What are the Implications of Kubuntu with Wayland and Ubuntu with Mir

[NoWorries]

For some time now I have been aware that KDE will be using Wayland instead of X. I found this article about the advantages of Wayland over X. There is also another article by phoronix about the development of Mir. I have also found other articles on this topic and also one comment that Canonical chose to develop Mir as they have control over its requirements and objectives.

So if Kubuntu has Wayland and Ubuntu has Mir, does this have any implications for the packages that Kubuntu uses from the ubuntu repositories? I have no expertise on this topic, but I would like to know if anyone with insight into this area considers this a problem or not.

[Rog131]

Always in motion is the future (Yoda)

KWin & Mir/Wayland & Kubuntu

Jonathan Riddell (http://planetkde.org/ -> http://blogs.kde.org/blogs/jriddell) wrote - KWin and Wayland on Kubuntu: http://blogs.kde.org/2013/05/08/note...ro-sessions-ii

Martin Gräßlin (http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/) wrote - Mir in Kubuntu: http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blo...ir-in-kubuntu/

KDM/LightDM/SDDM

David Edmundson (http://www.sharpley.org.uk/) wrote - KDE, LightDM and the Mir Kerfuffle: http://www.sharpley.org.uk/blog/lightdm-mir-wayland

Aaron Seigo (http://aseigo.blogspot.fi/) wrote - logging into Plasma Workspaces 2: http://aseigo.blogspot.fi/2013/03/lo...kspaces-2.html

Martin Bříza (http://martinbriza.wordpress.com/) wrote - SDDM: http://martinbriza.wordpress.com/201...math-and-gsoc/

SDDM

http://qt-apps.org/content/show.php?content=156539

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...isplay-Manager


non-Unity flavours and Mir

Kubuntu Developer Discussion mailing list: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/kubuntu-devel -> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ku...ay/006992.html

UbuntuFlavors

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFlavors

[NoWorries]

Thanks Rog131 for your comprehensive reply. I got the impression that a lot of time and effort has gone into dealing with the problems raised by Canonical's decision to develop Mir. You have certainly confirmed what I was concerned about. Particularly this blog about mir-in-kubuntu. I must say that our SADFL has done it again!!!!!! Ubuntu seems to be the only distribution that will be using Mir as Gnome is also going to use Wayland.

I wish all the developers for Kubuntu EVERY SUCCESS in traversing the minefield created by our SADFL.

PS. I left out the "B" in SABDFL as I feel that the actions that have been taken could potentially fracture the open source community and one who instigates this type of action does not warrant the term Benevolent .

[woodsmoke]

From Martin's blog:

I do not know of any kde-workspace developer using (K)Ubuntu. I do not see how anyone would work on it or how we should be able to review code or even maintain code. It would mean all the adoption would have to go into ifdef sections nobody compiles and nobody runs. This is the best way to ensure that it starts to bit-rot. Even more our CI system runs on openSUSE so not even the CI would be able to detect breakage.

Sooooooo if the devs for KDE do not use Kubuntu then ......

just an observation

woodsmoke

[Rog131]

Nitpicking

Martin Gräßlin:

...I do not know of any kde-workspace developer using (K)Ubuntu...

woodsmoke:

Sooooooo if the devs for KDE do not use Kubuntu then ......

I don't think that the kde-workspace = KDE.

[NoWorries]

Martin Gräßlin:
woodsmoke:
I don't think that the kde-workspace = KDE.

Thanks for the clarification. My impression has been that when a new version of KDE is released, it is not long before is is ported to Kubuntu. Because of this, I have concluded that minimal changes are made by the Kubuntu development team.

So when Wayland is added to KDE, I have concerns that the Kubuntu team will have to deal with the minefield created by Mir and our reliance on ubuntu repositories.

[woodsmoke]

thank you no worries, and also Rog,

since I am just a hardware kinda guy and applications.... any information is useful.

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

So when Wayland is added to KDE, I have concerns that the Kubuntu team will have to deal with the minefield created by Mir and our reliance on ubuntu repositories.

Not so much "when Wayland is added to KDE" as "when KDE works with the Wayland (or X) provided by the underlying distribution." Since Canonical intends to focus its own efforts on Mir, it seems reasonable to imagine that development of Wayland (and continued maintenance of X) will fall to the community. Alas, I have not seen any particular plans regarding such a transition.

[oshunluvr]

This subject is technically "above my pay grade" but could/might Kubuntu morph into K-debian instead? Or a hybird of sorts? Seems the graphic server base could move to debian unstable and still allow most of the Ubuntu packages to work - those that did not depend on the graphic stack.

It's clear that Ubuntu is going to move away from Debian, right?

[woodsmoke]

I, personally, have installed KDE onto Debian and attempted to make a relatively fair "look alike" and "do alike" distro, and it did work. The "rendering" it seemed to me, was, rather "harsh/sterile" probably because I didn't really know how to make systemwide appearance changes in terms of borders etc. aside from the normal stuff one can do.
The software had a few things "out of date" but when I enabled repos, got them.
However, it just seemed to be...wellll.....I can't define it, maybe, fragile/unstable? Things didn't seem to "flow smoothly".....which is, I guess, all the "integration" stuff that devs do behind the scene.

I also installed on stock Ubu and got, seemingly the same "feeling".

When I reported to that effect and that there was something special about Kubu, I was told in no uncertain terms that my observations were without basis because KDE is KDE is KDE.

So.... don't know, just some comments.

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

could/might Kubuntu morph into K-debian instead?

Yeah, KDEbian seems too cool not to do!

In fact, I was playing around with just such a build recently. I installed the Wheezy release, converted it to Sid (Unstable), and then added the Experimental repository so that I could obtain 4.10.2. Alas, it appears KDE receives little love in Debian land; Experimental remains stuck at 4.10.2 while KDE itself is now at 4.10.4.

However, the fine folks who maintain Siduction are on top of things, and their KDE Next repository works quite well on Debian proper. Keep in mind that if you decide to go this route -- Debian Sid + Experimental + Siduction, then you will necessarily spend more time managing your computer and working through the inevitable package brokenness. Of course, this will also force you to get more intimate with the Debian package management tools than you might otherwise want to be. Hell, if I were king for a day, I think I could rule the universe with nothing more than dpkg by my side (Well, OK, that plus aptitude. Give me a solver; I don't want to futz around resolving dependencies with my brain!)

One final bit... the Debian pre-release freeze is really quite frosty. Both Testing and Unstable stop receiving most updates; it's as if time has come to a standstill. The freeze can last for months. I think this makes Debian kind of pointless for running a daily driver desktop, and unfortunately relegates it to its current status as "framework distribution for derivatives." Maybe someday we'll see a rolling Debian desktop base. OMFG that would be the ideal basis for a KDE spin. Debian Fresh or whatever.

Or a hybird of sorts? Seems the graphic server base could move to debian unstable and still allow most of the Ubuntu packages to work - those that did not depend on the graphic stack.

It's clear that Ubuntu is going to move away from Debian, right?

Ubuntu is a Debian derivative, but it attempts to maintain zero binary compatibility with Debian. Do not add Ubuntu repositories to a Debian build; it will most definitely break.

About your question... "clarity" is something that appears to be far, far away from the Canonical hive mind.

[NoWorries]

Not so much "when Wayland is added to KDE" as "when KDE works with the Wayland (or X) provided by the underlying distribution." Since Canonical intends to focus its own efforts on Mir, it seems reasonable to imagine that development of Wayland (and continued maintenance of X) will fall to the community. Alas, I have not seen any particular plans regarding such a transition.

Thanks for the correction Steve. In all my searching I have found that "when KDE works with Wayland" KDE will have to include Qt5 and this work is under-way. Some estimates have this work being available with KDE 4.12. Hence, we will have to wait patiently.

What got me to start this post was that in my package list I saw listed under "wayland" the packages in the attached graphic. This made me think that, as the aim for unity was to have it work with Mir in 12 months, KDE was further advanced as Wayland was at version 1.1. It now seems that a considerable lot of work has yet to be done and I hope this proceeds well and I look forward to all the planned improvements. I just have to be patient.......

PS. I will be very interested to see if Mir is available in 12 months as this is a totally new area for Canonical to work in.

[dibl]

I've been running KDE on Debian Sid for several years now (I have a Kubuntu 13.04 VM too). KDE does indeed look pretty much like KDE on *buntu. The main differences are in the system-setting utilities, the handling of third-party drivers, and of course the "sudo" thing. Because sid is rolling, updates are done at a root tty console, with X shut down, so we don't break X server packages or user-level packages while they are running. Last week I installed systemd on this system and it seems to be working fine -- the faster boot time is not a big deal on a desktop rig, but the laptops do fly to the login greeter. As Steve says, Sid has KDE 4.10.4. Today I'm using the air desktop theme, air-oxygen-color window decoration, and qtcurve style. Here is what it looks like:




Debian is facing the transition to wayland, same as the other distros. I haven't followed that topic closely, but I did observe some wayland-named packages come in to my systems during dist-upgrade last week, so I know that the developers are working on it.

[SteveRiley]

Some estimates have this work being available with KDE 4.12. Hence, we will have to wait patiently.

Martin Graesslin, the maintainer of KWin, writes that we should expect to see an experimental Wayland backend in KWin with the release of 4.11 beta 1.

This made me think that, as the aim for unity was to have it work with Mir in 12 months, KDE was further advanced as Wayland was at version 1.1. It now seems that a considerable lot of work has yet to be done and I hope this proceeds well and I look forward to all the planned improvements. I just have to be patient....... I will be very interested to see if Mir is available in 12 months as this is a totally new area for Canonical to work in.

Wayland is a bigger project than Mir. Wayland, like most other large Linux projects, seeks to maintain some semblance of ABI (application binary interface) stability between releases. It must be distribution-agnostic, so that it can work on any distribution. And it will run an X server as a Wayland client, for backwards compatibility.

Canonical promises none of these for Mir. In fact, they specifically deny any effort to maintain ABI stability. Given that Mir has a smaller scope, which means less work to do, they might get something out the door in a year.

[SteveRiley]

and of course the "sudo" thing

It's such a habit for me that even when I'm looking at other distros, I install sudo right away and add my account to the wheel group. What alternative do you use?

Because sid is rolling

But how do you handle the freeze, when even Sid sees little activity? That would drive me nuts!

Last week I installed systemd on this system and it seems to be working fine

systemd and the /usr merge are important, major changes to Linux. Both significantly streamlined Arch. It's time for sysvinit to die. Yeah, I know "revolutionary" doesn't exactly describe Debian's goals, but still