Mir, the next generation of X

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>

| Well at this point Ubuntu is the only user left of upstart as far as
| I know, and no one else cares.  They are the only user of Unity, and
| no one else wants to touch it.  Not sure why they think this will make
| anyone care either.

I've not paid close attention over the years.

My impression was that upstart was a reasonable attempt at cleaning up
the System V initscript system.  Upstart was probably an improvement.
But the key requirement for it to improve the world was the long-term
process of getting everyone to buy in and use it.  Red Hat did, for a
while.  I take that as an indication that upstart wasn't horrible.

systemd is probably better (my guess), but it is large and has a lot
of moving parts.  Not my favourite state of affairs.

Now: what else has Canonical created that others were able/willing to
adopt?  All I can think of is Simple Scan.  I find it a mixed
blessing: it makes scanning a lot simpler but it crashes a lot (on
Ubuntu and Fedora).  And it's not new -- there's no excuse.  The
controls could be better too, but that's a matter of taste.

Oh, who wrote Simple Scan?  Apparently Robert Ancell based on the PPA
(<Robert Ancell>).  He's the Mir project leader.

Other than that, Canonical is mostly a free-rider.  Which is fine.
Except that Shuttleworth talks as if it is otherwise.

I read this old series about Unity vs GNOME.  A long read.  It shows
to me that Suttleworth is a politician and a salesman -- he talks
slickly but inaccurately.  Perhaps like Steve Jobs: with a reality
distortion field.  It might be a good thing but I'm allergic.
<http://bethesignal.org/blog/2011/03/12/thoughts-on-gnome/>

The creation of Mir seems very similar.  The reasons put forward in
the Mir Spec <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MirSpec> seem wrong, confusing,
or unconvincing.

I've enjoyed having Ubuntu as a choice up until now.  I suspect it is
going to be less useful to me in the future.  I will miss Mythbuntu.
But the sky hasn't fallen yet.
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists