
  Basically what happened is that we changed our wordpress theme, and it turns out that the new one puts a bit more pressure on our server than the old one. We used to be able to handle a top spot on hacker news, but this time our server died on us. We decided to switch to cloudflare to mitigate some of the load. This requires changing DNS settings, and it seems that for some people, there's been a gap when they haven't been able to access the page. This is of course a little unfortunate. However, it does mean that other people can actually access the page rather than just getting stuck loading. It's all a bit hectic here at the moment. It's possible there's some other problems that I haven't yet fully discovered.
na85 12y ago
No doubt Pottering will try to get his grubby little fingers into this and we'll see Mir with systemd as a hard dependency. Ugh.
- peatmoss 12y ago
  Cursed be the people who articulate a vision and code it. Punish failure. Punish presumed failure. Presume all new ideas to be failure until they are widely adopted. Reserve the greatest wrath for those who give away their presumed failures.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    Except for the "...and code it" part, that's the same thing I tell people who criticize Boko Haram. I feel it's always important to reduce everyone's detailed objections to 'haterism' because, well, haters, right?
    - peatmoss 12y ago
      What part of the grandparent's argument reflected a detailed objection to you?
      - pessimizer 12y ago
        I assume good faith, and would just google why people object (although everyone knows), and respond to the most common reasons, rather than demanding that everyone repeat themselves. My problem is that the reply was a completely empty justification for anything, not that it was defending Poettering or systemd. The reason other people disagree with things that one agrees with is not because they are bitter, angry, hateful types who love to object (because they have never accomplished anything, and are secretly jealous, just like mom said.)
        peatmoss 12y ago
        > grubby little fingers There can be legitimate critiques of systems, as you say. This was not.
bobajeff 12y ago
From the article it doesn't really sound like Wayland or Mir will be relevant. It's far more likely everyone will skip the the display/surface/compositer go straight down to EGL and GL.
- krschultz 12y ago
  Something has to coordinate the various applications.
- talideon 12y ago
  If all you're doing is running one thing, and that one thing is in total control of the screen and the input devices, sure, but once more than one application needs to access them all at the same time, you need some kind of mediator, and that's what the display server is for.
  - bobajeff 12y ago
    That makes sense from a system architecture perspective but will application developer need to write in that language or can they just write in EGL and GL?
    - slavik81 12y ago
      There is no Wayland drawing language, and presumably no Mir drawing language. However, there's no OpenGL 'createWindow' function. To create a new window and draw something in it, you would need both.
- slavik81 12y ago
  That's the point. The Wayland design philosophy is to give you a buffer and let you draw into it however you want. That's in marked contrast to X, which defines its own drawing API. Wayland is not meant to be doing very much. Its main job is to give programs the buffers they need.
mike_ivanov 12y ago
I bet that within 10 years none of these two will be relevant, yet X11 still be hanging around.
- orkoden 12y ago
  X11 will always be around as a client running under a more modern display software. Kind of like how we're still running VT100 terminals on top a graphical UI with mouse, sound and 3D graphics capabilities. Mac OS X has been running X11 applications like that for more than a decade now. It works just fine. http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/ http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/
  - mike_ivanov 12y ago
    That's true, although it doesn't mean that Mir or Wayland will necessarily stick as Mac OS window system did. It's a way too fast morphing landscape, even for a 10-year long project. Mac is a relatively stable platform based on a carefully curated ecosystem with predictable future, etc. Linux is not. BTW, I really like your X11-VT100 analogy.
lockcompetition 12y ago
The link appears broken for me. Is there a way to report that?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

105 points by mksaunders 12y ago

The headline here is attention grabbing, but this is actually a very solid interview with an expert developer talking about the pitfalls of protocol and API development, and the issues both technical and political of such a huge change of something like a Display Server. It was good perspective, and I look forward to seeing where both Mir and Wayland end up.

mkesper 12y ago
What about changing to the original: "Interview: Thomas Voß of Mir" or maybe "Interview: Thomas Voß of Mir (Wayland competitor)"

toyg 12y ago

> at the heart of convergence lies the fact that you want to scale across different form factors I have this feeling one day we'll look back at this and laugh. "Do you remember when they all tried to shove the same interface on all devices? What were they thinking?!"

nextos 12y ago
I don't think this is that silly. For example, tiling window managers scale extremely well all the way from a small netbook with 8 or 9 inches to multiple 27 or 30 inch monitors.
- valarauca1 12y ago
  The problem isn't so much the 8 to 80 inch gap. We've solved that problem. The problem is the 8 to 1 inch gap. Tilling window managers start to fail on smart phone/tablet size screens.
  - morsch 12y ago
    Phones and tablets just run all windows full screen, each on their own workspace. A few let you split the screen in half and run one app each. Sounds like a tiling window manager to me. A few apps -- on Android anyway -- have a floating mode, where they occupy some space over other apps, always on top. This is another thing tiling window managers do.
    - jackalope 12y ago
      Indeed. In fact, that's one of the reasons I switched to Windows Phone 8: It was the closest I could get to the linux+dwm environment where I do most of my computing. Why would anyone want a desktop metaphor on a phone, complete with tiny icons and illegible drop-shadowed text?
Shish2k 12y ago
I'm still hoping it won't be long until "Remember when computers had physical interfaces, we didn't just think about what we wanted and had it happen?"...
- XorNot 12y ago
  "Remember when every thing was 2D, and you had to put all those huge monitors on desks?"
  - rmchugh 12y ago
    Remember the Internet? Wow that was great.
  - embolalia 12y ago
    Well, we're already saying the second part.
  - Redoubts 12y ago
    The bow in my desk remembers.
taejo 12y ago
We might want different interfaces for different devices, but it's still preferable to have a uniform API across these devices at the level of display server.
higherpurpose 12y ago
I agree, but I don't think Canonical is really trying to do that. Ubuntu Touch, besides the side taskbar, has quite different interface than desktop Ubuntu. But there should be a common design language across platforms, even if they are optimized differently to take advantage of the screen size or form factor.
Pxtl 12y ago
Have you seen Windows 10? It looks doable. Windows 8 is just the confused mid-step.
phkahler 12y ago
>> toyg 3 hours ago | link > at the heart of convergence lies the fact that you want to scale across different form factors I have this feeling one day we'll look back at this and laugh. "Do you remember when they all tried to shove the same interface on all devices? What were they thinking?!" Umm but even phones have HD displays and 1GHz 64bit processors. Why should that be any different that a desktop system with a 5K display these days?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jbb555 12y ago

I don't really want to use wayland or mir. I'd rather keep using the current perfectly fine software.

scrollaway 12y ago
This isn't relevant to users, it's relevant to developers. Getting rid of X11 is important, and if you don't know why it's not relevant to you.
- cwyers 12y ago
  It's a big mistake to think that way. If you can't come up with a compelling reason for users to upgrade, it's a lot harder to get the install base large enough where developers can confidently switch over.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    Users will switch over when their distro starts using it by default, the same as they would for a new version of the kernel , a new init system or any other lower level software. The fact is that the design of X is archaic and not well designed for the needs of the modern era. The benefit to end users is that rich multimedia software becomes much easier to develop for Linux so they get more of it.
  - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
    Wayland's design as such is that every window manager implements their own compositor. Your regularly scheduled updates will get you on board, though I assume it'll be in compatibility mode with XWayland for quite some time.
  - hahainternet 12y ago
    > If you can't come up with a compelling reason for users to upgrade I'd like to use keycodes > 255 please.
- mahkoh 12y ago
  >This isn't relevant to users Wayland has crippled customizability compared to X11. This customization is much more important to the user because, as you said, the improvements of Wayland are not relevant to the user.

antimagic 12y ago

I don't know if it's the same for everybody, but this page is loading really slowly for me. Here's the Google cache version if you're having trouble: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ouh2mtFQHvIJ:www.linuxvoice.com/interview-thomas-vos-of-mir/+&cd=1&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=fr http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ouh2mtF...

mariuolo 12y ago

Quite frankly I don't care who arrives first, as long as we get there.

peatmoss 12y ago
I always found the backlash against this project somewhat baffling. The display server problem goes back a long ways. We've had a couple of distinct groups of opinions: a) people who think X is just fine b) people who think replacing X is a worthy task, and who've started to explore the topic in earnest. What we've been lacking was c) people who can articulate a pressingly urgent use case where a new display server is on the critical path, AND have the resources to code it up. Canonical is, as far as I know, the first in that category. I agree with the supposition that, IF Wayland/Westland represented a suitable head start on meeting the goals that Canonical has with Mir, that Canonical would do well to invest its resources there. Outside of Canonical, there has been a lot of debate as to whether the "Wayland/Westland is the right direction for Canonical" supposition is true. At the end, I tend to give more weight Canonical's opinion in this matter. They are, after all, urgently developing a project in which a new display server is on the critical path. The risk in foregoing the head start offered by Wayland/Westland is primarily on them. From the vantage point of this casual observer, Mir has lit a fire for the Wayland/Westland project. That's great! If unifying against a common threat is what pushes the project along at a faster rate, that's okay. But I still tend to think that Canonical is going to win this race by virtue of them having something to strive for on the other side of building a display server.
- jdub 12y ago
  Sure, but that's "the resources of Canonical" (more like a small amount of Canonical's already relatively meagre development resources, on a project that is not exactly a crucial enabler or breadwinner) vs. practically everyone else in the Open Source industry and community.
  - peatmoss 12y ago
    In my experience, "practically everyone else in the Open Source industry and community" only means the developers are N > 0. I like to believe that N -> Infinity, but I think very many projects N -> 0. There are few open source projects where even one or two talented, dedicated, full-time developers would not represent a substantial increase in labor. There was just an article posted a day or two ago talking about how people would be surprised if they knew how small some teams at Apple really were. This isn't to disparage F/OSS development. I still believe in the development model more than others. I just think we need to be realistic about project resources. Open source isn't magic in this regard.

fithisux 12y ago

A "mine is bigger than yours" headline. I hope both are here to stay with an Xming-like implementation of Xorg (even for Haiku-OS).

tormeh 12y ago

Jonathan Blow posted this on Twitter: "I kind of don't understand what's the big deal with these 'modern' "display servers" like Wayland / Mir / etc. it ought to be kind of simple actually, because we now have all this experience with drawing graphics and we know how it should go. So I wonder if it's just being made more complicated than it really needs to be, the same way GUI libraries always are. GUI libraries are generally terrible, but this is self-perpetuating as people making new GUI libs absorb bad assumptions from the old ones. There's an interview up with a Mir developer who mentions Mir is structured as communication via a protocol over sockets. And, like, I have literally NO IDEA why you would build a window system like that in 2014. It makes no sense to me at all. (But if you do decide that's how things should go, things become a lot more complicated, so that's at least part of the problem.) A major reason computers are so unreliable and un-fun to use is because software is now a massive pile of overcomplication. When it comes to a core thing like a window system, that many programs will interface with, simplicity should be a high design priority. Because every bit of complication that goes into the window system propagates. EVERY SINGLE PROGRAM becomes more complicated. Every piece of software becomes harder to develop. The toll in man-years becomes HUGE very quickly. Yet for some reason people don't learn. I think there is some Stockholm Syndrome happening: programmers can't even imagine how much more they would get done if the underlying systems were as simple, reasonable and solid as they should be." I'm curious about HN's opinion on this.

Shish2k 12y ago
Is this the same Jonathan Blow who said "Braid physically cannot be ported to Linux, the sound APIs simply can't handle it"? :P (Braid was later ported to Linux by a third party and runs fine, IIRC) Regardless, the answer is "everything is simple when you imagine a single use-case", which as far as I know is what he is doing. I would suggest that people with experience building multi-use-case display servers would know best, those building single-use-case display servers second best, and everybody else is essentially working on guesswork and imagination. That said, if he wants to go ahead and prove us all wrong by writing a small, elegant display server which fulfils everybody's needs without compromise, I wish him luck and can't wait to start using it :)
spb 12y ago

tgandrews 12y ago

Looks like they have lost their www DNS record. > linuxvoice.com Server: 8.8.8.8 Address: 8.8.8.8#53 Non-authoritative answer: Name: linuxvoice.com Address: 104.28.6.18 Name: linuxvoice.com Address: 104.28.7.18 > www.linuxvoice.com Server: 8.8.8.8 Address: 8.8.8.8#53 Non-authoritative answer: * Can't find www.linuxvoice.com: No answer

benev 12y ago
Basically what happened is that we changed our wordpress theme, and it turns out that the new one puts a bit more pressure on our server than the old one. We used to be able to handle a top spot on hacker news, but this time our server died on us. We decided to switch to cloudflare to mitigate some of the load. This requires changing DNS settings, and it seems that for some people, there's been a gap when they haven't been able to access the page. This is of course a little unfortunate. However, it does mean that other people can actually access the page rather than just getting stuck loading. It's all a bit hectic here at the moment. It's possible there's some other problems that I haven't yet fully discovered.

na85 12y ago

No doubt Pottering will try to get his grubby little fingers into this and we'll see Mir with systemd as a hard dependency. Ugh.

peatmoss 12y ago
Cursed be the people who articulate a vision and code it. Punish failure. Punish presumed failure. Presume all new ideas to be failure until they are widely adopted. Reserve the greatest wrath for those who give away their presumed failures.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  Except for the "...and code it" part, that's the same thing I tell people who criticize Boko Haram. I feel it's always important to reduce everyone's detailed objections to 'haterism' because, well, haters, right?
  - peatmoss 12y ago
    What part of the grandparent's argument reflected a detailed objection to you?
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      I assume good faith, and would just google why people object (although everyone knows), and respond to the most common reasons, rather than demanding that everyone repeat themselves. My problem is that the reply was a completely empty justification for anything, not that it was defending Poettering or systemd. The reason other people disagree with things that one agrees with is not because they are bitter, angry, hateful types who love to object (because they have never accomplished anything, and are secretly jealous, just like mom said.)
      - peatmoss 12y ago
        > grubby little fingers There can be legitimate critiques of systems, as you say. This was not.

bobajeff 12y ago

From the article it doesn't really sound like Wayland or Mir will be relevant. It's far more likely everyone will skip the the display/surface/compositer go straight down to EGL and GL.

krschultz 12y ago
Something has to coordinate the various applications.
talideon 12y ago
If all you're doing is running one thing, and that one thing is in total control of the screen and the input devices, sure, but once more than one application needs to access them all at the same time, you need some kind of mediator, and that's what the display server is for.
- bobajeff 12y ago
  That makes sense from a system architecture perspective but will application developer need to write in that language or can they just write in EGL and GL?
  - slavik81 12y ago
    There is no Wayland drawing language, and presumably no Mir drawing language. However, there's no OpenGL 'createWindow' function. To create a new window and draw something in it, you would need both.
slavik81 12y ago
That's the point. The Wayland design philosophy is to give you a buffer and let you draw into it however you want. That's in marked contrast to X, which defines its own drawing API. Wayland is not meant to be doing very much. Its main job is to give programs the buffers they need.

mike_ivanov 12y ago

I bet that within 10 years none of these two will be relevant, yet X11 still be hanging around.

orkoden 12y ago
X11 will always be around as a client running under a more modern display software. Kind of like how we're still running VT100 terminals on top a graphical UI with mouse, sound and 3D graphics capabilities. Mac OS X has been running X11 applications like that for more than a decade now. It works just fine. http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/ http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/
- mike_ivanov 12y ago
  That's true, although it doesn't mean that Mir or Wayland will necessarily stick as Mac OS window system did. It's a way too fast morphing landscape, even for a 10-year long project. Mac is a relatively stable platform based on a carefully curated ecosystem with predictable future, etc. Linux is not. BTW, I really like your X11-VT100 analogy.

lockcompetition 12y ago

The link appears broken for me. Is there a way to report that?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]