What are the Implications of Kubuntu with Wayland and Ubuntu with Mir

[oshunluvr]

Mir vs. Wayland, SADFL's rants and apparent slide into insanity, etc.

Don't ask me: https://blogs.kde.org/2013/06/26/kub...ng-mir-or-xmir

[richb]

Unless Kubuntu becomes based on something else, we'll all be looking for another distro within a year.

Upon what do you base that opinion?

[oshunluvr]

Unless Kubuntu becomes based on something else, we'll all be looking for another distro within a year.

[Rich Oliver]

As I am not part of American Politics and only see it from a distance, I was offended by the latest comments by our SABDFL.

Its time for Mark's achievements to be properly recognised as the Mussolini of open-source.

[NoWorries]

I certainly had a lot of trouble finding a version of Google Earth that would run on 13.04. What I mean by "run", is display images and not crash. The version that I have is a deb file, ie

google-earth-stable_6.0.3.2197-r0_amd64.deb

This does require the ia32-libs which I hope you have on your system. I must say that the multiarch version is very slow in coming and when it does come, I hope there is a version of Google Earth which works with it.

[GreyGeek]

... My only complaint is that Google Earth doesn't work on it. So I keep 13.04 to use Google Earth.

I can't get Google Earth (the binary from google) to run on 12.04.2. It only runs once or twice after I delete the hidden config folder. After that it crashes everytime during startup. Erase the config folder and it runs for two or three times again. Makes it hard to save klm's.

[NoWorries]

As Ubuntu began moving farther and farther away from the standard Linux base and toward Unity and Mir I believe that a breaking point will come, at which time it will be easier for Kubuntu to base off of Debian than Ubuntu. How soon that will be I cannot say, but the sooner the better in my opinion.

I certainly find it increasingly difficult to see how the move by Ubuntu to Unity and Mir will be compatible with the way "Kubuntu" is going. I would think that Blue Systems should be able to adopt and merge the approach taken by Canonical to make a Debian based system more user friendly for "Kubuntu".

IMO, it is time to address the needs of the bigger market, those who own machines between 6 months and 6 years old, and refocus on bug fixes and stability. There was a time when Linux was known by a majority of its users for its speed and stability. That was why I was glad to see a 5 year LTS. Unfortunately, it has turned out that the updates have done more to break my system than to improve it. I have spent more time in the last 6 months hunting down and installing fixes than I have in the previous six years.

I don't find that updates after about 6 months, for a released system, cause breakages. I personally enjoy getting Alpha and Beta releases to find and report bugs. Now, at times, these definitely lead to breakages. Fortunately I have been able to streamline my re-installation process such that a re-install takes 1-2 hours and is no big deal - in fact my wife hardly realizes that I have done it. I was so impressed with 13.10, that I was using the beta release for all my main activity! My only complaint is that Google Earth doesn't work on it. So I keep 13.04 to use Google Earth.

[GreyGeek]

...Maybe its time to start the process of basing "Kubuntu" on Debian rather than ubuntu.

As Ubuntu began moving farther and farther away from the standard Linux base and toward Unity and Mir I believe that a breaking point will come, at which time it will be easier for Kubuntu to base off of Debian than Ubuntu. How soon that will be I cannot say, but the sooner the better in my opinion.

Why? KDE 4.x is now in the support phase and the KDE dev team has moved new development to KDE 5.0. The kernel continues to plow ahead, driven by the release of new hardware. But, new laptop hardware development is slowing down, as is the market for it. Most Joe and Sally Sixpacks are moving to Apple and Android tablets and smartphones. Add to this the fact that some excellent apps are being abandon because of the development pressures. Debian has a slower development cycle and its stable release is just that, in my experience. Because of my programming background I've always favored living closer to the bleeding edge, but now it seems I am setting ON that edge with some of the recent updates.

Every year the Nebraska Dept of Revenue has a surplus equipment sale, in September. I went to it this year to see about buying some used laptops that I could refurbish and load Kubuntu on before giving them to those who need a good computer but can't afford one. I was dumbfounded to watch BROKEN laptops, some missing parts, selling for $65 or more. Dell 620s to 820s were selling for $175, not far from the price of a Goggle Chromebook! Eight year old laptops with P4 CPUs were selling for $100 and higher! One went for over $200 I believe the reason is that people have rejected new laptops with Win8 on them and have gone looking for used laptops running previous versions of Windows. I don't see an end to this premium market for used laptops as long as Microsoft has OEMs by the short hairs.

In times past, because the average life of a computer was 3 years, there was a "window" of usability in which computers could generally be counted on to install Linux and have it run without a hitch. I.e., it "just works". As time passed older computers slide out the back of the window as new computers slide into the front of that window. Computers that were too old or too new were problematic. This "window" is because there is only so much that can be put onto a CDROM. 700MB is about it. That means that older drivers and apps have to give way to new versions, which don't work on the older machines, but the newer versions don't alway work on the very latest machines, especially as long as Microsoft continues to plant roadblocks in the way that take Kernel and app developers time to reverse engineer. Most people do not have the bandwidth to download a DVDROM which could hold more drivers and apps. Only system houses like System76 install Linux and guarantee that every feature on the hardware is properly driven by the version of Linux installed, but not everyone can afford those systems.

IMO, it is time to address the needs of the bigger market, those who own machines between 6 months and 6 years old, and refocus on bug fixes and stability. There was a time when Linux was known by a majority of its users for its speed and stability. That was why I was glad to see a 5 year LTS. Unfortunately, it has turned out that the updates have done more to break my system than to improve it. I have spent more time in the last 6 months hunting down and installing fixes than I have in the previous six years.

[NoWorries]

Are we Part of the Tea Party??

As I am not part of American Politics and only see it from a distance, I was offended by the latest comments by our SABDFL. In particular

Mir is really important work. When lots of competitors attack a project on purely political grounds, you have to wonder what THEIR agenda is. At least we know now who belongs to the Open Source Tea Party And to put all the hue and cry into context: Mir is relevant for approximately 1% of all developers, just those who think about shell development. Every app developer will consume Mir through their toolkit. By contrast, those same outraged individuals have NIH’d just about every important piece of the stack they can get their hands on… most notably SystemD, which is hugely invasive and hardly justified. What closely to see how competitors to Canonical torture the English language in their efforts to justify how those toolkits should support Windows but not Mir. But we’ll get it done, and it will be amazing.

In this article no mention is made of Wayland which the rest of the open source community is adopting. Also, Mir is only relevant to Unity and I am not aware of anyone having success at installing Unity on another distribution. It is rather ironic that the attack has been on political grounds - I always thought that it was primarily technical grounds with a small touch of politics.

That aside, the Tea Party, I believe, is a small group that holds extreme political views. If one looks at the numbers game, more people are behind Wayland development than those behind Mir. I will leave it up to you to decide who among us is the one holding extreme political views.

Maybe its time to start the process of basing "Kubuntu" on Debian rather than ubuntu.

[SteveRiley]

Why designing for phones will never replace designing for desktops, part eleventy thousand.

[NoWorries]

Just came across this:
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/28032.html

Thanks for the reference. I like the followinng quote from the article

It's clear that XMir has turned into a larger project than Canonical had originally anticipated, but that's hardly surprising. There's only one developer with previous X experience working on it full-time, and the announced schedule provided no opportunity to deal with unexpected problems. As if that weren't enough, there's obvious conflict between Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Phone when it comes to developer time and required functionality.

I certainly hope that Wayland comes out of the starting blocks before Mir.

[Fintan]

Just came across this:
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/28032.html

[whatthefunk]

Maybe Canonical is figuring out why Wayland has been in development for so long....

[Rog132]

Ubuntu 13.10 Desktop Will Not Use XMir By Default

Ubuntu+1:http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=427
--> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2178119
-----> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTQ3NDQ

Ubuntu 13.10 Desktop Will Not Use XMir By Default

Posted by Michael Larabel on October 01, 2013
While the Ubuntu 13.10 desktop was expected to ship with Mir/XMir by default for supported configurations, this is no longer going to happen. Ubuntu developers conceded today that Mir/XMir isn't ready for desktop configurations when Ubuntu 13.10 ships later this month...

[SteveRiley]

My main gripe with MIr is not technical, however. Canonical's CLA will make sure that Mir will stay a Canonical/Ubuntu solution only...none of the big players on the linux ecosystem are going to touch it...ever.

This, more than anything else, is reason so many individuals in the Ubuntu community seem angry and unsure of what to do next. Contributions to Ubuntu increasingly benefit only Canonical and decreasingly benefit the rest of the Linux community.