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Graphics GUI Open Source Ubuntu Linux

Ex-Red Hat Employee Matthew Garrett Comments On the State of XMir 88

Posted by timothy from the no-longer-a-mir-trifle dept.
First time accepted submitter slack_justyb writes "Matthew Garrett, former employee of Red Hat, comments on the current state of XMir and Canonical's recent decision to not ship XMir as the default display server in Ubuntu 13.10. Noting the current issues outstanding in XMir, the features yet to be implemented, the security loopholes, and Intel's recent rejection to support Mir in general. All of this leading Garrett to the conclusion that 'It's clear that XMir has turned into a larger project than Canonical had originally anticipated, but that's hardly surprising.'"
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Ex-Red Hat Employee Matthew Garrett Comments On the State of XMir More

Ex-Red Hat Employee Matthew Garrett Comments On the State of XMir

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  • Poor Mattthew Garrett (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Still suffering from the butthurt he got when Ubuntu sided with Scott James Remnant over him in a technical dispute which then led to MG quitting like a petulant little bitch. Just like what happen when he was with Debian. Now he just takes to shitting on Canonical whenever he can. The fact is, Canonical is concentrating on getting Ubuntu Touch ready and with the technical difficulties with XMir, and made the prudent decision not to dump it as a default on the Ubuntu user base.

    BTW, the while he may not work

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Totally agree. ...and Fedora isn't known at all for dumping not-ready-for-prime time tech on its user base.

      Next up: Lennart Poettering on his brand new X server replacement. Oh yes, its totally ready to go....

    • Re:Poor Mattthew Garrett (Score:5, Insightful)

      by segedunum ( 883035 ) on Thursday October 03, 2013 @10:41AM (#45025621)
      I never liked him ever since I saw the way he started outright glorifying 'Secure Boot' and how there would be no problem with Microsoft being gatekeeper.

      As for Mir, forking away is not a great thing to see but Canonical have the right to do it.

    • BTW, the while he may not work for Red Hat, he's still on the fedora advisory board. Can somebody say "conflict of interest"?

      conflict of interest

      are you happy now?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'm glad we can just attack the messenger, and ignore the message.

      • Garrett's blog posts are an equal split between insight-sharing and attention-whoring, yet the free software press keeps focusing on the latter.

    • I seriously doubt that exchange ever got him fired for anything. He is known for being vocal about the people around him. If there was anything he was being vocal about that might have forced him to quit Red Hat, it would have been him calling Ted Ts'o a rape apologist [dreamwidth.org]. But the truth of the matter is that MG left of his own will to go work for Nebula [dreamwidth.org] to advise on their Open Stack solution.

      Now it is true that he still sits on the Fedora board, and you have a point about maybe just maybe, that influences hi

    • Where is the "conflict of interest"? I was unaware that he had influence and stood to gain financially from XMir and a competing product. Could you point me to the links, or do you not know what the term means?

    • Re:Poor Mattthew Garrett (Score:5, Informative)

      by mjg59 ( 864833 ) on Thursday October 03, 2013 @11:43AM (#45026327) Homepage

      I stopped working on Ubuntu because decisions were increasingly being made internally rather than anywhere that volunteer contributors could influence them. The "Click here to instantly break your mouse" thing was just the final straw. There's a component to the story that involves beer and a hilarious reply vs. reply all error on an iPhone, but I don't remember it being about anyone siding with Scott - there's a picture somewhere of me deactivating my Ubuntu membership a few minutes after sending https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2008-February/025141.html [ubuntu.com] , which hardly gave them time to.

    • I don't see where is he "shitting" on Canonical. It's obvious that he has done quite a lot of research before writing it (he has actually read the code), and he is pretty neutral about Canonical, he is just points outs facts. It's a good post.

      Which makes me think that it's you who is butthurt, and the one shitting on other people. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't read the post before writing your comment.

  • "Ubuntu Phone" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aardvarkjoe ( 156801 ) on Thursday October 03, 2013 @10:28AM (#45025477)

    FTFA:

    Mir could have done the same, but doesn't because of a conscious design decision - in the Ubuntu Phone world, clients stop doing things when they're told to. Ubuntu Desktop is expected to behave the same way.

    So they're letting design decisions for their phone interface dictate how they implement their desktop interface. It's the same stupidity that the Gnome developers are engaged in. A desktop is not "just another kind of phone," and if you treat your primary users as second-class citizens, they'll all jump ship.

    • So they're letting design decisions for their phone interface dictate how they implement their desktop interface.

      You mean Ubuntu is about to adopt Metro?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by div_2n ( 525075 )

      Canonical is making the gamble that the future of Linux desktop computing as a major platform, if there is one, will be in the mobile space via convergence (i.e. use your phone as a desktop on occasion by hooking it to a keyboard/mouse/monitor). If they can pull off a great phone experience that offers a compelling Android/iPhone alternative, it's a win for them. Even if not a single user decides to use it as a desktop and only as a phone, it's a win for them. It will offer Canonical a potentially sizable r

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        I think it would be very useful if I could stuff a phone or tablet into a dock and suddenly I have a full blown desktop. I think Microsoft and Ubuntu are far better placed to deliver this than either Apple or Google are although technically there is no reason that stops any of them doing it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by krammit ( 540755 )
      This is about the behavior of the display server, not the user interface. So no, this has nothing to do with using a unified interface for different form factors.

      Deep breath. Exhale.

      You're welcome.

      • This is about the behavior of the display server, not the user interface. So no, this has nothing to do with using a unified interface for different form factors.

        Hm. Let's see what Ubuntu says:

        The purpose of Mir is to enable the development of the next generation Unity. (http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mir [ubuntu.com])

        From the very beginning, Unity's concepts were tailored with a converged world in mind... (http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnityNextSpec [ubuntu.com])

        The purpose of Mir is to support their "converged interface." They are making design decisions of the display server based on the design requirements of their mobile interface, ignoring the existing desktop interface.

    • if you treat your primary users as second-class citizens, they'll all jump ship.

      There are more phone users than desktop users. So maybe it's worth declaring them primary.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I don't think Ubuntu has more phone users than desktop users.

  • the woes of XMir (Score:4, Informative)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Thursday October 03, 2013 @10:55AM (#45025769)

    It's still missing features

    XMir doesn't support colour profiles. XRandR properties aren't exposed, so there's no way to control TV output encoding or overscan. There's still no hardware cursor support. Switching to XMir now would reduce functionality without providing any user-visible gain.

    no hardware cursor support? talk about a dealbreaker!

  • We are cycling around a wheel of and racing to reinvention. All of Canonical's efforts could have been paired up with Wayland to make a one-size-fits-all display server and it probably would have been finished and ready to deploy by this point. It's opposition like Mir that is stagnating much needed innovation. I imagine Canonical's thoughts going something like "Oh, since Wayland isn't moving fast enough - even though it's been in development for years - we'll just make our own, from scratch." If they didn

  • It's clear that XMir has turned into a larger project than Canonical had originally anticipated, but that's hardly surprising.

    Isn't "something you didn't anticipate" almost the defintion of "a surprise"?

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