non-Unity flavours and Mir

[Steve Langasek]

Hi Julien,

On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 11:37:50PM +0200, Julien Lavergne wrote:
> 2013/6/18 Jeremy Bicha <jbicha at ubuntu.com>:
> > On 18 June 2013 02:00, Aigars Mahinovs <aigarius at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Based solely on comments from this thread, as far as I understand, both
> >> Ubuntu and KDE will maintain the ability to work with X for the foreseeable
> >> timeframe, so this more of a question on which happens first - Ubuntu
> >> stopping support for X based desktop environments (unlikely to be very soon,
> >> given the popularity of XFCE and friends) or KWin dropping X support in
> >> favour of Wayland-only solution (also unlikely to be quite soon given how
> >> many distros are not shipping Wayland by default yet).

> >> There might theoretically be new features that work on Mir (or Wayland), but
> >> not on X, but those are likely to be minor and more related to boot and/or
> >> user switching rather than actual work.

> > I think you're mixing up two different concepts: support for running X
> > apps and support for running X as the system display server. As I
> > mentioned before, my guess is that GNOME will only work with Wayland
> > as system display server within a year or two. Similarly, I expect
> > Unity to only work with Mir as the system display server for either
> > 14.04 LTS or 14.10. Developers are not switching to Mir or Wayland for
> > theoretical minor features, but to finally move past long-standing
> > issues with the X stack that impact users.

> > Obviously everyone will still support running legacy X apps for at
> > least the next few years.

> Speaking for Lubuntu, this point is my first concern before even
> thinking about migration to MIR or Wayland : what will be the support
> and Canonical support for X in the next releases ? For example, is X
> will be maintained in 14.04 as a LTS component ? Are other flavors can
> count on it to build a LTS version for 14.04 ? I can't imagine an LTS
> for at least Xubuntu (and all Xfce based flavors) and Lubuntu without
> a LTS support for this critical piece of the OS.

The established Ubuntu desktop is composed entirely of software that talks
to X.  While some of this software may "easily" migrate to Mir by way of
toolkit support, I think there's no question that Canonical will need to
support X - specifically, X on top of Mir - for quite some time to come.

So in the 14.04 time frame, I think it's a safe bet that Lubuntu will have
options for continuing to run on top of a supported X server.  Mir may not
give you anything new that you care about in Lubuntu, but Mir+XMir should
still provide a reasonable, stable, supported display platform for you.

The problems for Kubuntu, AIUI, have more to do with what happens when
Canonical supports X on top of Mir, and KDE stops supporting either X or
Mir.  I suspect this isn't going to be a problem for Lubuntu in the near
future?

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/attachments/20130620/7ffe6c64/attachment.pgp>