Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Felipe Sateler]

On 11/09/2010 11:48 AM, Camaleón wrote:

> If I were an Ubuntu user I wouldn't like to be treated as "guinea-pig" :-)

If you were an Ubuntu user you would already be ;)

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Felipe Sateler



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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Sven Hoexter]

On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 11:54:17PM +0100, Jochen Schulz wrote:
> Sven Hoexter:

Hi,

> > There've been times in the past when Debian was the playground to
> > introduce new cool technology.
> 
> When was that the case? I use Debian since potato and I never had this
> impression. But I might have missed that particular image in the first
> one or two years.

I think there are areas where Debian still is a playground for new
or at least non mainstream technology.
See e.g. the kfreebsd, Hurd or even Minix 3 porting efforts. There is
also ongoing support for new hardware architectures and improvement for
existing once like armhf.

There are other things like the mime-support integration which as far
as I remember started around Debian. Or other helpful efforts like debconf.
I guess there's a lot more I just missed.


> > It's strange that nowdays people expect Debian to stay away from it.
> > It even reverts the upstream/downstream relationship with Ubuntu.
> 
> That's not true anymore for many packages. Ubuntu tried to make
> cutting-edge solutions usable by everyone almost from the start.

Well yes while Ubuntu and Fedora provides more recent software I don't
see why Debian should avoid to experiment with it?
Nobody claimed that wayland should be the default display server for the next
stable release. Even for Ubuntu I think Mark suggested to try it and see if
it works.


> I am unsure whether this is about manpower only. Debian's answer usually
> is "we just need someone to package it", but there's more to it.
> 
> People will probably name a lot of counterexamples, but my impression is
> that Debian is currently unable to push any big changes forward. Even
> "internals" like multiarch don't happen. Maybe package maintainers have
> too much power over their packages, maybe it's just too much
> bikeshedding or personal attacks. And one could probably argue that the
> decision making process isn't designed for big changes in the first
> place. I don't know.

Get involved and help.

[Maybe I should just have spent the time to participate in this thread
with packaging LyX 2. *sigh*]

Sven 
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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Jochen Schulz]

Sven Hoexter:
> On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 09:13:04PM +0100, Jochen Schulz wrote:
> 
>> But I tend to agree with what another poster said: Ubuntu may be the
>> right place to try things like this. Debian isn't, but it still may
>> profit from the experience. Without being a Ubuntu fanboy, I hope this
>> experiment won't damage their reputation.
> 
> There've been times in the past when Debian was the playground to
> introduce new cool technology.

When was that the case? I use Debian since potato and I never had this
impression. But I might have missed that particular image in the first
one or two years.

> It's strange that nowdays people expect Debian to stay away from it.
> It even reverts the upstream/downstream relationship with Ubuntu.

That's not true anymore for many packages. Ubuntu tried to make
cutting-edge solutions usable by everyone almost from the start.

> I'm not sure if I'd call that an improvement but it somehow
> demonstrates a lack of manpower in Debian because otherwise someone
> would've already packaged wayland for Debian.

I am unsure whether this is about manpower only. Debian's answer usually
is "we just need someone to package it", but there's more to it.

People will probably name a lot of counterexamples, but my impression is
that Debian is currently unable to push any big changes forward. Even
"internals" like multiarch don't happen. Maybe package maintainers have
too much power over their packages, maybe it's just too much
bikeshedding or personal attacks. And one could probably argue that the
decision making process isn't designed for big changes in the first
place. I don't know.

I think the best change since I-don't-know-when is the recently passed
GR concerning "non-packaging contributors". I hope it pulls in a lot of
people with a different point of view than the regular package
maintainer.

J.
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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Roger Leigh]

On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 09:48:12PM +0100, Sven Hoexter wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 09:13:04PM +0100, Jochen Schulz wrote:
> 
> > But I tend to agree with what another poster said: Ubuntu may be the
> > right place to try things like this. Debian isn't, but it still may
> > profit from the experience. Without being a Ubuntu fanboy, I hope this
> > experiment won't damage their reputation.
> 
> There've been times in the past when Debian was the playground to
> introduce new cool technology. It's strange that nowdays people expect
> Debian to stay away from it. It even reverts the upstream/downstream
> relationship with Ubuntu.

I do find this a bit of an odd attitude as well to be honest.  Debian
isn't, and shouldn't, be about blindly accepting and packaging stuff
from other people.  We also have a lot of talented developers, many
of whom are deeply involved with hundreds of upstream projects in
addition to Debian-specific projects.

While making Wayland the default right now is probably a bad move,
there's no reason why it can't be packaged and available in Debian
for people wanting to test it.

Ironically, Wayland is mainly a RedHat-funded project, which I do
wish all the best.  But it's yet another example of Ubuntu picking
up someone else's work and getting all the glory.  This time, they
may well be jumping the gun; how many people here have actually
used it?  It's likely not ready for prime-time just yet.  When it is,
I'm sure you'll see it in Debian.


Regards,
Roger

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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Nuno Magalhães]

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 20:48, Sven Hoexter  wrote:
> There've been times in the past when Debian was the playground to
> introduce new cool technology. It's strange that nowdays people expect
> Debian to stay away from it

Er... stable > testing > unstable > experimental means there's room
for both trends. Maybe it is a manpower thing, sadly.

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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Sven Hoexter]

On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 09:13:04PM +0100, Jochen Schulz wrote:

> But I tend to agree with what another poster said: Ubuntu may be the
> right place to try things like this. Debian isn't, but it still may
> profit from the experience. Without being a Ubuntu fanboy, I hope this
> experiment won't damage their reputation.

There've been times in the past when Debian was the playground to
introduce new cool technology. It's strange that nowdays people expect
Debian to stay away from it. It even reverts the upstream/downstream
relationship with Ubuntu. I'm not sure if I'd call that an improvement
but it somehow demonstrates a lack of manpower in Debian because otherwise
someone would've already packaged wayland for Debian.

As long as you've a choice I don't even see a problem with offering two
solutions for one problem.

Sven
-- 
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With a golden heart comes a rebel fist.
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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Petrus Validus]

> What are your opinions on the matter, will this have repercussions for  
> Debian? *Should* it?

Admittedly I don't know much about either, I had to do some reading
first.  I don't see it having any *immediate* effects on Debian as they
are two separate entities.

I tend to agree with the phrase, "newer isn't always better."  It's one
of the reasons why I use Debian.  From the limited reading and
screenshots I've seen I can say GNOME works just fine for me.
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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Jochen Schulz]

Camaleón:
> On Tue, 09 Nov 2010 16:55:09 +0100, Jochen Schulz wrote:
>> 
>> I am not an X window programmer (don't even know C), but my impression
>> is that X has quite a few design warts that many people would love to
>> get rid of. And you cannot really blame X for that, it's more than 25
>> years old and was designed at a time where GUIs were still quite
>> uncommon.
> 
> Yes, but people's wishes tend to go faster than developers achivements 
> and today there are many applications which depend/rely on Xorg/X11 and 
> porting them to play fine with another display system requires time (and 
> not just to play fine but to be stable and provinding the same 
> capabilities that currently are there). 

True. X11's age does not only make replacing it a better idea, but a
harder task, too. :)

>> I cannot judge whether Wayland is in any way better, though.
> 
> Me neither, but it is still at alpha stage (well, this is said from a 
> person -me- who still uses grub legacy because is robust, well-known and 
> mature). I mean, I'm a bit conservative :-)

I actually jumped on the grub2 bandwagon, but only because I needed one
of its features. (Cool thing: boot your BIOS update iso from disk and
flash it. :))

But I tend to agree with what another poster said: Ubuntu may be the
right place to try things like this. Debian isn't, but it still may
profit from the experience. Without being a Ubuntu fanboy, I hope this
experiment won't damage their reputation.

J.
-- 
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up leading the hypnotised.
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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Phil Requirements]

On 2010-11-09 07:53:19 -0600, Mark Allums wrote:
> On 11/9/2010 6:56 AM, Tom H wrote:
> >On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 7:19 AM, Camaleón  wrote:
> >>On Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:08:05 +0100, Klistvud wrote:
> >>>
> >>>As you probably know, Ubuntu is planning to replace X11 with the Wayland
> >>>Display Management System, and replace Gnome with Unity. X11 and Gnome
> >>
> >>I hope it's just an Ubuntu trend and not affecting/spreading to other
> >>distros>:-)
> >
> >Debian hasn't adopted upstart so why should it adopt unity? I'm sure
> >that it'll end up in the Debian repos for those of us who want to
> >try/use it. It would be fun (perverse, sadistic fun though!) to follow
> >any debian-devel thread started by someone proposing to make unity the
> >Debian default. :)
> >
> >So the stories about X being ripped out and replaced in Ubuntu
> >11.10/12.04/... might not be entirely accurate.
> >
> 
> With Ubuntu 10.04, and even more so with Meercat and now with this,
> it seems like Ubuntu has jumped on the crazy train.  I hope they
> don't get *too* far away from Debian, for dozens of reasons, but it
> might be interesting to see what happens.  In the meantime, I hope
> Debian remains stable and reliable.
> 

I like this phrasing, that Ubuntu "has jumped on the crazy train".  I
don't totally agree with that, but it really encapsulates a line of
thought.

A different idea is that Ubuntu is trying to be very forward-thinking,
because they want to be the Next Big Thing. I think they are looking
into the future and seeing: handheld computers, thin clients, cloud
computing, and whatever else is in their crystal ball.

For Ubuntu to thrive in the future, they need to be cool, modern,
slick, etc. Windows, Apple, and Google all are developing features to
make themselves the Next Big Thing. I think Ubuntu is looking around
the software landscape and trying to figure out what they can pick up
that will make themselves vital and modern. They want to "win" in the
popular imagination, and that will take some changes (according to their
crystal ball).


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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Mark Allums]

On 11/9/2010 7:53 AM, Mark Allums wrote:


The fly in the ointment [for Qubes OS] has been X.
[Invisible Things Lab]are adapting their GUI to isolate
X sessions. I don't know the exact way they are doing
this, but it looks like Wayland might hypothetically
serve some purpose in such a  setup.   [Wayland] still
soundsvery centralized, though, adhering to the
client/server model, so I hope that security isn't an
issue.



I wrote something like the above in a previous post as a tangential 
thought about Wayland; I wanted to clarify it some.  Feel free to ignore.


Back onto the off-topic subject:  If I had to guess, I'd say there 
aren't any short-term repercussions affecting Debian.  As others have 
pointed out, Ubuntu is Ubuntu, and Debian is Debian.  They are not 
Siamese twins, joined at the hip.  I wish them the best of luck, but for 
me it will be business as usual.



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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[B. Alexander]

I personally am not impressed with Unity. I think it looks and feels
too much like Moblin. It may be good for a netbook or other
screen-real-estate limited device (I'm not even sure on this point),
but a full-size desktop? Not thanks. I usually have multiple windows
open on multiple desktops, and having windows open and covering the
icons so I can't open more windows just does not fit my workflow. I
imagine opening a terminal and ending up with a single 1680x1050 xterm
devouring my screen. Worse, in a font that is large enough so that the
terminals size is still 80 columns by 16 lines and can be read by
someone 2 rooms away... :)

Having said all that, I have never used Unity. It may be the best
thing since the invention of the computer, but I don't think so.

Just my 2 cents.
--b

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 7:08 AM, Klistvud  wrote:
> Howdie, fellow Debianites!
>
> As you probably know, Ubuntu is planning to replace X11 with the Wayland
> Display Management System, and replace Gnome with Unity. X11 and Gnome will
> still be in the Ubuntu repos, at least initially, but they won't be the
> Ubuntu default anymore.
>
> What are your opinions on the matter, will this have repercussions for
> Debian? *Should* it?
>
> --
> Cheerio,
>
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> Certifiable Loonix User #481801      Please reply to the list, not to me.
>
>
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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Camaleón]

On Tue, 09 Nov 2010 16:55:09 +0100, Jochen Schulz wrote:

> Camaleón:
>> On Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:33:56 +0100, Michael Schmitt wrote:
>>> 2010/11/9 Camaleón
>>> 
>>> I myself would prefer to keep X11
>> 
>> I see not good technical reason for introducing the change. At least
>> not nowadays.
> 
> I am not an X window programmer (don't even know C), but my impression
> is that X has quite a few design warts that many people would love to
> get rid of. And you cannot really blame X for that, it's more than 25
> years old and was designed at a time where GUIs were still quite
> uncommon.

Yes, but people's wishes tend to go faster than developers achivements 
and today there are many applications which depend/rely on Xorg/X11 and 
porting them to play fine with another display system requires time (and 
not just to play fine but to be stable and provinding the same 
capabilities that currently are there). 
 
> I cannot judge whether Wayland is in any way better, though.

Me neither, but it is still at alpha stage (well, this is said from a 
person -me- who still uses grub legacy because is robust, well-known and 
mature). I mean, I'm a bit conservative :-)

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Jochen Schulz]

Camaleón:
> On Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:33:56 +0100, Michael Schmitt wrote:
>> 2010/11/9 Camaleón
>> 
>> I myself would prefer to keep X11
> 
> I see not good technical reason for introducing the change. At least not 
> nowadays.

I am not an X window programmer (don't even know C), but my impression
is that X has quite a few design warts that many people would love to
get rid of. And you cannot really blame X for that, it's more than
25 years old and was designed at a time where GUIs were still quite
uncommon.

I cannot judge whether Wayland is in any way better, though.

> And that is one of the reasons I always fear "business decisions" (we 
> should not forget that Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu) because 
> "business decisions" can be founded on market/marketing issues and not 
> technicalities and the latter are the only ones that should lead to these 
> kind of changes.

As a Debian user, you shouldn't forget political reasons as an important
impetus for change. ;-)

J.
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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Gregory Seidman]

On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 01:57:15PM +, Camale?n wrote:
[...]
> I see not good technical reason for introducing the change. At least not 
> nowadays.
> 
> And that is one of the reasons I always fear "business decisions" (we
> should not forget that Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu) because
> "business decisions" can be founded on market/marketing issues and not
> technicalities and the latter are the only ones that should lead to these
> kind of changes.

Don't be too down on them. Wayland and Unity might really be a good path
forward. It is a grand experiment that can only be executed wholeheartedly
by fiat, and Canonical is taking it on. We in Debian-land get to reap the
benefits of Ubuntu's experiment if they get it working well, but don't have
to deal with the upheaval until a lot of the kinks are smoothed out and
don't have to touch it at all if the experiment fails. I call it win-win
(and I also call it "better you than me").

> Greetings,
> Camale??n
--Greg


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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Gregory Seidman]

On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 07:53:19AM -0600, Mark Allums wrote:
[...]
> With Ubuntu 10.04, and even more so with Meercat and now with this, it  
> seems like Ubuntu has jumped on the crazy train.  I hope they don't get  
> *too* far away from Debian, for dozens of reasons, but it might be  
> interesting to see what happens.  In the meantime, I hope Debian remains  
> stable and reliable.
>
> I like GNOME and LXDE, and Unity doesn't particularly excite me. Perhaps 
> I've become stodgy.

There are three approaches to this sort of thing:

1) Everything I want and need I have. Maintain the status quo so I can use
   my tools instead of adapting to changes in them.

2) If it's new, I want to play with it, try it out, and improve it. Tried
   and true is great and all, but it can always be better.

3) I don't feel a pressing need for this new stuff, but if something
   compelling comes along that requires it, I could be convinced.

Most people fall into that third category. I'm one of them. I use an older
version of Vim because I want to stay on (mostly) stable. The features of
the newer versions aren't quite compelling enough to go through maintaining
a testing/unstable mix. A few more useful features (especially since I use
a newer Vim on Windows and Cygwin/X11 at work), though, and I might go for
it.

When and if an application comes along that only has a Wayland/Unity GUI
that a lot of people really, really want, there will be people interested
in making Wayland and Unity work, work well, and work seamlessly on Debian.
(I'm not certain, but I have a sneaky suspicion that a lot of the drive
behind making Java easier to install and manage on Debian was Azureus, and
the desire to silence the unending stream of questions about how to get
things working as a result.) Personally, I'll wait and see.

--Greg


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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Mark Allums]

On 11/9/2010 6:56 AM, Tom H wrote:

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 7:19 AM, Camaleón  wrote:

On Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:08:05 +0100, Klistvud wrote:


As you probably know, Ubuntu is planning to replace X11 with the Wayland
Display Management System, and replace Gnome with Unity. X11 and Gnome
will still be in the Ubuntu repos, at least initially, but they won't be
the Ubuntu default anymore.

What are your opinions on the matter, will this have repercussions for
Debian? *Should* it?


I hope it's just an Ubuntu trend and not affecting/spreading to other
distros>:-)


Re Unity:

Debian hasn't adopted upstart so why should it adopt unity? I'm sure
that it'll end up in the Debian repos for those of us who want to
try/use it. It would be fun (perverse, sadistic fun though!) to follow
any debian-devel thread started by someone proposing to make unity the
Debian default. :)

Re Wayland:


From a Wayland FAQ:



Why fork the X server?

It's not an X server and not a fork.  It's a minimal server that lets
clients communicate GEM buffers and information about updates to those
buffers to a compositor.

...

Is wayland replacing the X server?

It could replace X as the native Linux graphics server, but I'm sure X
will always be there on the side.  I imagine that Wayland and X will
coexist in two ways on a Linux desktop:

1. Wayland is a graphics multiplexer for a number of X servers.
Linux today typically only uses one X server for GDM and the user
session, but we'll probably see that move to a dedicated GDM X server,
an X server for user sessions (spawning more on the fly as more users
log in) and maybe a dedicated screensaver/unlock X server.  Right now
we rely on VT switching to move between X servers, and it's horrible.
We have no control over what the transitions look like and the VT
ioctls are pretty bad.  Wayland provides a solution here, in that it
can host several X servers as they push their root window to Wayland
as surfaces.  The compositor in this case will be a dedicated session
switcher that will cross-fade between X servers or spin them on a
cube.

2. Further down the road we run a user session natively under
Wayland with clients written for Wayland.  There will still (always)
be X applications to run, but we now run these under a root-less X
server that is itself a client of the Wayland server.  This will
inject the X windows into the Wayland session as native looking
clients.  The session Wayland server can run as a nested Wayland
server under the system Wayland server described above, maybe even
side by side with X sessions.

There's a number of intermediate steps, such as running the GNOME
screen saver as a native wayland client, for example, or running a
composited X desktop, where the compositor is a Wayland client,
pushing the composited desktop to Wayland.


So the stories about X being ripped out and replaced in Ubuntu
11.10/12.04/... might not be entirely accurate.





This post reminds me of Qubes OS by Invisible Things Lab.  The goal of 
Qubes is to take virtualization to the extreme by creating many small 
and light, fast-booting VMs for special purposes, e.g., special VMs just 
for web browsing, and even creating on-the-fly VMs called "disposable 
VMs".  All this is in the name of security. Qubes is a Linux-derived OS 
on top on Xen.


The fly in the ointment has been X.  They are adapting their GUI to 
isolate X sessions.  I don't know the exact way they are doing this, but 
it looks like Wayland might hypothetically serve some purpose in such a 
setup.  It still sounds very centralized, though, adhering to the 
client/server model, so I hope that security isn't an issue.


With Ubuntu 10.04, and even more so with Meercat and now with this, it 
seems like Ubuntu has jumped on the crazy train.  I hope they don't get 
*too* far away from Debian, for dozens of reasons, but it might be 
interesting to see what happens.  In the meantime, I hope Debian remains 
stable and reliable.


I like GNOME and LXDE, and Unity doesn't particularly excite me. 
Perhaps I've become stodgy.













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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Camaleón]

On Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:33:56 +0100, Michael Schmitt wrote:

> 2010/11/9 Camaleón
> 
>> On Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:08:05 +0100, Klistvud wrote:
>>
>> > What are your opinions on the matter, will this have repercussions
>> > for Debian? *Should* it?
>>
>> I hope it's just an Ubuntu trend and not affecting/spreading to other
>> distros >:-)

> is there an urgent and important reason for a replacement? pro and cons
> ?
> I myself would prefer to keep X11

I see not good technical reason for introducing the change. At least not 
nowadays.

And that is one of the reasons I always fear "business decisions" (we 
should not forget that Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu) because 
"business decisions" can be founded on market/marketing issues and not 
technicalities and the latter are the only ones that should lead to these 
kind of changes.

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Nuno Magalhães]

Eh, i misread Weyland Yutani.

In the long run it might be interesting to have Wayland and Xorg
together, especially with VMs involved, but for now it's just a pet
project. And Debian will always be Debian, regardless of its bastards.

My 2¢

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http://xkcd.com/801/
/etc


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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Camaleón]

On Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:08:05 +0100, Klistvud wrote:

> Howdie, fellow Debianites!
> 
> As you probably know, Ubuntu is planning to replace X11 with the Wayland
> Display Management System, and replace Gnome with Unity. X11 and Gnome
> will still be in the Ubuntu repos, at least initially, but they won't be
> the Ubuntu default anymore.
> 
> What are your opinions on the matter, will this have repercussions for
> Debian? *Should* it?

I hope it's just an Ubuntu trend and not affecting/spreading to other 
distros >:-)

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Nate Bargmann]

* On 2010 09 Nov 06:09 -0600, Klistvud wrote:
> Howdie, fellow Debianites!
> 
> As you probably know, Ubuntu is planning to replace X11 with the
> Wayland Display Management System, and replace Gnome with Unity. X11
> and Gnome will still be in the Ubuntu repos, at least initially, but
> they won't be the Ubuntu default anymore.
> 
> What are your opinions on the matter, will this have repercussions
> for Debian? *Should* it?

While there is a lot of cross pollination between Debian and Ubuntu,
they remain separate projects with differing goals.  Ubuntu using
Unity for its desktop shell will have no effect on Debian's default
desktop installation.  Unity will likely be available in the Debian
repos, assuming the licensing is compatible, of course.  I suspect the
same will be the case with Wayland.

I'm not going to join the shrill chorus rebuking Ubuntu/Canonical for
their decision.  I'm looking forward to how this will pan out as I think
there is room for some experimentation amongst distributions.

- Nate >>

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Tom H]

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 7:19 AM, Camaleón  wrote:
> On Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:08:05 +0100, Klistvud wrote:
>>
>> As you probably know, Ubuntu is planning to replace X11 with the Wayland
>> Display Management System, and replace Gnome with Unity. X11 and Gnome
>> will still be in the Ubuntu repos, at least initially, but they won't be
>> the Ubuntu default anymore.
>>
>> What are your opinions on the matter, will this have repercussions for
>> Debian? *Should* it?
>
> I hope it's just an Ubuntu trend and not affecting/spreading to other
> distros >:-)

Re Unity:

Debian hasn't adopted upstart so why should it adopt unity? I'm sure
that it'll end up in the Debian repos for those of us who want to
try/use it. It would be fun (perverse, sadistic fun though!) to follow
any debian-devel thread started by someone proposing to make unity the
Debian default. :)

Re Wayland:

>From a Wayland FAQ:


Why fork the X server?

It's not an X server and not a fork.  It's a minimal server that lets
clients communicate GEM buffers and information about updates to those
buffers to a compositor.

...

Is wayland replacing the X server?

It could replace X as the native Linux graphics server, but I'm sure X
will always be there on the side.  I imagine that Wayland and X will
coexist in two ways on a Linux desktop:

   1. Wayland is a graphics multiplexer for a number of X servers.
Linux today typically only uses one X server for GDM and the user
session, but we'll probably see that move to a dedicated GDM X server,
an X server for user sessions (spawning more on the fly as more users
log in) and maybe a dedicated screensaver/unlock X server.  Right now
we rely on VT switching to move between X servers, and it's horrible.
We have no control over what the transitions look like and the VT
ioctls are pretty bad.  Wayland provides a solution here, in that it
can host several X servers as they push their root window to Wayland
as surfaces.  The compositor in this case will be a dedicated session
switcher that will cross-fade between X servers or spin them on a
cube.

   2. Further down the road we run a user session natively under
Wayland with clients written for Wayland.  There will still (always)
be X applications to run, but we now run these under a root-less X
server that is itself a client of the Wayland server.  This will
inject the X windows into the Wayland session as native looking
clients.  The session Wayland server can run as a nested Wayland
server under the system Wayland server described above, maybe even
side by side with X sessions.

There's a number of intermediate steps, such as running the GNOME
screen saver as a native wayland client, for example, or running a
composited X desktop, where the compositor is a Wayland client,
pushing the composited desktop to Wayland.


So the stories about X being ripped out and replaced in Ubuntu
11.10/12.04/... might not be entirely accurate.


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Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Paul Cartwright]

On 11/09/2010 07:08 AM, Klistvud wrote:
> As you probably know, Ubuntu is planning to replace X11 with the
> Wayland Display Management System, and replace Gnome with Unity. X11
> and Gnome will still be in the Ubuntu repos, at least initially, but
> they won't be the Ubuntu default anymore.
>
> What are your opinions on the matter, will this have repercussions for
> Debian? *Should* it?
I just looked at this page, a review of sorts..
http://www.webupd8.org/2010/05/taking-ubuntu-unity-interface-for-test.html

doesn't sound like a good replacement for such a robust desktop as
gnome.. I personally like LXDE.. but it has problems also. For a Debian
Light version/Netbook, MAYBE.. but I don't have a netbook:)

-- 
Paul Cartwright
Registered Linux user # 367800 

Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Michael Schmitt]

is there an urgent and important reason for a replacement?
pro and cons ?
I myself would prefer to keep X11

2010/11/9 Camaleón 

> On Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:08:05 +0100, Klistvud wrote:
>
> > Howdie, fellow Debianites!
> >
> > As you probably know, Ubuntu is planning to replace X11 with the Wayland
> > Display Management System, and replace Gnome with Unity. X11 and Gnome
> > will still be in the Ubuntu repos, at least initially, but they won't be
> > the Ubuntu default anymore.
> >
> > What are your opinions on the matter, will this have repercussions for
> > Debian? *Should* it?
>
> I hope it's just an Ubuntu trend and not affecting/spreading to other
> distros >:-)
>
> Greetings,
>
> --
> Camaleón
>
>
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> listmas...@lists.debian.org
> Archive: http://lists.debian.org/pan.2010.11.09.12.19...@gmail.com
>
>

Re: Wayland & Unity -- any repercussions on Debian?

[Camaleón]

On Tue, 09 Nov 2010 09:18:45 -0500, Gregory Seidman wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 09, 2010 at 01:57:15PM +, Camale?n wrote: [...]
>> I see not good technical reason for introducing the change. At least
>> not nowadays.
>> 
>> And that is one of the reasons I always fear "business decisions" (we
>> should not forget that Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu) because
>> "business decisions" can be founded on market/marketing issues and not
>> technicalities and the latter are the only ones that should lead to
>> these kind of changes.
> 
> Don't be too down on them. Wayland and Unity might really be a good path
> forward. It is a grand experiment that can only be executed
> wholeheartedly by fiat, and Canonical is taking it on. We in Debian-land
> get to reap the benefits of Ubuntu's experiment if they get it working
> well, but don't have to deal with the upheaval until a lot of the kinks
> are smoothed out and don't have to touch it at all if the experiment
> fails. I call it win-win (and I also call it "better you than me").

If I were an Ubuntu user I wouldn't like to be treated as "guinea-pig" :-)

Experiments are fine... for development releases and provided they are 
being incorporated in a logical timeframe (6 months is not what I take 
for "logical timeframe").

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón


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