Intel Reverts Plans, Will Not Support Ubuntu's XMir


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Intel Reverts Plans, Will Not Support Ubuntu's XMir

 

In an interesting change of events, the mainline Intel Linux graphics driver has reverted the patch to support XMir -- the X11 compatibility layer for the Mir Display Server in Ubuntu Linux. 

This week there was the surprise of the Intel 3.0 Linux DDX driver coming and with it SNA acceleration is enabled by default and it also integrated support for XMir. There's small work needed to the DDX X.Org graphics drivers to be able to support running XMir, similar to XWayland for Wayland users. The support was merged as Canonical said the XMir API should be stable. 

However, this morning the XMir work was reverted. In releasing a new 3.0 xf86-video-intel driver snapshot, Intel's Chris Wilson wrote in a Git commit

We do not condone or support Canonical in the course of action they have chosen, and will not carry XMir patches upstream.

-The Management

Intel, which is a company heavily invested in Wayland and has many full-time employees working on the competing display server (including Kristian H?gsberg, the Wayland founder), now doesn't want any XMir support in their mainline driver. It's interesting to see Intel management force the XMir removal from the Intel driver just days after it was committed and to publicly state a neutral stance on Canonical's controversial display server.  

Canonical will now need to carry the XMir support out-of-tree from the xf86-video-intel driver. Canonical is also carrying patched versions of Mesa, xf86-video-ati, and xf86-video-nouveau for being able to support Mir/XMir in Ubuntu 13.10. The binary AMD and NVIDIA graphics drivers also remain incompatible with Mir.

 

Source: Phoronix

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Sounds like 13.10 is going to be wonderfully compatible then.

I'm more curious about how 14.04 LTS plays out when the X fallback is supposedly being removed.  Personally a bad idea for a long term support build.

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Canonical wants to remove the X11 compatibility? That's hilarious. Not only do they have to maintain their own patches for GTK and Qt (Since neither of those groups want to support Mir), they'll remove the ability to run anything else.

Edit: Ehh, not XMir, but the ability to boot into X11 instead of Mir.

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HAHAHA and not a single **** was given that day.

That's what ubuntu gets for thinking they're almighty and pointlessly started stupid projects when much better projects already exist. Good.

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Seems Ubuntu is starting to become a victim of it's own success. Apparently their developers have joined the long list of developers of current day OSes that have their heads up their butts.

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Canonical wants to remove the X11 compatibility? That's hilarious. Not only do they have to maintain their own patches for GTK and Qt (Since neither of those groups want to support Mir), they'll remove the ability to run anything else.

Yea, it's a trainwreck in progress for 14.04. 13.10 at least will have the X fallback session, but 14.04... yikes. Copy-pasting a bit from the Ubuntu "Fridge".

 

This will mean that all users are well served in Ubuntu 13.10 and everyone will get the standard Unity 7 experience with feature parity with X (e.g. multi-monitor support). This fallback will be removed for Ubuntu 14.04. We are working with GPU vendors and partners to provide the required driver support and are confident to have this in place for 14.04.

Obviously that confidence was misplaced. (My own personal preference.. no proprietary drivers, no thanks.)

There's also the current status page, obviously this is a work in progress so this will (hopefully) change.

- no proprietary driver support (dependent on 3rd parties) - ?input events seeming slow/last buffer render delay? https://bugs.launchpad.net/mir/+bug/1199450

- no multimonitor support https://bugs.launchpad.net/mir/+bug/1102760

- no bypass composition support at the system compositor level, iow: framerates will be (s)low https://bugs.launchpad.net/mir/+bug/1109963

- no power management enabled https://bugs.launchpad.net/xmir/+bug/1193222

- no VESA support https://bugs.launchpad.net/mir/+bug/1118903

- XMir always listening to keyboard, passwords may appear in other X sessions https://bugs.launchpad.net/xmir/+bug/1192843 https://bugs.launchpad.net/mir/+bug/1102757

- multi session, doesn?t work

I seriously hope they re-think this strategy. An LTS build is supposed to be their flagship release based around stability, big on the "just works" factor. Throwing an unproven (and unpopular) core component into the mix with no option to fall back to something that's much more supported is just insane.
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Not really surprised to be honest. Intel has invested a lot into Wayland development, and to have Canonical FUD-ding all over the project since the Mir announcement I can imagine has annoyed Intel somewhat. If Canonical want to go ahead with their ridiculous plan, then they're welcome to do it alone as far as I'm concerned.

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Seems Ubuntu is starting to become a victim of it's own success. Apparently their developers have joined the long list of developers of current day OSes that have their heads up their butts.

Around version 8.04 (the last version I personally contributed any code to) Ubuntu has been more about selling Canonical's "services" and sending large pay-checks in the directions of those who run things there. For $9000, someone from Canonical will come to your premises and setup a "private cloud", or they'll sell you a certification on how to package your apps in a way which is compatible with apt. To them, X11 incompatibility is probably just a good way to sell "compatibility training courses" and the like.

I just wish everyone using Ubuntu would give Debian a try.

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I happen to really like ubuntu for us less then nerdy-geek types. install it and it works straight from install. Ubuntu is a great alternative for those who are new and don't want to know about the inner working. I guess a dumbed down version for some.

 

If I get a new laptop next year, I'll maybe make this one a Linux ubuntu system just for ****s and giggles. :)

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I don't quite understand why people hate Mir so much. So they got a few details about Wayland wrong (which they've since corrected). Who cares?

 

I thought the free open source software movement was about freedom to choose what you wanted to use, not freedom to be told what to use...which that seems to be case now.

 

This just seems like more political BS which is stupid.

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I thought the free open source software movement was about freedom to choose what you wanted to use, not freedom to be told what to use...which that seems to be case now.

That's the thing, you are being told what to use as the option to use the X fallback is being removed in favor of something that's going to get very little support from third parties, never mind being rushed into an LTS build which will cause all sorts of problems. This is supposed to be the "Linux poster child" of how easy it's supposed to be used, instead they're undermining that effort by delivering a product that's getting zero support from hardware manufacturers and other developers and is currently a buggy mess.. case in point, Steam only officially supports Ubuntu. How's that going to pan out when 14.04 rolls around and you're suddenly forced to use the significantly slower open source drivers? Will you be able to add different desktop environments? How will this work with remote X clients?
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I don't quite understand why people hate Mir so much. So they got a few details about Wayland wrong (which they've since corrected). Who cares?

 

I thought the free open source software movement was about freedom to choose what you wanted to use, not freedom to be told what to use...which that seems to be case now.

 

This just seems like more political BS which is stupid.

Nobody's forcing you not to use Mir, we're just calling out the justifications around it existing as stupid (Mir exists solely so Canonical can control it and tie Mir apps to their platform, it has no benefits over Wayland and in fact takes code from Wayland)

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It's Canonical's fault, they should just have gone with Wayland instead of creating their nonstandard display server. More fragmentation ahead, I always wonder why those Linux developers can't work towards a common goal.

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Why would you even use Ubuntu? So many superior alternatives out here for you to use, it's becoming like MS was during the XP days, bloated arrogant and complacent all at the same time

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It's Canonical's fault, they should just have gone with Wayland instead of creating their nonstandard display server. More fragmentation ahead, I always wonder why those Linux developers can't work towards a common goal.

 

To be fair to "those Linux developers", it's more a case of Canonical having a severe case of Not-Invented-Here syndrome than the usual political forking.

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Nobody's forcing you not to use Mir, we're just calling out the justifications around it existing as stupid (Mir exists solely so Canonical can control it and tie Mir apps to their platform, it has no benefits over Wayland and in fact takes code from Wayland)

Ha I wasn't referring to Mir in my rant. What code did Mir take from Wayland? Also if Mir was completely about control, I don't think they would care as much about getting others to work with them or even use it.

 

That's the thing, you are being told what to use as the option to use the X fallback is being removed in favor of something that's going to get very little support from third parties, never mind being rushed into an LTS build which will cause all sorts of problems. This is supposed to be the "Linux poster child" of how easy it's supposed to be used, instead they're undermining that effort by delivering a product that's getting zero support from hardware manufacturers and other developers and is currently a buggy mess.. case in point, Steam only officially supports Ubuntu. How's that going to pan out when 14.04 rolls around and you're suddenly forced to use the significantly slower open source drivers? Will you be able to add different desktop environments? How will this work with remote X clients?

Wayland's driver situation isn't any better. If you want to use it, you still have to use the terrible open source drivers. So what's your point? Also practically all of the issues as far as legacy X apps that Mir has (or will have) will be shared by Wayland...yet people only seem to be using that issue to bash Mir.

 

 Also "officially supported" doesn't really mean much as Steam works well on other "not-Ubuntu" distros.

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Ha I wasn't referring to Mir in my rant. What code did Mir take from Wayland? Also if Mir was completely about control, I don't think they would care as much about getting others to work with them or even use it.

...

XMir is based on XWayland, I'm not saying they're bad for forking it, I'm saying the reasons behind the fork is what's bad.

Canonical is trying to get other people to support Mir, but nobody is (No toolkit guys want Mir, no driver guys want Mir, etc.) The entire Linux graphics stack is moving towards Wayland.

Edit: Hell, even the Ubuntu based distros don't want Mir, Xubuntu is moving towards Wayland as well.

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Also "officially supported" doesn't really mean much as Steam works well on other "not-Ubuntu" distros.

Yes, we know that, but explain that to the random newbie who wants to try gaming on Linux and the first thing they're told is "sorry, you either need to downgrade to an older version of the distro or switch to an unsupported distro and hope it works with it." After Googling around for a new distro, how to get Steam to work with it if it does, etc etc.. chances are they're going to be questioning why they thought it was a good idea to try it in the first place. Again, this is commonly billed as the go-to distro for first-timers, never mind it's not only going to have serious problem with Steam, but Linux/Wine gaming in general, or hell anything that requires on GPU performance, never mind things suddenly not working because they upgraded to the latest version. Everybody else is going to go with Wayland.. why add yet another unnecessary option into the mix, especially one that really isn't helping anybody in the first place? Don't get me wrong, I used to like Ubuntu in general, hell even Unity has kinda-sorta grown on me (like it better than Gnome 3 anyway), but this.. this is just a bad move with no benefits.

As for the rest, Decryptor says it above better than I can. What's the point?

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It's Canonical's fault, they should just have gone with Wayland instead of creating their nonstandard display server. More fragmentation ahead, I always wonder why those Linux developers can't work towards a common goal.

 

Ubuntu is but one project. There are many others, some of which are very coordinated towards common goals.

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XMir is based on XWayland, I'm not saying they're bad for forking it, I'm saying the reasons behind the fork is what's bad.

Canonical is trying to get other people to support Mir, but nobody is (No toolkit guys want Mir, no driver guys want Mir, etc.) The entire Linux graphics stack is moving towards Wayland.

Edit: Hell, even the Ubuntu based distros don't want Mir, Xubuntu is moving towards Wayland as well.

Do you mean kubuntu? XFCE has no plans to support either mir or wayland, so xubuntu switching wouldn't really be possible...

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XMir is based on XWayland, I'm not saying they're bad for forking it, I'm saying the reasons behind the fork is what's bad.

 

 

Canonical was always had a nasty habit of using other people's work to achieve their own ends, instead of helping the community at large.

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