Ubuntu moving towards Wayland

Camilo Mesias camilo at mesias.co.uk
Sat Nov 6 13:51:32 UTC 2010


> I believe it is possible to do photo management, web browsing and
> watching video, even on the current version of Fedora.

Indeed. It's not the point that it's possible or not. I could do much
of that on a Windows 3.11 machine... Be honest with yourself, is it
every bit as good as the experience on a non-free OS and software
stack? I don't think it is.

> So in fact you are running non-free drivers.  I have none of these
> problems with the free (Intel) drivers, and the performance is great,
> certainly more than adequate for web browsing, watching DVDs and
> video, and a little gaming.

I am running several machines, including Intel based, low end radeon
and Nvidia, like a lot of users... I also use, shock horror, non free
software, because I am pragmatic about getting the most out of the
machine rather than living in a free software hairshirt. I think that
if the infrastructure was more geared towards performance then maybe
the free apps would provide a more Mac-like experience instead of
being also-rans. But I don't want to beat up free software or X, I
just want the best possible experience from the desktop.

> With virtualization I have more Linux machines than ever (about 50 in
> active use at last count).  All on my local 1GB network.  Consequently
> I use X to them and to other physical machines _all the time_.

Out of interest, do you use individual shells/terms or something that
provides a more remote desktop like experience? I have to use a
Windows laptop for work, and use many Linux VM servers, often set up
for specific tasks or with specific networking. The way our
organisation works (having tried lots of different approaches) is
using NoMachines (which is X in a way). My point is that although X is
involved at some point there are significant parts of the solution
that aren't X - it still works.

If there is no way to provide remote access for Weyland based systems
(and I hope there will be a way that is "more than adequate") then I
can see the day when desktop users wanting a high quality experience
and server users part company...

-Cam


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