Mir Display Server Will Be Default in Ubuntu 13.10

[Brahim Salem]

Originally Canonical was planning to ship their Mir Display Server by default in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS . However, it’s been announced today that with Ubuntu 13.10 they will now be using Mir by default. Complete story at [url]http://www.hackerpaparazzi.com/?p=1087[/url]

[DrHu]

If its is somehow better and is provided by distributors, I don't much care which Xserver or graphics driver/interface is being offered.
--if it has too many issues, I won't want it.

Apart from the graphics card vendors no-one seems much interested in tearing down the whole Xserver framework and starting again
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(display_server)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System

[Condorman]

I'm hoping that in the future it won't matter what you are running; be it X, Mir, or Wayland. I'm hoping the graphics vendors provide a driver for all occasions. However, I was reading today over on Phoronix that the AMD open source driver has recently received a lot of attention. I would definitely consider switching from nVidia to AMD if this persists. That way, it won't matter what you are running as display server, as either way you'll be fine with whatever driver comes OOTB.

Come on nVidia! Let's see some movement!

[The Dark Side]

Will have to see how it works. I do not know whether Canonical is being rushed too much with this, hope it works properly. Anyway, I do not want to be burned throwing something previously a LTS version will not functioning properly. When you exit the final version of Ubuntu 13.10 will give a look, just to see how advanced is Mir.-

Anyway, I doubt very much that the Linux Mint Team use this. I do not think that Linux Mint will use Mir, will continue as before. Greetings.-

[dee.]

I'm hoping that in the future it won't matter what you are running; be it X, Mir, or Wayland. I'm hoping the graphics vendors provide a driver for all occasions.

Sorry but regardless of the driver situation, it WILL matter. There will be compatibility issues between applications coded for Mir vs. applications coded for Wayland, even if we consider that most applications will use toolkits and thus be display-server-agnostic (assuming Canonical manages to keep all the toolkits supported downstream), there will still be applications that will not want or be able to use toolkits and thus will want to use the display server APIs directly. For example, consider games, and proprietary software that gets ported from other OS's, those are likely to use their own solutions for graphics, which will require them to write their own graphics backends, and those will only support one display server. In this case, the best possible scenario is, that they will use X, which is the lowest common denominator between Mir and Wayland. The worst, they'd use Mir, and their software would only work on Ubuntu, not on any other Linux, not even buntu derivatives.

Canonical's current plan to run a whole DE under XMir is plain idiocy, this arrangement has been shown to be slower than plain X in pretty much every situation, with no advantage whatsoever (the DE won't be able to use any of the advantages of Mir, since the X layer is in between). Running on plain Mir is impossible for other distros, since Mir is being designed in-house, for the needs of Unity only, with no regard for any other distro. It's no wonder that no other distro seems interested in using Mir in any way or capacity, and this will cause a situation where there will be Ubuntu, and then there will be Other Linux Systems - and there will be very little common between those environments. Canonical is building a walled garden, separate from the rest of the Linux ecosystem.

[Zalbor]

What will this mean for Mint? Will it have to choose between not using Ubuntu and using Mir, or will it be possible to use X (or Wayland) while still having Ubuntu as a package base?

[viking777]

I don't see the problem myself. A "walled garden" as you put it implies closed source. I have never heard Canonical suggest that Mir is closed source, and if it isn't, and they are in such a darned hurry to get it, then then let them do all the work (suspend all Wayland development and continue using X in the meantime). When Mir is complete, simply port it to work with GTK. It has got to be easier than developing Wayland from scratch in competition, and it is a commonly used development tactic eg. Mac and Android which use Linux as a base, or maybe even Mint and Ubuntu or Ubuntu and Debian. I guess it restricts the input that you can put into the gtk version but it makes life one hell of a lot easier and doesn't end up with two incompatible graphics servers.

The only thing in the way of that happening is the egos of Wayland developers - which means it will never happen

[xenopeek]

Xorg will remain at least in the Ubuntu repositories till the next LTS (which would be Linux Mint 17). Kubuntu and Lubuntu have already announced to stay on Xorg and not move to Mir or XMir. Kubuntu will be moving to Wayland, and KDE team is working hard on that.

What does it mean for Linux Mint? Not much right now; Linux Mint is not in the business of picking winners. Xorg vs Mir vs Wayland isn't decisions doesn't need to be made till earliest the development cycle for Linux Mint 18 starts. That's almost a year from now, so who knows what will be the status of Mir and Wayland then