Recently there has been a ton of posts about some of the recent Canonical decisions and how they would affect Kubuntu. Generally it was people just jumping to premature conclusions and as a whole Kubuntu would continue to exist in a form similar to now. But things might change massively.
Forever and a day Linux has always relied on X.Org for handling the stuff we see on our screens. X has started to show its age for a while now and Wayland has been earmarked as its successor. All the big names have jumped onto the Wayland bandwagon namely Intel, Google, Samsung, Red Hat, the X.Org developers to name some. Canonical has been developing Mir behind closed doors and in the last few days dropped this bomb on us.
If this is the official direction Canonical takes (which it looks almost certainly to be) then it does indeed spell the death of Kubuntu. KDE/QT has been ported almost completely to Wayland bar a few non deal breakers and currently exists on X but it is highly unlikely it will live on with Mir as supporting three display servers is probably just a bit too much for anybody.
I know Mir might support Android drivers but apart from that I can't really see any compelling reason at all to adopt it especially since most ARM graphics drivers already support Wayland. Mir does have QT bindings which might help.
Realistically, is this the long feared death knell for Kubuntu? Is it time for our fantastic community to put our support behind a different distro maybe Debian (Mint is unrealistic as it is Ubuntu based). If we don't mind forgoing our current package base then Chakra and openSUSE both have an incredibly dedicated KDE focus. Mint with its homegrown Cinnamon might also be in danger, their reaction is one to watch.
Obviously I'm jumping the gun a little but still, even I'm starting to doubt our future.
Some related articles:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTMxNzg
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTMxNzc
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTMxNzY
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTMxNzI
(Phoronix is of debatable quality but I find these articles to be quite well written.)
Forever and a day Linux has always relied on X.Org for handling the stuff we see on our screens. X has started to show its age for a while now and Wayland has been earmarked as its successor. All the big names have jumped onto the Wayland bandwagon namely Intel, Google, Samsung, Red Hat, the X.Org developers to name some. Canonical has been developing Mir behind closed doors and in the last few days dropped this bomb on us.
If this is the official direction Canonical takes (which it looks almost certainly to be) then it does indeed spell the death of Kubuntu. KDE/QT has been ported almost completely to Wayland bar a few non deal breakers and currently exists on X but it is highly unlikely it will live on with Mir as supporting three display servers is probably just a bit too much for anybody.
I know Mir might support Android drivers but apart from that I can't really see any compelling reason at all to adopt it especially since most ARM graphics drivers already support Wayland. Mir does have QT bindings which might help.
Realistically, is this the long feared death knell for Kubuntu? Is it time for our fantastic community to put our support behind a different distro maybe Debian (Mint is unrealistic as it is Ubuntu based). If we don't mind forgoing our current package base then Chakra and openSUSE both have an incredibly dedicated KDE focus. Mint with its homegrown Cinnamon might also be in danger, their reaction is one to watch.
Obviously I'm jumping the gun a little but still, even I'm starting to doubt our future.
Some related articles:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTMxNzg
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTMxNzc
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTMxNzY
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTMxNzI
(Phoronix is of debatable quality but I find these articles to be quite well written.)
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