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Intel and XMir

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 20:59 UTC (Thu) by maxiaojun (guest, #91482)
In reply to: Intel and XMir by robclark
Parent article: Intel and XMir

> But it may surprise you there is no corporate agenda as such behind this. There was no memo telling us what to think about mir (or systemd or gnome-shell or ... in fact there are outspoken RH employees on both sides of the systemd and gnome-shell debates.). It is just that RH see the benefit of a healthy upstream and making contributions to upstream projects.

The problem is that, well, even if RH doesn't have consensus internally, as you mentioned, an external entity, e.g., Canonical, would be bashed by many people if they do not follow the direction of systemd and/or gnome-shell.

As a matter of fact, Lennart explicitly called Canonical to adopt systemd on Google+. If it is even OK within RH to dislike systemd, what's wrong with Canonical if they decide to keep UpStart around for some time?

> no, that doesn't actually follow

Yes, it doesn't follow in strict logical sense. However, after observing numerous breakage caused by GTK+ and so on, after some very bad experience about PyGTK, I'd conclude that the "open source atomsphere" does contribute to the loose API/ABI stability we are experiencing today.


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Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 21:15 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (18 responses)

Because Upstart is inferior to systemd. Ubuntu users suffer for it.

XMir is another inferior solution.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 21:25 UTC (Thu) by maxiaojun (guest, #91482) [Link] (17 responses)

Because systemd is inferior to Upstart. Fedora users suffer for it.

Wayland is another inferior solution.

If you thought that only your claim is right, then explain again what is free software.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 21:30 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (11 responses)

Nope. SystemD is technically superior (just look at unit files vs. upstart init files) and has more features. Decision to create SystemD was technical-driven.

Mir is inferior to Wayland (still), though it's quickly gaining new functionality.

And what's worse, the decision to start Mir was purely political. There are absolutely no technical reasons for Ubuntu _not_ to use Wayland.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 21:46 UTC (Thu) by maxiaojun (guest, #91482) [Link] (7 responses)

> Nope. SystemD is technically superior (just look at unit files vs. upstart init files) and has more features. Decision to create SystemD was technical-driven.
> Mir is inferior to Wayland (still), though it's quickly gaining new functionality.

Having more features doesn't mean superior.
Otherwise I may able to claim that KDE is superior to GNOME.

Moreover, I once noticed that yum/zypper is probably superior to APT. Should we give up APT and switch, then?

> And what's worse, the decision to start Mir was purely political. There are absolutely no technical reasons for Ubuntu _not_ to use Wayland.

Probably true. But given the obvious hostility showed by Intel this time, I find that political concerns, if any, are justified.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 21:50 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (6 responses)

> Having more features doesn't mean superior.
It is, if those features make common tasks less complicated.

> Moreover, I once noticed that yum/zypper is probably superior to APT. Should we give up APT and switch, then?
It's definitely not completely superior. And once something better comes and the switch is not too complicated, then yes we should switch.

> Probably true. But given the obvious hostility showed by Intel this time, I find that political concerns, if any, are justified.
Intel's hostility is mostly reaction to Ubuntu's.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 22:04 UTC (Thu) by maxiaojun (guest, #91482) [Link] (5 responses)

> It is, if those features make common tasks less complicated.

So, how do you measure complexity?

> Intel's hostility is mostly reaction to Ubuntu's.

If not picking some free software is hostility, then free software is a misnomer of fascist software.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 22:52 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (4 responses)

>So, how do you measure complexity?
Lines of code to implement certain functionality and chances to make a mistake.

> If not picking some free software is hostility, then free software is a misnomer of fascist software.
Creating a technically pointless local fork is hostility and one of the major reasons for fragmentation.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 23:20 UTC (Thu) by maxiaojun (guest, #91482) [Link] (3 responses)

> Lines of code to implement certain functionality and chances to make a mistake.

Oh, then it is even better to use Windows Server, where it generally requires 0 line of code to do things have 0 chance of making a mistake.

> Creating a technically pointless local fork is hostility and one of the major reasons for fragmentation.

I find that it is quite meaningful, after encountering so many hostile, fascist people like you.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 23:23 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

For servers? Nope, Windows Server requires quite a bit of configuration (just look at service installation). So my comparison holds.

SystemD _is_ easier to use than Upstart, especially with its JournalD integration.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 23:33 UTC (Thu) by maxiaojun (guest, #91482) [Link] (1 responses)

> For servers? Nope, Windows Server requires quite a bit of configuration (just look at service installation). So my comparison holds.

Yes, you are always 100% correct.

> SystemD _is_ easier to use than Upstart, especially with its JournalD integration.

A straight search of "JournalD" gives me this: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=168524
Something works for you doesn't necessarily works for other people (especially true in Linux eco-system as software configurations are way too many)

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 23:41 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> A straight search of "JournalD" gives me this: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=168524
Something works for you doesn't necessarily works for other people (especially true in Linux eco-system as software configurations are way too many)

You do realize that that link actually contradicts your assertion? The actual problem is another piece of software (ie nepomuk) either had corrupted data files or said files weren't compatible from one version to the next, and was continually (and rapidly) crashing and restarting itself. Journald, being the system logger, did its job and logged each and every occurance.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 19, 2013 5:04 UTC (Thu) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link] (2 responses)

Your arguments against Mir sound like they could have equally been leveled against systemd when it was started: that its changes could have been integrated into Upstart (that most major distros were either using at the time or evaluating).

Instead, they continued work as a new project and ended up with a product that you apparently like a lot.

Is it really that difficult to give Mir the same courtesy, and accept that its reasons for existence might not just be political?

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 19, 2013 5:13 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

No. Systemd from the very beginning had features that would have required complete re-architecting of upstart. And it had been considered at that time, btw.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 19, 2013 5:36 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

" Is it really that difficult to give Mir the same courtesy, and accept that its reasons for existence might not just be political?"

That comparison weakens your plea

http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/why.html explains why systemd was started and has the technical details of how the architecture is different and really the inverse of upstart and they still talked to upstart developers before developing an alternative.

If there are similar technical reasons for Mir or if Mir developers talked to Wayland and tried collaborating, feel free to provide pointers.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 23:32 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] (4 responses)

As drag put it already:
> juxtaposing words around in a juvenile manner isn't a way you win a arguments or convince people of your position.
So please just stfu.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 23:37 UTC (Thu) by maxiaojun (guest, #91482) [Link] (3 responses)

As drag put it already:
> juxtaposing words around in a juvenile manner isn't a way you win a arguments or convince people of your position.

Yes, only Fedora fascist can call Ubuntu inferior, not other way around.
Yes, only systemd fascist can call Upstart inferior, not other way around.
Yes, only Wayland fascist can call Mir inferior, not other way around.

> So please just stfu.

Obvious troll obvious.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 14, 2013 23:29 UTC (Sat) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (2 responses)

The real, important question is: does this post count for 3, or is there a maximum of 1 Godwin point you can get per post?

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 15, 2013 17:14 UTC (Sun) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

I always thought Godwin posts implicated the all sub-threads and, to some extent, its parents (and more specifically, the user). The question I would like to know: what percentage of Godwin sub-threads get back on track[1]? Is it permanently tainted or is there some hope?

[1]This is a meta-discussion, so it probably doesn't count here.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 16, 2013 22:24 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Please stop that, I just laughed so loud I woke up my neighbour. :)

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 21:34 UTC (Thu) by robclark (subscriber, #74945) [Link] (2 responses)

>> But it may surprise you there is no corporate agenda as such behind this. There was no memo telling us what to think about mir (or systemd or gnome-shell or ... in fact there are outspoken RH employees on both sides of the systemd and gnome-shell debates.). It is just that RH see the benefit of a healthy upstream and making contributions to upstream projects.

> The problem is that, well, even if RH doesn't have consensus internally, as you mentioned, an external entity, e.g., Canonical, would be bashed by many people if they do not follow the direction of systemd and/or gnome-shell.

well, I'd phrase it a different way, ie. that RH gives a lot of freedom to employees that work on upstream projects (and really, that RH employs a lot of people who are very passionate about open source and upstream). I guess when you have a lot of people with passion and strong opinions (in and outside of RH), there may be some bashing. Don't take it too seriously.

> As a matter of fact, Lennart explicitly called Canonical to adopt systemd on Google+. If it is even OK within RH to dislike systemd, what's wrong with Canonical if they decide to keep UpStart around for some time?

I don't see any particular big problem if canonical keeps upstart.

But otoh, upstart doesn't really have a big impact on graphics stack and toolkits, so it is an area that doesn't cause as much fragmentation of effort for the linux desktop and graphics drivers. Maybe I take this more seriously because I'm a graphics driver developer... but graphics drivers are an area where we are seriously outnumbered by our closed source counterparts, and seriously understaffed. So needless fragmentation in this area is a bad thing.

>> no, that doesn't actually follow

>Yes, it doesn't follow in strict logical sense. However, after observing numerous breakage caused by GTK+ and so on, after some very bad experience about PyGTK, I'd conclude that the "open source atomsphere" does contribute to the loose API/ABI stability we are experiencing today.

Hmm, maybe a matter of bad experience with a particular project. I would say that the linux kernel has an "open source atmosphere" and it has some of the most rigorous ABI stability requirements (when it comes to userspace/kernel ABI). And likewise, the client<->xserver protocol ABI is very rigorously maintained. And the wayland crew is taking the same approach with wayland protocol.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 12, 2013 23:04 UTC (Thu) by maxiaojun (guest, #91482) [Link] (1 responses)

> Maybe I take this more seriously because I'm a graphics driver developer... but graphics drivers are an area where we are seriously outnumbered by our closed source counterparts, and seriously understaffed.

Yes, indeed.

> So needless fragmentation in this area is a bad thing.

This is unrelated. Fragmentation gonna happen when there is conflict interest. And people have right to have conflict interest.

> Hmm, maybe a matter of bad experience with a particular project. I would say that the linux kernel has an "open source atmosphere" and it has some of the most rigorous ABI stability requirements (when it comes to userspace/kernel ABI). And likewise, the client<->xserver protocol ABI is very rigorously maintained. And the wayland crew is taking the same approach with wayland protocol.

Without GTK+ and so, many interesting stuff won't build.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 13, 2013 0:10 UTC (Fri) by robclark (subscriber, #74945) [Link]

>> So needless fragmentation in this area is a bad thing.

> This is unrelated. Fragmentation gonna happen when there is conflict interest. And people have right to have conflict interest.

yeah, perhaps I put it badly.. one aspect of open source / free software is the freedom to take it and try something different.

But, when that something different is something that touches many different projects which make up the (in this case, graphics) stack, you have no right to demand that those various upstream projects shoulder the burden of maintaining your changes.

And fwiw, I'd have the same negative opinion if, for example, some distro wanted to fork a different core piece of the linux ecosystem, like the kernel (cough, cough, android.. although at least in the android case there are some vaguely valid technical reasons)

>> Hmm, maybe a matter of bad experience with a particular project. I would say that the linux kernel has an "open source atmosphere" and it has some of the most rigorous ABI stability requirements (when it comes to userspace/kernel ABI). And likewise, the client<->xserver protocol ABI is very rigorously maintained. And the wayland crew is taking the same approach with wayland protocol.

> Without GTK+ and so, many interesting stuff won't build.

Ok, I guess I am missing the point you are trying to make here. But I'm not really getting the connection between "open source atmosphere" meaning that projects must have no respect for ABI compatibility (or really what has to do with this topic at all). Maybe certain projects have a problem, I'm not really involved w/ gtk+ so I don't really know the details in this particular case.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 13, 2013 0:25 UTC (Fri) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link] (13 responses)

GTK+ 2.x was ABI-stable (as well as API-stable, obviously) for 9 years. Nine. Including major releases adding features and new capabilities.

That's two years longer than the period between the initial release of Windows XP, and the release of its last service pack.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 16, 2013 9:23 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (9 responses)

And probably is the reason why so many projects used GTK+ when targeting Linux.

Windows, on the other hand, still supports the same ABI and API since Windows 95. That's 18 years, and still counting.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 16, 2013 16:53 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (8 responses)

No, windows doesn't. They changed things so a lot of programs that were written for windows 95 no longer work and need to be updated.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 17, 2013 7:09 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (7 responses)

I do routinely run binaries that I compiled for Win32 like 15 years ago. None of my early GTK+ (1.2) binaries runs today. Most don't even compile any more. That's sad.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 17, 2013 10:26 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

I have had a number of programs that were written for Win 95/98 that stopped working with newer versions of windows until they were updated.

i also have some very old binaries on some of my Linux systems that are still working today. Some of those are graphical apps that were written for motif (although admittedly, most are command line apps)

The fact that you are having problems with GTK+ 1.2 apps has more to say about the GTK developers than Linux overall.

You will not find me defending the backwards compatibility of Desktop Environment developers, and the fact that Gnome2 and Gnome3 could not both be insalled on the same system is a perfect example of the problem (and far from the only one, it's not limited to Gnome)

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 17, 2013 12:09 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (4 responses)

I doubt they fail to run or compile due to GTK-1.2 errors specifically, because the GTK folks are pretty good about backwards compatibility within a major API series and explicitly encourage parallel library installations.

That said, I know Fedora (and presumably others) stopped shipping GTK-1.2 libraries by default several years ago because there's nothing in the standard install sets that uses GTK-1.2 any more. It's still available via yum for those that want/need it.

So, I'm genuinely curious as to what you are trying to run/build, and if you checked that the libraries/headers are indeed installed, and if that build error is indeed due to GTK.

And on a tangental note, I've found that Linux (via Wine) often provides better backwards compatibility for older/ancient Windows software than modern Windows does, especially for stuff written during the years of massive DirectX API churn.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 17, 2013 13:16 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (3 responses)

> So, I'm genuinely curious as to what you are trying to run/build, and if you checked that the libraries/headers are indeed installed, and if that build error is indeed due to GTK.

My own tools I wrote back in the day, while learning GTK+. GTK+ 1.x has not been available in Ubuntu for a long time (don't know about others), so no headers and no libraries here. Unless I compile my own, something I'm was not very inclined to do.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 17, 2013 13:35 UTC (Tue) by peter-b (subscriber, #66996) [Link]

GTK+ 1.2 libraries are still in Fedora, fortunately!

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 17, 2013 15:02 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (1 responses)

Ubuntu doesn't ship dillo, the best browser ever? Heresy!

Intel and XMir

Posted Oct 1, 2013 12:38 UTC (Tue) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]

Ubuntu ships Dillo 3.x, which uses FLTK, which is available in Ubuntu.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 19, 2013 17:33 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

And I have a bunch of programs that were sold certified for XP, and now won't even install on Win7.

Cheers,
Wol

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 19, 2013 5:24 UTC (Thu) by freetard (guest, #92836) [Link] (2 responses)

Exercise time:

Try compile http://i8086emu.sourceforge.net/ on any recent distribution. RHEL family doesn't count.

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 19, 2013 7:00 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

No gtk2 issues. I did have to pass -fPIC explicitly in the CFLAGS for it build. There were also quite a few apparent 64bit issues. But it built, linked and ran OK.

System: Debian Stable (7.0).

Intel and XMir

Posted Sep 19, 2013 11:39 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

Compiled just fine (even with the GUI) on Fedora 19 (x86_64). I had to add '-fPIC' to CFLAGS, and add the appropriate -devel packages.

Fedora 19 is about as recent as it gets, BTW.


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