Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) Makes a First Appearance 179
srimadman writes "The Alpha 1 Release of Ubuntu 11.04, often known as 'Natty Narwhal,' is intended as a developer snapshot of the next major Ubuntu version, which is due in April."
So, if you want to try Unity and Wayland before your neighbors do, this is the time.
Re:I'm sorry (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Natty uses Wayland? (Score:3, Insightful)
And they would be reimplementing large portions of X's job by doing so. So instead of a known common protocol that is consistent with a few implementation problems, you have a whole new untested drawing system that is GTK specific too... great.
Re:Ah man... (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot: We'll nit-pick the funny out of any joke.
Re:Natty uses Wayland? (Score:3, Insightful)
After suffering X for years, then using a Unix that uses another windowing system while still allowing for X compatibility, all I can say is that this is a very good move on Canonical's part. At least in terms of their motivations. Execution is very important and remains to be seen.
X11 is the single worst thing about Linux systems. They've got a great kernel, great filesystems, great command line shells, great non-GUI scripting tools, great non-GUI libraries all hobbled by an ancient windowing system and sometimes not completely awful window managers.
When you keep things simple, X can be alright. It's kind of like DOS. If you don't get too fancy, it's simple and solid. It's great for some tasks, but not something that belongs on the desktop. If the term "this is the year of Linux on the desktop" is going to ever be said out of anything other than irony/sarcasm or delusion, some distro is going to have to replace X with something better.
Re:Natty uses Wayland? (Score:4, Insightful)
The known protocol is decades old, the people that originally wrote them is retired or dead or too old to work hard on it full time like a 20-30something.
FTP is decades old, and the original spec developers are likely reaching retiring age, same with tcp/ip v4, so should we drop all of that too? this argument is silly.
2)This code is so complex, and very very difficult to maintain.
With a project of this size and with this much use, there is constant adaptation going on to new circumstances (3d graphics cards etc) after the new functionality is stable it all tends to get cleaned up. X of today is not the X of 20 years ago, maintainers aren't masochists they do do cleanups etc.
3)The X system is not designed for current desktops, 3d graphic cards, low latency and personal computers, it is designed for mainframes, corporate, boring stuff, making Linux obsolete compared to MacOSX, iOS, or Windows 7 that redesigned their graphic systems.
Bullshit, the fundamentals of drawing have not changed at all, whether 3d acceleration is used for rendering or not is an implementation detail not a flaw with the protocol itself. If you can explain how the fundamentals of drawing things to a screen are different for professional use as opposed to home use, I'd like to hear it.
Again by your logic everything should be reimplemented every five years just because even if it works perfectly reinventing it would make it 'more awesome' this is idiotic.
Re:Natty uses Wayland? (Score:5, Insightful)
FTP is decades old, and the original spec developers are likely reaching retiring age, same with tcp/ip v4, so should we drop all of that too?
You could not have picked worse examples to prove your point.