Canonical Ports Chromium To The Mir Display Server 63
An anonymous reader writes "Months after Intel ported the Chromium open-source web browser to Wayland, Chromium is now running on Ubuntu's Mir. The Mir display server port ended up being based on Wayland's Chromium code for interfacing with Google's Ozone abstraction framework. The Ubuntu developer responsible for this work makes claims that they will be trying to better collaborate with Wayland developers over this code."
Grab the code hot off the press.
Shuttleworth is a lunatic. (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember at openstack portland Shuttleworth gave a live demo that failed. Ubuntu fails constantly. While Redhat tries to normalize the high rates of change in Linux, Ubuntu injects massive changes all the time while providing no stability. I have many years now working with a development team where we use Ubuntu as both product appliance and infrastructure. I have never seen a bigger mess than the trash that gets pumped out by Canonical. I used to know many Ubuntu acolytes who are converting away. Shuttle
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Change is not bad. X11 needs change. Perhaps they should have worked with X11, but from what I hear the X11 authors themselves didn't want to keep it.
X11 is broken in one serious way. X11 window forwarding over network is slow. Pathetically slow. Maybe some people who only ever forward terminals from X11 and whose entire computer use case involves manipulating ASCII characters might be fine with this, but those of us who work with graphics of any kinds that third-party hacks are required to make X work over
+1 Insightful (Score:2)
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If "fixing toolkits" is all that is needed, why hasn't anybody done it? How about yourself?
As far as I can tell, everyone who has tried to speed up X over the network has taken a different route. Maybe once you actually look at the toolkit code, it's not that easy---otherwise it would have been done ages ago.
[quote]But yes, you need a fast network with todays bloated desktops.
[/quote]
"Bloated desktop"? Hardly. Try putting up a 10-year old tcl/tk based GUI which allows you to manipulate 2D graphics by live-c
ssh -X (Score:2)
You must not be an X11 developer. You are also, if you can talk about Linux becoming somehow comparable to FreeBSD, not very aware of Linux usage. Linux sees far more use as a server than a desktop, and while it's possible that some other project starts eating up marketshare in that segment, I would be extremely surprised if that happened, and then we have the supercomputer, embedded, and mobile markets.
Your post is devoid of technical arguments for X11, because X11 is technically a clusterfuck. [youtube.com] It does far
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The slides are here. [freedesktop.org] While I respect the idea that video is an inefficient means to convey information but, since this is an issue that you seem to care about, you may want to take the time to educate yourself. I believe it is possible to speed up playback of youtube videos. This article [phoronix.com] conveys some similar points, but not much depth. Here is an architectural overview. [freedesktop.org]
Why don't you go over some of this information, and we can take this conversation over again from the top. You should find most of your conc
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I'm happy with Mint-MATE, thank you very much, and sure as hell doesn't look dated and ugly.
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X11 should be dustbinned just for the lack of multi-target network transparency. You know, the limitation that says while OSX and Windows users can efficiently share apps and desktops in a teleconference, Linux systems have to use VNC to toss around bitmap deltas instead. Its like getting a shot of Novocaine in the mouth everytime you head out to a party.
Oooooh, wait! Did I just attack X11 on its hallowed territory... Network transparency?! Well, indeed I have and its true that X11 has not gotten any overha
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X11 should be dustbinned just for the lack of multi-target network transparency. You know, the limitation that says while OSX and Windows users can efficiently share apps and desktops in a teleconference, Linux systems have to use VNC to toss around bitmap deltas instead. Its like getting a shot of Novocaine in the mouth everytime you head out to a party.
Oooooh, wait! Did I just attack X11 on its hallowed territory... Network transparency?! Well, indeed I have and its true that X11 has not gotten any overhauls to support this very important and common use case.
Security also stinks to high heaven on X11, and it took an OS like Qubes completely re-worked around a VM security model to address that architectural flaw (regular hypervisors like VMware won't even protect you). The priestly developers of X11 implementations do not appear to give a rats ass.
This stack (and its anachronistic neckbeard clique) has run its course and should have been on its way out 10 years ago. I think you're wrong about developing replacements for X11; Apple users never regretted it for an instant.
BTW, I don't know about you but I'm tired of my Linux UI's being interspersed with character-mode upchuck, screens flickering and popping momentarily in an out of existence whenever something different happens in the runlevel or login status or number of displays.
X11s security problems the ones patched resently by OpenBSD? One of the many operating systems besides Linux that uses X. One of the operatting systems that wayland and Mir have stated they have no plans for supporting?
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X11 is the technically superior choice. #getoffmylawn
The get off my lawn comment is quite appropriate in this case, because in many cases X11 vs Wayland is the equivalent of an old person using modern technology vs some young kid. The old person has a wealth of knowledge and experience behind them, and along with it an entire lifetime of prejudices on how things are supposed to be, and as such they often have a problem understanding workflows on a computer system (how may times have you seen people hit the X in the top corner of the dialogue box asking them t
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So, don't hold back, tell us how you really feel....
What's your idea of an easy migration path out of Ubuntu, preferably something still Debian based, but really, anything that serves the ideals that Ubuntu used to address 6 to 10 years ago and has gotten away from?
I see lots of hard-core Arch users around, has anybody made something like "Stable KDE on Arch" into a supported distro yet?
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Advice (Score:2)
A long time ago I was a big Debian fan. I had two problems with it, eventually I became pissed off and moved on to Gentoo. I still love Gentoo on my desktop but would like something less labor intensive for any and every other computer I might have to maintain. I am wondering if Debian has improved and if I might want to use it for this.
My first problem was packages asking for user input during installation. I wanted to start a dist-upgrade and walk away. Often I would do so, coming back hours later exp
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Just rambling here, but I did Gentoo about 10 years ago, back when Gentoo was the most practical way to get a 64 bit Linux OS... it took about a half day to compile and install, which isn't the end of the world, but it left me in mostly "static" maintenance mode - I wasn't inclined to try anything because of the potential cost. I was kinda jazzed about all my packages being recompiled with optimization switches tailored to my AMD64 system, but I don't think it did anything noticeable for me.
I did one full
"static maintenance mode" (Score:2)
Yeah, I can definitely see how waiting for compiles could discourage people from trying things. I've adopted a mode of ssh to home first thing in the morning from work, start a screen session, start something big emerging". Then I can sign out, focus on work and when I get home I have something new to play with. If I think the compile will take longer than that, and I think I will want to use my computer that night I just set it to some low priority nice level. That way I can go on using my computer for e
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Apt does feature an unattended-upgrades mode. It's not the default, which is annoying, but it's pretty easy to configure. It's one of the first things I configure on a new Debian box.
As for outdated packages: Debian unstable and experimental usually contain cutting and bleeding-edge versions of most open source software that is packaged in Debian. Unlike the grandparent poster, I would not recommend running sid (AKA unstable) as my main repository, because doing an apt-get upgrade has occasionally wrecke
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This is an excellent answer and match my experience exactly.
Just wan to add that I have been doing an aptitude full-upgrade/aptitude upgrade almost weekly, and have only encountered 2 packages that require user interactions so far: glibc (warning about restarting some services) and OpenJDK (licensing stuffs). Other packages just install "silently" during an upgrade.
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I'm quite happy with Linux Mint Debian Edition. It provides a nice middle ground between stable-but-out-of-date-and-highly-political Debian and unstable-but-nice-features Ubuntu. LMDE is basically a tested snapshot of Debian testing (like CUT was supposed to be, but actually regularly maintained) with a lot of the ease-of-use features (proprietary drivers, etc) of Ubuntu. Unlike Ubuntu or regular Linux Mint (which is based on Ubuntu), LMDE is completely compatible with Debian. I can use the apt preferen
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This comment is a fabrication, I was working on the demo for OpenStack Portland and it worked just fine. The rest of your post is just a rant with no technical details in it whatsoever.
Re:Shuttleworth is a lunatic. (Score:5, Insightful)
I really love Ubuntu. Everything Just Works, TM. You just download it, usage and installation is a breeze. Hardware compatibility is off the charts, even compared with Windows. The amount of online information if you run into problems is amazing, as well. I don't pay Ubuntu for support, yet each problem I've encountered is already documented somewhere and a workaround/fix available. The usability is on par or better that Windows, and close to Mac. All programs that have Linux versions come neatly prepackaged for Ubuntu.
I get why purists hate it, because it takes away the nice hours and days of tinkering for something to work. Yep, it's not as customizable in the sense that is difficult to change something and get it to work better. But if you want get something done WITH computers and not FOR computers, it's amazing.
AC for corporate reasons.
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Posting to remove moderation.
I realize this was not meant to be funny, but serious.
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I get why purists hate it, because it takes away the nice hours and days of tinkering for something to work.
No, you quite clearly don't get it. The clue, regarding the objection of the purists, is right there in the word purist. Relevant FSF page [gnu.org].
I'm not a purist myself (I run Mint Linux in VMware on Windows 7), but you are confusing Free Software proponents with OS hobbyists. The former advocate gNewSense. The latter play with Syllable, MenuetOS, Haiku, etc.
Shuttleworth is the reason many use Linux Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate him all you want. But when I looked around for a Workstation preinstalled with Linux, Ubuntu was the only serious choice I got. Redhat didn't even have a preinstalled system they would sell me. That's right, they haven't even paid enough attention to Linux Desktop to have a partner provide a well-spec'ed, modern, supported Linux laptop.
After a lot of digging I found a list of Windows laptops Redhat swore would also run their OS. But asking users to buy one OS ( Windows ) and reinstall another is an automatic fail for the vast majority of desktop buyers. Not that I can't do install an OS, but not having a supported OS is just not worth my time anymore. I'm no longer in college with lots of time to tweak and troubleshoot.
I wish I could go to Redhat.com, enter my credit card and have a partner laptop shipped to me in a few weeks. Complete with modern specs and OS support direct from Redhat. But that's not possible even if I'd happily pay a premium. At least Ubuntu has System76 [system76].
Usually... (Score:2)
Usually I buy a computer (laptop or desktop) based on its hardware features and then the OS. Yes, in theory, it sounds great to be able to have linux preinstalled, but most of those systems are pretty pricey compared to the equivalent hardware with Windows preinstalled. Since I tend to reconfigure a default install anyway, having to actually do the install is minor inconvenience, particularly if I'm saving $200-$300 over having it preinstalled. While my time is valuable, so is my money.
To each their own. H
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RedHat/Fedora is way outclassed by Ubuntu in terms of supported hardware. Just check out their respective HCL pages.... I dare any RedHat "workstation" lover to find out if they can stomach the difference and RedHat's obvious neglect.
The RedHat ken only makes *noises* about supporting desktops. There is no commitment or vision. Fedora is a only testbed distro for haphazardly plopping misc desktop components onto a base server OS.
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I have many years now working with a development team where we use Ubuntu as both product appliance and infrastructure.
Backend bits are better implemented on Debian. The slow release schedule and more rigorous release testing provide more stability.
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I remember at openstack portland Shuttleworth gave a live demo that failed. Ubuntu fails constantly. While Redhat tries to normalize the high rates of change in Linux, Ubuntu injects massive changes all the time while providing no stability.
Well yeah. I believed in Ubuntu for a long time, because I wanted it to become at least a "de facto" distro instead of all the fragmentation. But indeed the quality assurance is really bad in Ubuntu. If you want a slow and buggy Linux, install Ubuntu.
Shuttleworth is playing Batman (Score:1)
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You sound like someone who's gotten burnt by installing non-long-term-support Ubuntu in a production environment. That was your error, really; the non-LTS releases get minimal support, so installing them in an infrastructure-critical environment is pure silliness.
I've never had an issue with LTS releases... I have a machine that's been continuously updated since Ubuntu 8.10 (non-LTS), and the thing has miraculously upgraded with zero hitches via 8.10->9.10->10.04->12.04 and soon to be 14.04. This w
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but from the still image the guy looks like a monkey
he's a code monkey!
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but from the still image the guy looks like a monkey
Ummmm, I'm gonna need you to go ahead and have those TPS reports for us this afternoon.
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Why is this on Slashdot? (Score:1)
Sorry, it was funny in my head.
Mir? (Score:3)
I thought Mir [wikipedia.org] crashed long ago
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Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
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Pretty much. In this case, it's doubtful Wayland is at critical bodies and so adding the programming resources from Mir onto Wayland would produce a product with better quality and a richer feature set in a shorter time. That's how you make projects successful; in this case, of course, projects have a much more flexible budget of "anyone who has time and desire"--with the double-edge that budgeted resources aren't assigned by a higher power, but rather volunteered.
Canonical has volunteers in a pool whi
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In Soviet Russia, display server crashes you!
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Putin wants it back
Re: Mir? (Score:2)
It did! So did Ubuntu. What is your point?
Wait, what? (Score:4, Interesting)
My logic says that the toolkit that Chrome uses should be ported to have a Mir backend, rather than Chromium itself? I guess Google uses so much in-house stuff that it makes this necessary.
Not that I would be interested in Ubuntu anyway. The Unity desktop is laggy and, I'm not a big fan of having a custom display server (Mir) instead of the widely-adopted Wayland.
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None of the serious distros use Wayland yet. I would not call it widely-adopted.
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None of the serious distros use Wayland yet. I would not call it widely-adopted.
And the chances of that changing are poor, given that Ubuntu and its spinoffs are the only popular distros that are even capable of handling multi-monitor setups correctly.
Apple (actually, NeXT) taught us long ago that if there is one area where you should second-guess and buck the Unix herd, its in graphics architecture. IMO, Canonical are trying to copy some of Jobs'/Apple's engineering decisions.
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