Ubuntu's Mir Gets Delayed Again

jones_supa writes "Delays keep piling up for the Mir display server on the Ubuntu desktop. After already being postponed multiple times, Mir might not be enabled by default on the Ubuntu Linux desktop until the 16.04 LTS release — in two years time! This was the estimate by Mark Shuttleworth in a virtual Ubuntu Developer Summit. Using Mir, Mark says, will lead to supporting more hardware, obtaining better performance, and 'do some great things' with the technology. He expects some users will start using Mir on the desktop over the next year. Mir is already packaged as an experimental option, along with an experimental Unity 8 desktop session."

This could be good news...

[bazmonkey]

If Wayland is able to make decent ground before Mir is ready, there's still hope Ubuntu will drop the whole thing.

Re:This could be good news...

[dbIII]

Why?
I think we need both to compete. Some of the early limitations proposed in Wayland were frankly, utter shit, and it was only pressure to lift their game that led to them being dropped.

Re:X got from Version 1 to Version 11 in 3 years

[GigaplexNZ]

Version numbers don't mean a whole lot. Google Chrome hasn't changed much in 33 versions.

Re:This could be good news...

[angryfeet]

But remember Wayland was floundering until just after Mir was announced. Only once all the righteous indignation kicked in did it start going anywhere. Without Shuttleworth we'd all be stuck in the 70's.

Re:This could be good news...

[davydagger]

ubuntu didn't adopt wayland because they said it lacked too much functionality, so instead of contributing back, like most other companies do, they decided to do what they normally, do, make an incompatible, inhouse version only they use, and then blame everyone else for not marching around them.

I liked ubuntu early on, because when it was X11 and Gnome 2, they made using linux easy, with using the exact same technologies everyone else running a linux desktop was using. They were using the most mainstream widely supported technologies.

And thats all I want out of a newbie distro. To take wideley supported, most default software, package it together, with support, make the best sane configs. Find the best GUI config tools, and make a coherent OS family like windows and mac do, for everyone who is non-technical, so they can enjoy what we do, and I have something to recommend to non-techies.

It would also make my life easier, being I'm the one who generally fixes the computer.

Re:This could be good news...

[Alomex]

Except that most people don't use X network transparency. You can achieve the same effect without it, and this is what most people do, but they don't even know it. They see a remote client and immediately think "it must be network transparency!" If that were the case then surely windows is network transparent since it supports remote desktop.

As I said, network transparency is the mating call of the X noob.

Yes, it is a flamebait-ish statement, but it also happens to be the truth.

Re:Try harder

[thegarbz]

You are really calling the people who have been using X for years "noobs"?

Using X does not mean understanding X. Additionally using X does not mean understanding how things have changed under the hood when there's been no visible change in the usability of the system.

Frankly a lot of X veterans who maybe once used X in a truly network transparent way think that just because their ability to send a window to another X system means it's still network transparent, which is utter rubbish. There's no modern distro which actually implements remote X in any other way than Wayland is proposing to do it, pixels scraping and sending it over the network.

Yet for some reason some people are still hung up on a feature which they think they use because frankly they don't understand anything, and the most vocal bunch seems to be the ones with the longest beards.

Re:This could be good news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Given they both solve the same problem, but one has wide support and has shipped on devices, what use is the other?

If this is true then why even have Wayland? It solves pretty much the same problems that X had already solved. We could have simply modified X.

If Wayland is justified then so is Mir.

Re:This could be good news...

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Your response is a combination of reductio ad absurdum:

Hell, if that's the approach you want to take, why even have a computer? It solves pretty much the same problems that pencil and paper had already solved. Why have pencil and paper? It pretty much solves the same problems cuniform tablets had already solved.

and ad hominem:

I assume you really can see the difference between a new display server and antiquated X, but maybe not. I'll chalk it up to the state of the school system in today's world.

It's very weak and emotional filled response. It makes me think you more of a Wayland fanboi who can't handle the competition than someone who has anything important to add to the conversation.

While I do think it's detracts from the efforts being made by Wayland, I don't see anything wrong with Mir's existence. We always said competition is good. We said this when Linux went against Windows, to justify the multiple desktops available (e.g. Gnome, Qt, XFCE, OpenStep, etc.) and I can see the same argument said for Mir versus Wayland.

Wayland is competing against X windows. They are offering the promise of improved performance and maintainability by jettisoning the legacy code of X. I don't see Mir any differently. I see what the AC is going for and agree. Wayland may have some of the same programmers of X, but that doesn't necessarily mean X is abandonware.