Xubuntu Saucy on Mir/XMir

Sun Aug 4 22:29:36 UTC 2013

On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 11:14 AM, Thomas Voß <thomas.voss at canonical.com> wrote:
> Hey Elizabeth,
>
> sorry for the long delay, we were quite busy fixing a lot of issues
> encountered by the first wave of testers :-)
>
> However, most of the issues you were reporting should be fixed by now
> and giving Mir a spin according to:
>
>   http://unity.ubuntu.com/mir/installing_prebuilt_on_pc.html
>
> definitely makes sense. Please let me know if you encounter any issues.

When Mir hit 0.0.8 we decided to launch a broader round of testing,
today we worked to collate all the major results that are currently
blockers for us.

Rather than a meeting at this point, we're looking for remarks
addressing some of the following issues. In general we understand that
the code needs to land soon for archive inclusion and that Beta Freeze
is at the end of the month. We are coming up on a decision-making
point on August 22nd where we need to decide whether or not this
technology is ready for our users.

And a few questions about the following results: Are these results
atypical?  What, in your view, is going to be the minimum hardware
platform that can be supported by XMir at this point in time?  Antique
hardware is generally not in use as far as we understand it though if
our definition of such differs from your own we need to resolve that
quickly. Is there anything we are we doing that is perhaps suboptimal?
 Do you have any recommendations to improve the ability to boot
Xubuntu using XMir?  Have you reviewed the ISO image one of our
community members has created to make things easier for our testers
(http://vanir.unit193.tk/mir/) and have any remarks as to changes you
would make in producing an image on your own?

We look forward to engaging in dialogue via e-mail as this is a
complex matter that most likely cannot be resolved in a single IRC
meeting or Google Hangout.

tl;dr list of bugs/issues:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/mir/+bug/1208242
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/plymouth/+bug/1198741
https://bugs.launchpad.net/mir/+bug/1208250
Multi-monitor support is poor

Full version of issues with details:

ISSUE 1: Works, but jumpy on text being typed, a bit slow and all text
from session writes to console

VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
Wrestler [Radeon HD 6320]:

XMir starts up, screen flickers and is laggy on events like changing
workspaces and tab-changing application windows - often showing
previous application for a moment. In xfce4-terminal it prints
characters and then will delete them and show them again, when
shutting down the text I typed in my session shows up in the console
during shutdown (including paswords!) video of all here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfroweheIEU

A lot of reports were like this:

Laptop - ATI Mobility™ Radeon® HD 5870 - Useable, text input is very laggy.

AMD Athlon2 X2, Radeon HD 4200 integrated graphic card: too much lag
when typing. Otherwise, display (fonts, icons, etc.), sound and mouse
behavior are perfect.

Ati mobility Radeon 4000 family. Hp g42 notebook: At one point when i
pressed a letter it printed on the screen only when the next was
pressed. Same with back space and space. Everything else seems
allright (only 5 min testing)

Jumpy text bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mir/+bug/1208242

Someone already reported the all-text-typed-in-console issue:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/plymouth/+bug/1198741

ISSUE 2: Poor multi-monitor support

NVIDIA Corporation GF119 [GeForce GT 520] (rev a1)
dual monitors where mirrored by default
i see no option to change its mode, http://i.imgur.com/yHSAH2F.png

Note: Multiple monitor setups are very important to many Xubuntu
users.  This is considered a fundamental issue to one of our
developers as to whether or not we can successfully deploy XMir.

It has been reported that the multimonitor setting has not been merged
to any mir session yet. (
http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2013/08/03/%23ubuntu-mir.html#t17:14 )

ISSUE 3: Does not work at all

Netbook had a string of apport failures on getting to desktop.  It
booted but was useless.
Hardware described here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/skellat/netbook-profile

Podcast production platform tested with newest ISO resulted in this
on-screen image of uselessness using this hardware profile:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/skellat/audiobox-profile - Video of the whole
boot process: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q1AdXsJj5E

Other reports had similar fragmented screen errors, making it unusable:

Intel Mobile Corp Mobile 4 series: http://imagebin.org/266445

PC - GF GT 240 graphics card: http://lderan.co.uk/xmir.jpg

Based on feedback so far, it seems at least 50% of the casual testing
reports we're getting thus far are left in this position of having it
be completely unusable.  The machines are unusable to the point that
cameras pointed at screens are the only way we can gather data as we
cannot harvest logs.

Bug here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mir/+bug/1208250

-- 
Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph || Lyz || pleia2
http://www.princessleia.com