On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 05:50:52PM -0400, Stephen Michael Kellat wrote:
> > The established Ubuntu desktop is composed entirely of software that talks
> > to X. While some of this software may "easily" migrate to Mir by way of
> > toolkit support, I think there's no question that Canonical will need to
> > support X - specifically, X on top of Mir - for quite some time to come.
> > So in the 14.04 time frame, I think it's a safe bet that Lubuntu will have
> > options for continuing to run on top of a supported X server. Mir may not
> > give you anything new that you care about in Lubuntu, but Mir+XMir should
> > still provide a reasonable, stable, supported display platform for you.
> > The problems for Kubuntu, AIUI, have more to do with what happens when
> > Canonical supports X on top of Mir, and KDE stops supporting either X or
> > Mir. I suspect this isn't going to be a problem for Lubuntu in the near
> > future?
> As neither Micah nor Lionel have chimed in, I'll tread in as a
> non-developer briefly. From the Xubuntu perspective, we're still at the
> wait-and-see point to see how XonMir will perform. The big concern raised
> in discussion in the land of the mouse is the nature of the X stack and
> where it will go.
> If I understand the flow of discussion correctly, a bit of friction
> results from the use of generalities too. While noted above that X would
> need to be supported for some time to come, much of what has not been
> spoken of in this context is what that means in terms of a ballpark
> figure. Two years? Five years? Until 16.04? Narrowing down that
> generality may help with that seeming friction point.
The point I was making is that, for the 14.04 timeframe, nearly all (if not
all) desktop software we will care about supporting in the 14.04 LTS will
be X-using applications. This implies that XMir will need to be supported
for the support lifetime of 14.04 LTS itself.
I can't speculate how many releases /past/ 14.04 XMir will remain relevant
for Canonical, but I expect the community will have plenty of advanced
warning by which to make their own plans.
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
