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1 • Canonical and Mir (by john on 2013-10-14 09:17:29 GMT from Portugal)
Well said Jesse. Even though I think Canonical has a lot of issues to address in their communication and vision strategies they made a choice to push a new technology out. Even if Mir doesn't become succesful, indirectly it pushed Wayland. I think it's a win-win situation for all the users!
2 • Mir (by Mirix on 2013-10-14 09:59:52 GMT from Belgium)
Hardware producers often ignore Linux. They often do not produce Linux drivers, or do not open their code, or, if they do offer Linux drivers these often are of lesser quality and less full featured than the drivers for proprietary operating systems.
This is particularly true for graphics cards and those who have been around in the Linux world for long enough, know who painful this used to be (and still is to a lesser extent).
Under the light of these precedents, does anyone really believe that Nivida, Intel, ATI, etc are going to produce drivers for three different display servers? Really? If we are lucky, they will chose one.
So the whole Mir thing is another desperate attempt from Canonical to make Ubuntu and Linux synonyms (as Bill Gates did with Windows and PC). They want to make Ubuntu the default Linux so that everyone that develops software for Linux will do it only with Ubuntu in mind. If they succeed, they should then be able to impose to the whole community the strategies that are more in line with their commercial interests (as they have always tried to do).
Canonical is losing ground very quickly and this, while they are still the number 1 (thanks to Mint), may be their last chance to impose their hegemony in the Linux landscape. Luckily, it seems that, once more, they are late...
3 • MIR/conical (by kc1di on 2013-10-14 10:31:29 GMT from United States)
Well Written Jesse!
I tend to agree with you I'm not a big fan of Conical , but can't deny they've been a big player in the Linux and open source community over the years. Just look at the number of spins and Distro that are based on their efforts. And as you said when your at or near the top people can's seem to stop being critical. Conical it's self after all is a business and needs to turn a profit at some point. They supported the free giving away of their CD's for many years and introduced many to Linux.
I Think some of the business choices have been poorly timed and some in open source community seem to be trying to make Ubuntu and Conical into the next M.S. but in fact they are simply pushing the tech to new limits. and it might fail for them. But as you said I do think MIR should be given a fair shake.
I'm not sure why Intel made the choices they did , but seems it may be business related more that software related :(
anyway thanks for making us think I'm sure you'll get many comments pro and con. Hope you have thick skin ;)
4 • Canonical and Mir (by Wine Curmudgeon on 2013-10-14 10:42:47 GMT from United States)
Once again, jesse, you have written an excellent piece -- thoughtful, balanced, and logical. And, sadly, as kc1di wrote, you'll need a thick skin. That's the shortcoming here, not what Canonical is doing with Mir.
5 • OpenSuse's RC (by Bob on 2013-10-14 10:45:54 GMT from Austria)
Tried the OpenSuse RC in the KDE 64b flavor - worked like a charm. This is a pleasant surprise, since I sometimes had to skip OpenSuse releases because of reliability concerns. Therefore it looks like it is going to be the Linux of choice for all my hardware once the final version is available - and still working.
6 • About Mir (by Danmery on 2013-10-14 10:52:18 GMT from United States)
Guys,
Linux world means 'Freedom' then Mir has the right to be developped by the Ubuntu Community. Only the Linux Community will judge if Mir is good or not.
Remember: When we have options we all win.
7 • Tips reply (by Ben furstenwerth on 2013-10-14 11:12:14 GMT from United States)
I usually just use sudo blkid or sudo /sbin/blkid depending on system. Tells you dev location uuid, cs type and label. Usually all I need to identify. On every device I have if I can format it i label it so its real easy, usually the last plugged in item is the last /dev/xxx
8 • Of Mir and stuff (by kneekoo on 2013-10-14 11:21:41 GMT from Romania)
Quite a mature way to look at things (Mir, distros etc). This is the main reason I come back to DistroWatch. I value other people's opinions based on how much of their own thoughts are in it, rather than how much they repeat what others say.
Unless we financially support the long term work of the developers I don't believe we even have the right to judge what they come up with, but we always have the choice to use or ignore whatever open source software out there. I guess in the end it boils down to personal comfort. If someone likes a distro as it is and the distro maker changes something significant (to the user), the user might be unhappy with it. So for our own convenience we tend to brag a lot.
With all the good and bad Canonical published in previous Ubuntu releases, there's one thing I just love about them: they keep going and improve their work. Canonical's Achile's heel is the fixed release dates. But I still can't find a perfect distro/operating system, so I won't expect that from anyone. Let's face it, people would use a single desktop environment if only one was available, but that doesn't mean everyone would be happy with it. So options make much more people happier - let's keep that in mind. Being open-source, packaged and distributed with install instructions and online communites that we can use to have a free and functional operating system is a lot more valuable than selfish/mindless rants.
I wonder what would these people (the critics) would reply to these simple questions:
- With your own time, knowledge and money would you agree to let anyone dictate you what to develop just to release it open source?
And now for the tricky part:
- Which people would you listen to and work for? (all having so many different opinions and requests)
9 • Mir did not provide peace and Unity not unity it seems. (by greg on 2013-10-14 11:28:04 GMT from Slovenia)
As long as we have choices, right? Who cares about having standards for certain things... Each person it's own OS and no compatibility between them. but at least they would have choices. some manufacturers supporting this choice others other choice... they could all chose to install only modules they need if they read a thick book on how to do it. it's all about choices. not about using the OS or programmes, not about having safe, smart OS that can work on nearly any device you thrown it on.
10 • Thank you, Jesse ... (by Raphael on 2013-10-14 11:36:31 GMT from Switzerland)
... for your thoughts on Mir. I hope that more people will focus on the positive aspects of Mir than on their pessimism.
11 • On the Intel/Mir controversy (by carlo on 2013-10-14 12:02:41 GMT from Italy)
It's very simple actually: Intel doesn't want to mantain non-mainstream code. Everyone who is actively involved in the developement of an at least medium-sized project can understand why the clutterness of code and badly mantained parts of it can affect the whole in a bad way.
So, as per their won words, they want to focus on Wayland for now. Why are you Jesse and others accusing them of sabotaging Mir? The fact is that Wayland has been in active developement for years (and it can't be denied also that the recent momentum is of course due to Mir announcement) is the main reason Intel wants to mantain only Wayland-related code in its tree alongside X-related code. They didn't state anything against Mir, they just want it to reach a more mature state before inserting Mir-related code in the tree. It's THAT simple.
Until Mir is more developed it's up to Ubuntu guys to track its own patches to the Intel driver. What's the big deal? They already track literally thousands of personalized patches on upstream packets!!! When also Fedora, Mint, Debian are going to integrate Mir with their own patches, probably Intel will save their efforts and switch to integrate the Mir section of the driver tree. That's it.
Open source in my mind doesn't mean that I must do your job even if I don't need it.
Regarding Matthew Garrett, he just described why Mir integration on Ubuntu Desktop is problematic. Has he trolled someone? I don't think so.
12 • OpenSUSE's RC (by Rajesh Ganesan on 2013-10-14 12:06:34 GMT from India)
#5 +1
I agree with Bob. I too tried it - still using it. Very stable and pleasant. Great work by openSUSE developers :)
13 • Mir (by Mirix on 2013-10-14 12:25:30 GMT from Belgium)
I think people are missing the whole point. The community will not choose which display server is better. Hardware producers will. No one will choose a display server which is not well supported by his GPU drivers.
Hardware producers will choose to support one of them or none of them, but not two of them or the three of them (that would be ridiculously anti-economic).
Apart from technical considerations, the decision will mostly be based on power balance... Will the professional player, RedHat, support Canonical on this one? Are Intel or Nvidia willing to give Canonical the monopoly of the Linux display server?
Maybe yes or maybe not... But it is not up to us, it is up to them. It is their freedom, not our freedom. We will just have to adapt to whatever they decide. That is why Mir is not neutral and it is definitively not about technology. It is about a small non-profitable company desperately trying to gain control over a critical piece of the Linux ecosystem in order to become profitable and survive.
14 • @11: Carlo (by dragonmouth on 2013-10-14 12:51:50 GMT from United States)
"Why are you Jesse and others accusing them of sabotaging Mir? "
That is a very good question. Just as easily one could question why is Canonical trying to sabotage Wayland by developing a competing product.
For someone with no horse in the race, Jesse sure seems intent on pushing Canonical/Mir.
15 • Mir and Canonical... (by sherman on 2013-10-14 13:02:10 GMT from United States)
It's Linux...if you don't like it don't use it (support it, donate to it, code for it, etc). Use Debian or something/anything else.
As far as resources and display drivers and such from the likes of Nvidia, Intel, AMD...they *never* had any intention of playing fair. They always have picked and will pick whatever is in the best interest of their long term business model.
Canonical *is* making its decisions based on what is best for itself in order for it to survive/prosper/whatever...which it is perfectly allowed to do.
As far as fracturing or monopolizing the harmonious Linux community/ecosystem...I'd actually have to see one in the first place to admit that is even possible.
16 • OpenSuSE (by Dave Postles on 2013-10-14 13:04:16 GMT from United Kingdom)
I started my conversion to Linux with OpenSuSE, but I dropped it when Novell went into collaboration with MS. Is OpenSuSE supported just by Attachmate now?
17 • Mir and STANDARDS? (by LinuxMan on 2013-10-14 13:06:47 GMT from United States)
Standards? Since when have we had certain standards in the open source world? People complaining about Mir are way out of line. They are giving their opinion on something they know nothing about. It still has bugs that need to be worked out and it's still under development and hasn't been released. But we still have these ones that say, IT'S NO GOOD AND IT WILL FAIL. I wonder what psychic hotline they heard that on. It seems that we have a lot of that in the linux and open source environment. It will fail because it's different. Mir may fail, but I doubt it, and if it does, so what? Nothing has been wasted and Canonical is will to take the lost if that is the case. Some good always comes out of being progressive. That is why most linux distros are safe and will work on nearly any device it's thrown on. That is a victory in itself. It seems that among nerds it's cool to hate Canonical and Ubuntu because they do things different and are always trying to develop new solutions for old problems. I've also heard for the last 10 years how Canonical will be the new MS. That's ridiculous. Stop waiting for something to happen that isn't going to happen. Linux is more popular now then it ever has been. It's a great thing and a lot of credit goes to Canonical and (do I dare say it?) Google, and for the ones who say that Android is not linux, you are wrong. People need to remember what open source is all about. It's seems, with a lot of the whining and complaining, that some have forgotten, and just want things to be done the same way, their way. Maybe for those people Apple or even MS would be a better fit. Think about it.
18 • Mir Only Needs To Work for Canonical (by jonc on 2013-10-14 13:15:34 GMT from United States)
To be successful, Mir only needs to work for Canonical, to meet the requirements it has set for its products.
Perhaps Canonical would be pleased if Mir was more widely adapted. Or, perhaps not, given the support burden.
At any rate, I'm always astounded at the entrenched conservatism in the developer community (the only FOSS community that counts). The apparent need to compel everyone to use a single solution for every problem might make life simpler for those who dominate that community. That, though, puts the emphasis on maintaining enforced community harmony rather than on providing improved products for users.
Competition is good. Linux is Linux. I can do on one distro what I can do on another. So, I will wait and see which display manager I like best.
19 • Canonical/Mir (by Jon Wright on 2013-10-14 13:16:38 GMT from Vietnam)
Not sure what Jesse is up to this week - this comes just a few weeks after the Misc News section was abandoned in favour of an Unbuntu Edge advertorial. Canonical are well-known for their lack of participation - as measured by their lack commits to the Kernel, for example. The main reason given here for Ubuntu not contributing to Wayland was the slow pace of development but then we learn that Mir is also experiencing serious slowness, having not made 13.10.
Not sure about the attack on Matthew Garrett. That paragraph didn't flow well at all so no point passing comment.
20 • Mir (by corneliu on 2013-10-14 13:19:13 GMT from Canada)
While I agree with all of Jesse's comments, I think the criticism stems in the fact that Ubuntu's contributions to common Linux projects such as the kernel are so tiny. If Ubuntu has been a top contributor to the Linux kernel, I guess they wouldn't have faced so much criticism. The point is, in a resource limited world, every minute spent for developing Mir is a minute not spent for developing Wayland or X. Of course, Ubuntu is free to do whatever they want, it is just a pity they don't contribute to a common project. And the graphic cards makers will do only what makes sense for them from an economic point of view. So I think in the end the whole issue will fix itself naturally.
21 • re 16 OpenSuse (by corneliu on 2013-10-14 13:31:33 GMT from Canada)
Yes, I think the OpenSuse project is managed by Attachmate. If I remember correctly, Attachmate extended Novell's original deal with Microsoft which is a shame because in my opinion OpenSuse offers the best KDE integration at the moment and is really a quality distro.
22 • Way off base, here! (by DavidEF on 2013-10-14 13:53:51 GMT from United States)
Well, where should I start. Okay, how about we start with greg from Slovenia (post #9)?
greg, you seem to be confused. You need to know that for a large amount of people using linux and free software, it really IS all about having choices. No, really! And there is nothing wrong with that! If you disagree, that's okay, but that doesn't mean that others are wrong.
On the matter of hardware vendors (yes I'm talkin' to you, Mirix from Belgium), once again, there seems to be some confusion about what free software developers are capable of. From the very beginning of free software, there has always been a severe lack of help from hardware vendors."Hackers" were proud of their ability to get linux and free software working just about anywhere, without any help from the manufacturers. Yes, it would be nice to have their help. But, if I want to write code (as if I could) for an "unsupported" piece of hardware, why should you care? If I (okay, someone else, maybe Canonical) did all the hard work of making it happen, instead of getting help from the manufacturer of the device, why would that be a problem for you?
@14 dragonmouth,
Since when is "developing a competing product" an act of sabotage? I don't suppose you remember that at one time, Canonical had hopes of using Wayland in Ubuntu. Now, they've decided that it doesn't fit the plans they have for Ubuntu to be device agnostic, so they created Mir for themselves. As far as I know, they aren't even asking anyone else to adopt it, so it really isn't even a competing product! So, why are YOU spreading FUD?
@Jesse,
Thanks for a wonderful piece about Mir. I agree with your conclusions, and I am also anticipating the outcome of development on both Wayland and Mir. I do also appreciate Canonical NOT pushing an unfinished Mir on us, like Pulseaudio was pushed on us years ago, by seemingly everyone.
23 • Mir vs Wayland (by Tonny on 2013-10-14 13:58:30 GMT from Indonesia)
Hm.. When someone get your code, fork it and then claiming that that was they hard work while badmouthing your code. What will you do? And what about libhybris dev vs canonical case? I wanna know your opinion about that, Jesse.
#8:
-1. If I have enough money, I'll do what google do now, pay people to fix buggy code in apps; rather than to fork the code and create one more fork because I can do it. e.g. google paid dev to patch/fix libssl or the like rather than paid one to fork that.
-2. Wayland, in this case, have timeline, and what TODO. Must one 'fork/steal' their code and start a new? Can one not just contribute to it? With their abundant resource?
24 • RE: Thoughts on Mir and the community (by -W- on 2013-10-14 14:00:29 GMT from United States)
I can easily see why a lot of critics tend to dislike Canonical.
Not that long ago, Canonical introduced us to the Unity desktop which was met with many angry users for dropping GNOME (or at least giving it a back seat). Canonical was then caught with it's hand in the cookie jar (depends on who you ask) over data mining and the Amazon search fiasco. Maybe you remember it. So with thinking like that - like Microsoft, Apple or even Google - it's no wonder that most people in the Linux/BSD community now look at Canonical with a bit more skepticism.
And yes, all 3 companies (Micrappoogle) and even quite a few others mine data in order to make money. But the thing that's so amazing is why almost no one objects when Google does it. I mean, you can hardly even turn an Android device on without Google being involved. Yet, Canonical can't do it with Ubuntu? But I digress...
Now Canonical wants to fundamentally change the display server that has pretty much been the only common tie between all Linux distros. I can't say if this is good or bad but it does seem long over due. And given Canonical's shall we say arrogant history? It's only natural to have a little more tendency to resist major players like that.
The thing that confuses me is why Intel is now resisting Canonical's Mir project too. After all, large corporations like Intel don't often shy away from anything thing that could make them more money. That is, unless someone even bigger is doing some major arm twisting. So I'm sort of on the fence about Mir. Clearly Canonical is proposing something that is not making Intel happy. And I'm just not sure who is going to be better off when all the dust settles -- "them" or us.
25 • Lack of Kernel commits? (by DavidEF on 2013-10-14 14:03:12 GMT from United States)
You guys are unreal. Yes, it has been said for years that Canonical don't commit much to the kernel. Tell me why that makes them evil, or untrustworthy, or whatever.
26 • RE: 19 Canonical/Mir (by ladislav on 2013-10-14 14:11:55 GMT from Taiwan)
Advertorial? It would have been an advertorial if we got paid for it. But we did not. I thought the crowdfunding of an Linux-based mobile phone developed by Canonical was a rather newsworthy event and I duly reported about it. That's all there is to it, so please stop spreading any more FUD.
27 • Mir and Waylanf vs X (by Alessandro di Roma on 2013-10-14 14:31:52 GMT from Italy)
I use remmina (client side) and tightvncserver (server side) in order to obtain a graphic remote control of my machines. This works thanks to the client-server architecture of X, will it work with Mir or Wayland? I'm afraid no... I leaved Ubuntu because Unity and Xubuntu because my non-PAE CPUs, now I live happy on Debian with XFCE, and Mir and Wayland confirm to me I'll never go back.
28 • Advertorial (by Jon Wright on 2013-10-14 14:35:13 GMT from Vietnam)
The links in the news section were affiliate links and the ads in the sidebar had identical links - hence advert met editorial.
29 • re 25 Ubuntu is just selfish (by corneliu on 2013-10-14 14:50:07 GMT from Canada)
Ubuntu is not evil, or untrustworthy it is just selfish. And selfish is not necessarily a bad thing. Companies tend to be selfish, which is OK since their goal is to make profit. But in a community that values sharing, being selfish is kind of bad. Jesse tried to argue that the reason people bash Ubuntu is because Ubuntu is the king of the hill, and envy drives people to pull Ubuntu down. That is mostly false. The real reason is that Ubuntu does not contribute to common Linux projects as much as their financial resources allow them to do. I remember the time when Mandriva was on the brink of bankruptcy and still contributed more to Linux kernel than Ubuntu.
30 • Selfish (by Jon Wright on 2013-10-14 15:05:54 GMT from Vietnam)
And being selfish when you've co-opted a whole section of the community's goodwill - in the shape of Launchpad, for example - is kind of bad.
31 • device names, Mir (by octathlon on 2013-10-14 15:06:56 GMT from United States)
Device names: I usually use df -h to see them, and space remaining.
Mir: I agree completely with Jesse and have the same attitude. I also understand the point that with Ubuntu being the dominant distro and having more influence on what hardware vendors may choose to support, Mir may be a more divisive project than the other things Canonical is doing. But they can do what they want with their own distro. Something has given new impetus to the Wayland project--was it Mir? Competition can be good in that respect.
I am much more troubled by Unity sending your Dash search strings to outside servers by default--IMO this really goes against the spirit of Linux and destroys the trust in Linux that end users have come to rely on.
32 • Mir (@DavidEF) (by Mirix on 2013-10-14 15:12:43 GMT from Belgium)
The following statement may be a bit shocking for some: The world is not divided into Good and Evil, that only happens in Marvel comics and Tolkien novels. A community is a conflict of interest and defending your own interests is not necessarily being "evil".
However, it is important to analyse each one's interests in order to design a reasonable strategy to protect yours.
Some of us are just trying to analyse the facts and the possible scenarios from a logical and rational point of view. There is no place for love, hatred, good and evil in that.
That said, I am also looking forward for the second part from The Hobbit this Xmas...
33 • Canonical and MIR (by igor on 2013-10-14 15:18:59 GMT from United States)
It might be a good idea for a writer to have a passing acquaintance with computer programming before writing an entire article about how the open source community should be more receptive to MIR.
34 • @27 Horse-drawn carriages vs cars (by DavidEF on 2013-10-14 15:25:36 GMT from United States)
If you're saying you prefer VNC, and you don't think you'll ever have a reason to upgrade to something else in the future, then I agree with at least some of your logic concerning Wayland and Mir, although I don't know whether VNC will work on Wayland or Mir.
If you only need the functionality, and have no certain preference for VNC, there are already alternatives, and probably will be even better alternatives in the future. You might try looking into xpra. The wikipedia article for xpra says that it differs from VNC in that it is rootless. The applications from the remote host appear as local windows. It also is designed to perform better over slower networks compared to standard X.
So, if you were trying to say that Wayland and Mir are regressive compared to X, then you might compare that to saying cars are regressive compared to carriages, because they don't include a place to hitch up a horse. In other words, you probably don't need the network-transparency of standard X to do what you're doing, because there are better ways of getting it done now.
35 • @32 Agreed, sorta (by DavidEF on 2013-10-14 15:39:42 GMT from United States)
I really like this statement, and wish more people would keep it in mind always:
>>>>A community is a conflict of interest and defending your own interests is not necessarily being "evil". <<<<
I do believe that good and evil are part of everything in this world, to some degree. People are not robots. We do sometimes make decisions with "love, hatred, good and evil" rather than always from a logical standpoint. But, it would be better if we tried more often to be less emotional and instead "...analyse each one's interests in order to design a reasonable strategy..."
I'm also looking forward to seeing the second Hobbit movie. Is it really coming out this Christmas? I haven't been paying attention.
36 • Mir (by Rev_Don on 2013-10-14 16:08:22 GMT from United States)
My only problem with MIR is that while it does give more "choice" to users, it fractures the community even more than it already is, and to me that is one of the biggest problems with Linux as a whole. It's too divided with all too many people feeling the need for more choice. The divisiveness and fracturing leads to less and less stability which in turns holds Linux back. How many times does an update to one program cause another to stop functioning. What Linux needs is LESS fracturing and a few standards in key places to provide a SOLID and STABLE platform from which to build. Three display servers (X, Mir, and Wayland) is simply too many in a key position. At least that's how I see, but I'm from the I just want Linux to work so I can use it to do something constructive, not just to play around with.
The other problem I see with MIR at the present time is this is the last Interim release prior to the next LTS release. No one in their right mind could possibly think that including a completely untested display server into an LTS release would be a good idea. Canonical may be a lot of things, but I can't see them being that stupid/foolish, although they have done some pretty stupic and foolish things in the past. So that would mean pushing MIR back to 14.10 a year from now with the earliest implementation in an LTS release on 16.04, or 2 1/2 years from now. Neither option seems particularly good to me, and I doubt either is what they would want.
At least that is how I see it. Your mileage may differ.
37 • RE 31 device names (by dbrion on 2013-10-14 16:52:25 GMT from France)
" I usually use df -h to see them, and space remaining. "
Well, youi bet they have been (auto)-mounted.
Jesse Smith 's solution does not make this assumption (I use both commands,
dmesg if I plug in a USB _device_ -arduino, serial USB adapter, not meant for _storage_ -,
df -{k,h} for already mountd _disks_ , and
sudo fdisk -l # for _disks_ which might want to be mounted).
38 • Mir and the importance of context (by Onuca Victore Doefil on 2013-10-14 16:55:13 GMT from Mexico)
Hello Jesse.
I think your approach in all the Mir controversy is a little displaced. Maybe to evaluate a new distro is a good idea to keep everything else out, but the bigger problems around Mir are not software-realated or userview-related.
I've been following this situation from an anthropologic curiosity viewpoint and I must say the main problem with Mir is not Mir itself but the way Canonical introduced Mir to the world. When Mir was introduced for the first time, it was not as kindly as you write. Canonical claimed Wayland was under a slow development pase and it was impossible for it to do things already was doing. This was really unwelcomed by the Wayland community for various reasons including false and dismissing statements and critics for developing an alternative software by months before making it public (this evolved in a now-really-kind list of reasons to not using Wayland).
Long story short, the context in this case is really important because it was Canonical who started the flames, they might have tried to be polite, but didn't manage to. After that, came critics about CLA assimetry, divided efforts and hard-set schedule, etc. Until now, Mir is not doing anything Wayland can't do, but maybe because the convergence strategy. I hoped Ubuntu Edge success, and I hope Mir success, nevertheless. I just criticize the way Canonical intrduced Mir.
39 • Is Unity starting to be usable? (by fernbap on 2013-10-14 17:00:25 GMT from Portugal)
Recently, i decided to take a look at Unity and Gnome 3. Installed Ubuntu beta and Ubuntu Gnome and upgraded it to Gnome 3.8 to take a look at eventual new features.
Ubuntu beta worked well from the start on my hardware. As i decided to give Unity a second chance, I "played" with it for a few days, after, of course, getting rid of that silly scroll-overlay.
I have to admit the result was mostly positive. The major flaws i found on it are basically its gnome 3 inheritance, the largest of them all being the dumbed down Nautilus. I continue to find preposterous a file manager that doesn't display the space available, requiring me to start another app ion order to know wether there is space to copy a file to a certain device or partition.
Ubuntu gnome had a few hickups at the start, probably due to the upgrade to 3.8. I can say that it is reasonably stable. I still don't like gnome 3 the same way i did when it came out, even i installed a system menu.
As a counterpart, I installed Mint 15 Cinnamon. Lem, of course, forked Nautilus and presents on Mint a file manager that gives the user what he needs.
Mint, obviously, won on all accounts, but i must say that all 3 were equally sluggish on my hardware, because they all work on top of Gnome 3.
What surprised me is that Unity went a long way. Very polished, as everything coming from Canonical, and once you use it for a while it starts being usable.
I could work with Unity, i still would never work with Gnome 3. Gnome 3 continues in the bottom of the pile.
40 • Ubuntu /mir (by Jon on 2013-10-14 17:43:14 GMT from United States)
I was wondering if the complaint of mir in the Linux community and the refusal by Intel to help maintain coding is a sign that Ubuntu is on its way to being the next windows
41 • Wayland 1.3 (by MZ on 2013-10-14 18:23:59 GMT from United States)
Wayland 1.3 is out and it has improved touch support and improved support for some Android devices:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2013-October/011419.html
I'm still fairly skeptical about Mir, and from what little I can tell Wayland might have as much potential on smart phones as Mir. Wayland is also more compatible with other operating systems like BSD due to using MIT license. I keep hoping to see better hardware support in PC-BSD, but if the open Unix community keeps getting divided this may be less likely to happen.
@27
Wayland can do anything X can because it can run X. This was an intentional design choice by the developers who wanted backward compatibility.
42 • Why? (by LinuxMan on 2013-10-14 18:34:58 GMT from United States)
#33 said, "It might be a good idea for a writer to have a passing acquaintance with computer programming before writing an entire article about how the open source community should be more receptive to MIR."
Why? It has nothing to do with computer programming. He was just stating that the hostility directed toward Canonical over MIR was unfounded. He is correct. He is not asking the open source community to be receptive to MIR, he's just wondering why some of the community, not all, is so hostile to anything that Canonical does. Not all of Canonical's efforts have been successful, with the community that is. The Amazon search is one of the items I don't like, but I will not judge MIR until I've tried the final version.
43 • @5 (by jaws222 on 2013-10-14 19:05:26 GMT from United States)
I hear you with OpenSuse. The 11 series was a nightmare for me. I had issues with Network manager and on two ocassions updates hosed my installs so I gave up. Then when OpenSuse 12 (12.2 to be specific) rolled out I gave it another shot and it has been nothing but reliable. I run the Gnome desktop on it and it works like a charm. I have not yet tried the 13 RC but will wait for 13 to become official and give it a go.
44 • @25 (by Jeff on 2013-10-14 19:08:33 GMT from United States)
The main thing about it is that Ubuntu/Canonical is seen as a bunch of freeloaders for taking and not giving anything in return.
This is seen as selfish as well as greedy and therefore evil.
45 • @15 (by jaws222 on 2013-10-14 19:09:48 GMT from United States)
"It's Linux...if you don't like it don't use it (support it, donate to it, code for it, etc). Use Debian or something/anything else."
Debian. Yes, that's the ticket:)
46 • 36, 37 (by octathlon on 2013-10-14 19:12:03 GMT from United States)
@36 I hope they don't try to introduce Mir in the LTS 14.04. I like Ubuntu (underneath -- I prefer to use an alternate DE) and I hope to be able to upgrade to 14.04 with no issues. They can go ahead and use Mir for the "phone", but take the time to make sure it's right before putting it on the desktop. Though by that time others may already be moving to Wayland.
@37 Good point, you are right of course. I also use fdisk -l if the volume has not been mounted.
47 • The right to not choose Mir (by KimTjik on 2013-10-14 19:17:14 GMT from Sweden)
While I can respect the viewpoint of Jess I think it ignores a just as justified freedom. The freedom to not choose to use or support. Why should Intel or any other part with interest in Linux have to support Mir? It's not like Intel is refusing support for Linux.
48 • Fragmentation (by t on 2013-10-14 19:40:15 GMT from United States)
As someone opposed to Mir, my major problem with it is simply that it is going to create more work for developers trying to get things working on GNU/Linux. It's not inherently bad, and I think if it came at another time, it would be great. But both projects are just starting to get going. I would be a lot less opposed it they, say, forked Wayland and chose to go a different direction while maintaining driver compatibility with the main Wayland branch.
49 • @44 (by fernbap on 2013-10-14 20:14:58 GMT from Portugal)
"The main thing about it is that Ubuntu/Canonical is seen as a bunch of freeloaders for taking and not giving anything in return."
Jeff, i don't know wether that is your opinion or you are just quoting, but in any case that is just wrong. Linux us not just the kernel, and most distros contribute nothi9ng to kernel development.
Canonical doesn't give back? really? Besides being probably at least the second company that most invested in Linux, Canonical gave us Ubuntu, the base for most of the distros advertized in here. Is that not giving back? Or do you think that Ubuntu is just a Debian respin?
And, of course, Canonical gave us, besides the best gnome 2 experience, Unity and will give us Mir.
Linux is about choice. Don't like it, don't use it. I have heard this phrase ad nauseum here.
Except when the choice is offered by Canonical, it seems...
Personally, i think this is just what it ever is: developpers feeling their ego bruised.
50 • @49 (by jaws222 on 2013-10-14 20:20:53 GMT from United States)
"And, of course, Canonical gave us, besides the best gnome 2 experience, Unity and will give us Mir."
You're really not comparing Unity to Gnome 2, are you? Unity, imo is usable but I'm sue if you ask people their favorite DE's Unity would rank near the bottom.
51 • @50 (by fernbap on 2013-10-14 20:22:08 GMT from Portugal)
You're really not comparing Unity to Gnome 2, are you?
Of course not. See my own post above.
52 • Slow Week (by Gee on 2013-10-14 21:13:36 GMT from United States)
Sparky Linux LXDE looks promising, have not finished testing a 64 bit install.
Watt OS looks good too, I want to try Watt OS microwatt and see how it fares on low power non pae systems.
I'm holding off on BSD to see if the dual booting, partition mounting and network sharing issues are resolved.
I'm also having the same issue with the latest Archpup along with update dependency issues. It really needs a puppy package manager.
The Raspberry Pi picture frame software sounds interesting, I wonder if it will run on a Chumby.
53 • RE: 28 Advertorial (by ladislav on 2013-10-14 23:44:13 GMT from Taiwan)
The links in the news section were affiliate links and the ads in the sidebar had identical links - hence advert met editorial.
Those "affiliate links" and "ads in the sidebar" provided absolutely no financial benefit to this website (and would have not provided any even if the crowdfunding succeeded). The "affiliate link" merely gave me access to statistics on clicks and contributions to the Ubuntu Edge campaign, that's all. The reason I placed the "ads" in the sidebar was that I liked the Ubuntu Edge idea and hoped it would succeed. (As a matter of fact, I had already purchased an Ubuntu Edge phone for myself at that time.) If anything, DistroWatch actually lost money on this because the Ubuntu Edge "ad" replaced a real income-generating ad.
Please do not look for evil where there is none. I periodically receive requests from companies that want us to write a product review in exchange for a payment, but I've always declined such requests. The Ubuntu Edge story was NOT an advertorial in any sense of the word and your repeated accusations won't change that fact.
54 • Mir vs Wayland vs UEFI (by denflen on 2013-10-15 03:25:31 GMT from United States)
I know, this weeks DistroWatch editorial stirred up the masses, and that was the plan. And I have enjoyed all the opinions, both positive and negative, about Canonical. But with absolute dismay, I can't believe the split in the Linux community is this deep while the UEFI situation has hardly created a stir. We (Open Sourcers) are from the same tree, and need to not fight over graphics drivers while in the mean time, the real problem to Linux's future is UEFI. Can't we all just get along and fight the real enemy?
55 • Re.: #54 - Mir and UEFI (by Anon on 2013-10-15 05:27:54 GMT from Norway)
Yes, I agree that UEFI is a worrisome menace, but there is little we linuxers can do about it except _trying_ to adapt. Mir is a different proposition altogether, coming from an unhelpful company which shuns being associated with Linux whenever possible. Enough said.
56 • Resenting Mir (by Arkanabar on 2013-10-15 06:06:14 GMT from United States)
I think corneliu (#20) has nailed it. People resent the development of Mir because they want those resources used for other projects. To them, I say:
Tough.
Canonical is spending their own time and money. They do it to benefit themselves and their investors. Anything we freeloading users (which would include Clem and the entire Mint community, including myself, and everyone else using any sort of Ubuntu spin and/or the Ubuntu repos) get out of it is a positive externality. They do not owe it to us to work on what we want. They only owe people those things which they are contractually or legally obliged to provide. They don't owe us X or Wayland development, or submission of their kernel patches upstream. Their users can do it, if those patches are of any use to Linus and his developers. If Mir can't do what Shuttleworth & co want, they'll have to drop it. If Wayland gets far enough ahead of Mir, they may (again) have to drop it.
57 • RE 56 (by dbrion on 2013-10-15 07:56:26 GMT from France)
"Canonical is spending their own time and money. "
What about Intel? (I bet they do not rob banks)
I suppose Intel benefits themselves , their investors and the outside freeloading world by (among other things)
a) supporting the Linux kernel (what about ... Conical?)
b) supporting X and Wayland (which, if it is backward compatible with X, would allow people not to port and loose time) (what about ... Conical?)
c) giving to everyone who is interested OCV -open computer vision-, an OS (**and* hardware**) agnostic -shipped with Fedora, Debian, Rapsbian {BTW, RPi does not have Intel processors) AFAIK; is Windows ported- library for image processing and recognition -it is a popular topic-. What about ...Conical? Do they contribute to popular, working, interesting(I mean "not replacing something existing, which is at best redundant") pieces of software?
Maybe Intel keeps its shareholders and buyers happy by carefully choosing which projects they will help and which ones they wonot help.
58 • what? (by Ulf on 2013-10-15 08:12:30 GMT from Netherlands)
What is the problem here?
Babbling about MIR, Wayland, Gnome (2/3), unity.
Really?
Do you yourself consider to be an real Linux user, or just a windows retard trying to use something else?
Linux is about freedom of choice!
Dont like Unity, wayland, mir ore what ever for that matter, dont use it.
You can Always remove it from youre favorite distro and compille something that does the job for you.
If you dont know howe to do it, or dont want to use another type of distro, Linux isnt for you.
Than you clearly missed the message whats Linux is all about.
The greatest about Linux is that you can pic a kernel of choice and build youre own distro arround it as you see fit.
Orstart whit Linux from scratch/ slackware ore Debian and make it to youre liking ore needs.
Stop being negative and pointing fingers, really get into Linux and do something about it yourself.
Thats really freedom of choice.
Dont like it please buy a copy of windows, and be happy about it.
Regards Ulf.
Happy Compiling!
59 • Some history (by silent on 2013-10-15 08:31:37 GMT from France)
Around 1991 there were BSD, Minix and the Hurd in the open source world. Someone came up with an idea of a new operating system instead adding his resources to the development of one of the already existing three systems above. What a shame. Nevertheless, he received a warm welcome and lots of support from the Minix team, although he favored a monolithic kernel instead of a microkernel. Now, this is an old story. Does anyone know what happened to the guy and his operating system? Has he failed miserably? Was it just a commercial interest?
60 • Beggars are not choosers RE: (was) Mir (by Mirix on 2013-10-15 09:56:07 GMT from Belgium)
There is one thing that still seems not to be clear enough: We have free software but we do not have free hardware (ok, there is some, but little). This fact, together with the fact that the most relevant hardware production is essentially monopolistic/oligopolistic, implies that we are not free at all to choose. When it comes to hardware, we have to adapt and choices are rather narrow.
So again, which display server will survive will not depend on user's preferences but on corporate strategies. It does not matter which one is best. They will choose it and we will adapt, as usual. That is all our "freedom".
If Intel, AMD and Nvidia go for Wayland it will survive and Mir will fail (or vice-versa). It does not matter whether the other is technically superior or whether the "community" like it more. It is not for us to decide. That "freedom" is not ours.
In my opinion, Wayland is a better option for Intel, AMD and Nvidia because: 1.- It is "backwards" compatible with X; 2.- Some of them have already invested some time on it; and, more importantly, 3.- It is not directly controlled by an external company (it is, for the most, a community-driven project).
From the perspective of the corporations, backing Mir would imply empowering Canonical.The question is, do they really want giving that power to another company? Ok, right now it is not a direct competitor (and, most likely, it will never be), but what happens if in the future one of its rivals acquire Canonical?
From the perspective of the community, backing Mir would imply leaving one of the most crucial part of a modern operating system entirely in the hands of a private company. All right, in principle, they cannot close the source or anything like that, but what they can do and they will do is orientating the development in the way that best suits their own interests (not ours)...
61 • @60 Why are you having a problem understanding this? (by DavidEF on 2013-10-15 10:27:54 GMT from United States)
Hardware vendors DO NOT decide what software we develop or use. If you think they do, go back and read the linux/free software history. Yes, there are times when vendors will go out of their way to make their junk so proprietary that it could never work without their secret sauce. But that is their stupidity. They're adding extra work to themselves for no real benefit. And usually, we just move on and say "doorstop - do not use" or something like that. But if you really take the time to look around, those are the exceptions.
Yes, we have always had challenging hardware, and yes, we always will. But, we usually get through it and move on. And if it ever got to the point that the video chip manufacturers all got together and black-balled Mir, or Wayland, or standard X, then a determined maintainer could still get around that issue, because free software is insanely flexible. So, the hardware vendors will not dictate to us what software we want to use, although they may at times cut their own hardware sales by locking it up with some proprietary stupidity. Hardware vendors control hardware, not software. Remember that Mir and Wayland and X are not drivers, they are display protocols. They are not tied to any specific hardware.
62 • @57 dbrion (by DavidEF on 2013-10-15 10:34:13 GMT from United States)
What in the world are you talking about? Why should I care that Canonical don't contribute to the kernel? They scratch their own itch, and contribute in ways that help themselves AND US! You think that an entity has to contribute to the kernel in order to be a good "linux ecosystem" citizen? As it has already been said, that would cut a lot of others out too. What is really your specific problem with Canonical? Why do they get picked on and everyone else gets a free pass?
63 • Some more questions -in lower case- to 62 (by dbrion on 2013-10-15 11:03:53 GMT from France)
Well, there are many very useful entities such as my vegetables seller, my cloth manufacturer who do not contribute to the kernel (and they do not claim to be in the GNUlinux world) Conical does not claim to sell vegetables/manufacture shoes, does it?
And I would really be glad to know what Conical did in their domain of -maybe- competency....
And Intel supplied a free (OS agnostic) , popular (for biometry, safety, embedded GNUlinux on cars- with cheap cams,help them to avoid obstacles - )computer vision library (has windows, installers, *.deb, *rpm). Why did you
*********
forget
********
this question ? Because you thought I was a Conical hater? It was rather an intersting Intel contribution, hinting they can choose interesting technical projects?
I ask again the question:
what about Conical??
Is there **one** interesting library they built and I can find in, say, my FC17/19?
Which one? (I want facts about
"ways that help themselves AND US!"
BTW you can give links to these _facts_ in normal case, that would not harm and make the distinction between a credo and objective , easy to verify -if they exist, it is not that complicated- facts)
NB: by "interesting" I mean 'really useful and innovative, not a third version of a wheel nobody wants -as it is not even backward compatible-"
64 • @62 (by Mirix on 2013-10-15 11:52:00 GMT from Belgium)
Last message: I try to describe what I see. I might one to switch to BSD, for instance, but I would be hampered by the fact that I could not do number crunching on GPUs, for instance (or maybe I could, but I having been able to find out how). So I have to stick to Linux. It is not my decision. Nvidia decides for me. This is just an example. In some computers I can choose to use Nouveau (which is one of the most remarkable free-software efforts that have happened lately), but I need the proprietary driver for work. With Windows, you can use a GeForce card for 3D display (which I use for work), with Linux you need a Quadro. Again, it is not my decision. I talk about the GPU because it is one of the greatest issues I have found with Linux (and very related to the Mir topic) but I could provide many other examples on how we cannot choose, we just adapt (in the best case scenario). Those are the facts.
65 • What? (by LinuxMan on 2013-10-15 13:05:29 GMT from United States)
@47, Read the comment #42 for correction.
@40, That makes no sense what so ever and people has been saying that for 10 years. lol
@55, Enough said? You didn't say anything helpful or anything with a grain of truth in it. All you did was make yourself look really bad.
@63, I believe that a little upper case is warranted. Your comments are very, well let's just say, strange. You need to clam down and stop babbling. And by the way, who is Conical? :)
As far as Intel, Amd, or Nvidia deciding anything for us, they don't and contrary to what some here say, they are not great friends to Linux except it seems to be changing for Amd. To say that MIR is bad because Intel said they won't support it is just illogical at best. When you stop or change development of open source projects because of what the hardware companies say then you have lost your freedom to really do anything and are just along for the ride.
66 • Mir (by Bernhard "bero" Rosenkränzer on 2013-10-15 13:33:11 GMT from Switzerland)
I dislike Ubuntu and its various spin-off distributions, and while I can't say I hate them, I surely distrust Canonical.
However, I think Mir could actually become something great.
Finally, someone dares to introduce C++ constructs into a core part of the OS instead of relying on obfuscated, easy to write bad code with, replacements that try to add object constructs on top of plain C (such as GObject) rather than just making use of some C++ constructs (I'm essentially thinking "C with classes and better type checking" here, I'm no fan of pushing the STL and crazy design ideas like "everything should be a template" to the core OS) that exist, are standard, easy to use, and not that easy to use incorrectly.
(Chances are this is actually why Mir is received so negatively in parts of the community - some people are scared people will realize how useless GObject and friends are if you just stop doing things in a language not designed for it).
We will definitely investigate Mir as an option in OpenMandriva. (We will obviously also investigate Wayland and keep X as well).
67 • re @65 (by corneliu on 2013-10-15 13:51:23 GMT from Canada)
This is just a guess, but I think dbrion misspelled it. He meant Comical. On a second thought, maybe he was referring to pointy heads? Not sure.
And to answer a previous question about Ubuntu's areas of competence, there is one area where Canonical excels: advertising.
68 • @58 (by jaws222 on 2013-10-15 14:11:53 GMT from United States)
"Dont like Unity, wayland, mir ore what ever for that matter, dont use it."
Exactly! I started on Ubuntu/Mint but do not like the direction they are taking so I went to Debian. Debian just works better for me. The only Ubuntu-like distro that I really like is Bodhi (LXLE is okay too). I've recently discovered Manjaro and Arch and am liking that. Also, PCLinuxOS is pretty cool too. FREEDOM OF CHOICE!!!!!!
69 • Pointy heads? (by LinuxMan on 2013-10-15 14:21:39 GMT from United States)
@67, Okay, now I get it, Coneheads! :)
70 • That's Wise (by LinuxMan on 2013-10-15 14:34:06 GMT from United States)
@67, I forgot to mention that it's very important for any business to excel in advertising. A good advertising department can mean life or death to any type of business.
@68, Have you tried elementary OS? It's very good and I use it on one of my laptops.
71 • re 68 Freedom of choice (by corneliu on 2013-10-15 16:03:27 GMT from Canada)
Stop yelling with your caps locked and your six exclamation marks, no less. What are you, a six year old brat throwing a temper tantrum?
I hear everywhere about freedom of choice. That's great. But what if your choice has an impact on your neighbor? Or your neighbor's choice has an impact on you? If the guy next to you decides to use a highly polluting car, does that affect you? The guy has freedom of choice after all. If you think that the answer is "yes" then you should be careful when you choose your technology, especially when you are part of a community.
72 • Thoughts on Mir --comment (by marc on 2013-10-15 16:03:59 GMT from United States)
Bravo! Very well written!
As a Linux "pro" for over 15 years, my thoughts exactly: "When we have choices we all win" as a community of open source developers, supporters, and users of open source software.
Our strength, as a community, is in our diversity AND the openness by which we encourage creativity, i.e., "scratching a new itch," whether in totally new directions, or incremental improvements --we all win AND the open source code-base wins, too.
I, too, support Canonical's development efforts / new approach to display server technology. As you said (paraphrased), perhaps it will win big, or provide code that will be the base for yet another display server approach.
The open source community, in my view, must be careful NOT to embrace the "one size fits all approach" of the closed source venders, who seek "vender lock-in" to drive "end user adoption," hence sales revenue for their product lines. That is one software development model that requires "monetizing the code-base". The open source community suffers from NONE of those pitfalls!
The rationale that we, the open source developer community, are fragmented by embracing creativity AND taking the time, energy to do so, suggests that we are a static, fixed resource, which is untrue. The open source development community is dynamic, with developers and projects entering, morphing, exiting development efforts, and forking new directions, etc., at any given time --We are as dynamic as human creativity is dynamic --not static, not fixed.
Let us not allow a closed-source mentality to creep into our community --the world has never seen the level of cross-border, cross-culture, cross-industry, cross-EVERYTHING shared cooperation that we, the open source community, have brought to software development. It's about the competition of IDEAS, not of people (personallies), nor of people as "resources". Let closed-source software development companies, with Human Resource departments, firmly entrenched in that development model (and the associated costs) view people as resourced to be "allocated" across project selected by cost-benefits analysis and projected revenue models..
New ideas in that environment will only get a development allocation IF they can project sales revenue greater than the cost of development AND will be under pressure for an early (buggy) release in order to "get the product into the market" to start generating a revenue stream, as soon as possible, in order to offset development carrying costs, i.e., NOT when the code is ready for prime time.
The open source development community does not function that way, nor, again, are we "static". "fixed" in a "resource allocation" sense, such that, the implication being, if more that one approach to a problem, new idea is underway, that resources are being wastefully allocated, and hence the community "output" worse off by some measure --that's a closed-source, fixed resource allocation model mindset (sorry for the buzz words there) that, in my view, the open source community must not fall into thinking.
Creativity, enthusiasm for new approaches, improvements upon existing approaches, forks in new directions, and because someone or a group of people just think it would be FUN, interesting to DO / code --we don't need a resource allocation projection, or for that matter, a sales revenue project to justify applying our time, energy, creativity, etc.!!
Anybody got a COOL idea?? Go for it!! and may we all, as the open source community of end users, supporters, developers support and encourage you in your efforts!! We may all learn something new in the process AS new peer reviewed code is presented openly (without digital rights management legislation!!) for our collective benefit!! And that's how human potential is leveraged in the present to improve a shared future!!
Glad you took the "week off from reviewing distros" to share you views! --marc :-)
PS Please pardon the lengthy reply :-)
73 • RE 65 (by dbrion on 2013-10-15 17:17:12 GMT from France)
"And by the way, who is Conical? :)"
Well, I answered to @62, who is the natural receiver (and obviously understood : ask for translation if this was not a "rhetorical" question)
"To say that MIR is bad because Intel said they won't support it is just illogical at best "
A better logical way would be ...to wait and see what becomes without Intel support (already supports X, Wayland : maybe they will become "great linux friends" if they support another 30{0}+ successors of X? I assume there are, in Linux manhoodland, standards - untold, of course - for being "great friends to Linux").
Is it logical to say that, because Co{n,m}ical decided to develop a new, redundant wheel, it would be better than the existing one(s) ? (the assumption new == good is too simple for me).
And I am still wondering which are Ubulinux area of competence (may be there are, but show them to me : I saw Ubu powered PCs at my friends', and they were not better than my FC17/19 PC). Intel contributed compilers, libraries - opencv is popular, - to users (on every OS). What about Conical?
74 • @71 (by jaws222 on 2013-10-15 17:57:50 GMT from United States)
???. I put 3 words in caps and am not throwing a temper tantrum Obama. I'm just reiterating the fact that there are other alternatives. I guess it would be wiser to take those alternatives away and sign up under the Affordable Linus Act.
75 • Choose and difference? (by Ulf on 2013-10-15 18:26:03 GMT from Netherlands)
what on earth are we talking about here?
Is there a diference between Mac osx, Linux, windows, bsd, dos, to name a few???
No there is no diference other than looks.
No more no les.
On every system i mentioned above,
i can write a letter, fiew foto`s, make a film, burn dvd`s, make it suitable for a buisinness environment, or critical operations, like a nuclear powerplant, or spaceship.
And above all, i and yourself can make it run on every piece of hardware you like or have laying arround.
So i really dont nderstand the point here, about display managers and hardware vendors, and whom is giving the other party money to make or develop something.
Look arround see something you like and use it, hardware or software,(better to have both LOL) and get the damn work done.
In the end that is allthat matters, do on the machine what you must at an affordable price.
end of discussion.
76 • re 75 (by corneliu on 2013-10-15 21:11:48 GMT from Canada)
Dear Ulf,
I can't speak for the rest of us here, I can only speak for myself. I am sorry if I caused you any discomfort, but apparently this week's topic is "Thoughts on Mir and the community" and I tried to stay on topic. Now, I have never noticed your last line ->
"end of discussion."
otherwise I would have never submitted this comment.
77 • Thoughts on Mir and the community (by win2linconvert on 2013-10-16 08:55:35 GMT from United States)
The most calm, and sensical coverage of Mir and Canonical I've come across from anyone in quite some time. Good job, and thanks.
78 • @75 • Choose and difference? (by Ron on 2013-10-16 15:44:42 GMT from United States)
"On every system i mentioned above,
i can write a letter, fiew foto`s, make a film, burn dvd`s, make it suitable for a buisinness environment, or critical operations, like a nuclear powerplant, or spaceship.
And above all, i and yourself can make it run on every piece of hardware you like or have laying arround"
Some systems have at the very heart of themselves the idea of extracting every bit of money they can. Other systems try to be as useful as they can to as many users as they can. Today you might be able to do everything you mention above, but tomorrow or any second you could be surprised to suddenly find an unwelcomed change. Suddenly what once worked well, no longer works without $$$$. Purposeful antipathy towards cooperation and serendipity.
I leave it to your imagination as to which system one would prefer.
79 • affordable linus act? (by death panels on 2013-10-17 07:25:46 GMT from United States)
@71
Did mean old Linus make you redistribute your code under his nasty GPL? Any real freedom lover knows that true freedom means licensing under BSD, so you have the freedom to let Apple take your code & do whatever they want with it. Then you can rest secure knowing that then new & improved apple version of what you gave away won't see the light of day until it is loaded on a new macbook & shipped over from a Chinese sweatshop. Or am I injecting random nonsense into the conversation?
80 • freedom (by greg on 2013-10-17 08:50:50 GMT from Slovenia)
problem with BSD code is that you are not obliged to give away source code for the product where this code was used. then again that is what freedom is about :-)
81 • Extremes, Freedom" (by Fairly Reticent on 2013-10-17 14:03:30 GMT from United States)
BSD freedom to donate, potentially to proprietary, vs. GPL freedom to donate to the community, vs proprietary freedom to suppress & extort.
These extremes certainly help to minimize production.
82 • @79,80 Haven't we been here before? (by DavidEF on 2013-10-17 14:04:04 GMT from United States)
Freedom certainly has as many definitions as there are people in the world. Let me say that what may mean freedom to one person may become oppression for the next. Thomas Paine once said "He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." What I take from that is that "true" freedom must always have boundaries. I cannot, and should not, have unbounded freedom, because that would mean that I could trample on yours. So, all that to say that the BSD license may speak freedom to the person who didn't write the code, yet wishes to lock it up as his own proprietary creation. Whereas, the GPL may speak freedom to the person who wishes for his code to always remain freely available for future generations to enjoy.
83 • @71@79@80@82 (by jaws222 on 2013-10-17 15:13:21 GMT from United States)
When I said freedom of choice I was referring to a previous post (@68) where he said "Dont like Unity, wayland, mir or what ever for that matter, dont use it." I chose to go another direction, Debian simply because I like it better. I wasn't trashing Ubuntu but rather embracing the fact that I did have a choice, whereas with Windows what you get is what you get.
84 • Mir and Ubuntu (by Ron Lankford on 2013-10-17 18:46:45 GMT from United States)
I thought your comments on Mir were well taken. It has been my opinion that Canonical has a lot of development pending that requires a replacement for X and perhaps they felt they couldn't wait on the Wayland development to proceed. There's nothing wrong with that. "Mir is open source" and can be used or not by whomever. Having a choice of possibly three display servers can only enhance open source software in the long run. Distrowatch lists almost 300 active distributions in its database. I don't feel that my distribution choices would be degraded if some used X or Wayland or Mir. Just the opposite.
For those who feel constrained by the possibility of display server proliferation I recommend they try the ever-wonderful INX distribution and decide if they really need a display server at all.
85 • @84 (by jaws222 on 2013-10-17 19:53:41 GMT from United States)
"For those who feel constrained by the possibility of display server proliferation I recommend they try the ever-wonderful INX distribution and decide if they really need a display server at all."
Now you're really making people work. :)
86 • A good week. (by LinuxMan on 2013-10-18 12:40:46 GMT from United States)
Well this week was a lot more lively than last week. Makes you wonder what's in store for next week. With the Ubuntu and friends releases I'm sure it will be interesting. :)
87 • EduBuntu (by Dave Postles on 2013-10-18 16:01:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
How about stripping out the Amazon icon/search?
88 • Read between the lines (by death panels on 2013-10-18 22:04:14 GMT from United States)
@ BSD comments
Or could the fact that I chose the name death panels indicate that I had some other kind of double meaning? I actually like the BSDs & use them for a few minor things, just not the desktop. It was meant to be random nonsense, but at least it was about software & not other random crap ;)
89 • Comment about Mir editorial. (by Finalzone on 2013-10-19 18:50:39 GMT from Canada)
I am afraid I see Jess Smith editorial nothing more than a PR for Mir. That display server has no reason to exist other than being controlled by Canonical who developed in secret for nearly nine month with is omitted in this essay. That move shows Canonical is desperate for profit since its creation back to 2004.
For those stating it is about choice, in the case of display, reaching a common ground without duplication is a better approach. Canonical haven't participated to Wayland development when they announced to use it. Without the hard works done by Wayland developers (essential X.org developers) during the five years of development, Mir would not exist. The editorial knows it.
Canonical started the battle by lying and misinforming the public about Wayland when they announced Mir leaving a much deeper scar that will take time to heal.
90 • Mir Wars: Ceasefire Unlikely (by kernelKurtz on 2013-10-19 20:51:17 GMT from United States)
https://plus.google.com/107555540696571114069/posts/76Nd9RSTZWp
I don't see "hush up and go code" being advice anyone will take, anytime soon. Also, it's essentially the Canonical party line: "Mark will continue to say any wild thing he likes; but the rest of you should be coding not commenting."
91 • re 90 Mir wars (by corneliu on 2013-10-20 12:25:47 GMT from Canada)
Very interesting. Thanks for the link.
Number of Comments: 91
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| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
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| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Issue 1104 (2025-01-13): DAT Linux 2.0, Silly things to do with a minimal computer, Budgie prepares Wayland only releases, SteamOS coming to third-party devices, Murena upgrades its base |
| • Issue 1103 (2025-01-06): elementary OS 8.0, filtering ads with Pi-hole, Debian testing its installer, Pop!_OS faces delays, Ubuntu Studio upgrades not working, Absolute discontinued |
| • Issue 1102 (2024-12-23): Best distros of 2024, changing a process name, Fedora to expand Btrfs support and releases Asahi Remix 41, openSUSE patches out security sandbox and donations from Bottles while ending support for Leap 15.5 |
| • Issue 1101 (2024-12-16): GhostBSD 24.10.1, sending attachments from the command line, openSUSE shows off GPU assignment tool, UBports publishes security update, Murena launches its first tablet, Xfce 4.20 released |
| • Issue 1100 (2024-12-09): Oreon 9.3, differences in speed, IPFire's new appliance, Fedora Asahi Remix gets new video drivers, openSUSE Leap Micro updated, Redox OS running Redox OS |
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Runtu
Runtu is a Russian desktop Linux distribution based on Ubuntu's LTS (long-term support) releases. It features full support for Russian and a variety of extra applications, tools and media codecs. There are two separate editions that are produced with a varying degree of frequency; the "Xfce" edition tend to get more attention while the "Lite" edition, featuring the LXDE desktop, is also released and updated from time to time.
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