Full Circle Magazine FR

Hi, everyone! Welcome back to Ask the New Guy! If you have a simple question, and Linux is so confusing to you that you think “home folder” refers to a shut-in origami enthusiast, contact me at copil.yanez@gmail.com. Today’s question is: Q: A lot of people seem to be unhappy with something called Mir. What is it and why the drama? A: I know, right? So much duh-raaamaaaaa, it’s getting like an episode of Glee around here. I half expect Mark Shuttleworth to break into a Mariachi rendition of Missy Elliott’s Work It: Is it worth it? Let me work it. I put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it.

Actually, in reference to today’s question, the above lyrics are weirdly accurate. Let me explain. Mir is a display server, a piece of software that sits between you and the Linux kernel in Ubuntu. It takes your input, routes it to the right place, and then returns the output to your screen. If you’re married, Mir is like your spouse, taking your dinner invite to the neighbors whose name you can never remember, and reporting back their refusal because of your tendency to get drunk and act out the Empire State Building scene from the original King Kong. If that’s not clear enough for you, below is an extremely simple diagram I found to help explain what a display server does. See? Simple.

Okay, so that’s what Mir does. Still doesn’t explain why everyone’s treating it like the new kid in school who cuts his own hair and smells like pork products all the time (we called him Ricky Bacon). Well, Mir was chosen to replace the X window server, the existing display server in Ubuntu. Canonical, the lead Ubuntu developer, and the company in charge of all final decisions with regards to what default programs appear in Ubuntu, made the choice to move away from X. Why? X had been serving the needs of Linux users for almost three decades. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? The problem was that X wasn’t up to the challenge of delivering an operating system on all appliances a user might have. Actually, that’s not entirely true. X was up to the challenge of delivering to your Internet-enabled toaster, it just couldn’t do it the way you were most familiar with.

The thing is, most of us know what an operating system should look like on a small screen. We use our thumbs to navigate from one screen to another, pinching and zooming as fast as our minds can handle. And there’s the real problem with X. Modern phone users have been conditioned to expect an experience that’s been dubbed “f ‘n f,” fast and fluid. If your favorite OS appears on your phone, you want it to look enough like your desktop that it’s like kissing your boyfriend’s twin brother: different, yet similar. But you most definitely want it to behave like every other phone OS you’ve ever seen: fast and fluid. Okay, so X wasn’t going to be f ‘n f, so what to replace it with? The smart people at Canonical put their heads together. And they chose Mir, right? Nope.

They chose a program called Wayland. Actually, Wayland is a “protocol,” a series of instructions defining how input and output should be handled. At this point I just sat down and cried because I was pretty much over my head about five minutes ago. Upon further evaluation, Canonical decided Wayland wasn’t going to do the trick either. So they did what every amateaur woodworker does when his wife tells him they need a new picnic table for the backyard: they built their own. Here’s the thing about homemade furniture. No one, except people who make furniture for a living, actually know how hard it is to make furniture. But everyone’s used furniture so we all think we have enough knowledge to judge and criticize. Oh, this table is too scratchy, you should have sanded the edges more. Oh, this table isn’t long enough, you’ll never get your whole family around it for dinner. Oh, this table isn’t really a table, it’s a piece of plywood resting on cinder blocks and my mother was right, I should have married Derrick!

Canonical set about designing the next generation display server, codenamed Mir, thereby angering a lot of people, not least of all fans of old Soviet space hardware, a pretty tough bunch, in case you didn’t know. Mir is meant to offer the familiar Ubuntu experience using a window server that can handle the f ‘n f demands of modern users. What’s not to like? Well, if you believe that Canonical puts too much emphasis on this idea of convergence, that people want the same OS from device to device, or if you doubt that users are going to ditch desktops and laptops in favor of phones and tablets, you might not be too excited. But I think the frustration with Mir is simply a manifestation of a different concern.

When Ubuntu came on the scene, the skies opened up and angels heralded its arrival. Here was an open source OS that finally had the resources to push forward on multiple fronts simultaneously. Uptake skyrocketed and suddenly the Linux desktop seemed more viable than ever before. Diehard Linux enthusiasts, the ones who tattooed Tux on their biceps, continued to use the command line and roll their own distros. Me, I was thrilled to use an OS that did everything I needed, didn’t cost a cent, and didn’t stalk me like a psycho ex to update bloatware programs I never wanted installed in the first place. Ubuntu just worked, and it did it with style. It was so beautiful, many of us were willing to ignore that, hey, Canonical is a business, not a charity. It offers B-to-B services for companies who want a stable, powerful and scalable OS. They incorporate the efforts of developers working for free, into a product they charge corporate users to support. They even (shudder) trademarked the Ubuntu name. Then came Unity and scopes and the whole Amazon.com kerfuffle, and people began to realize what should have been apparent all along: you can’t run a company forever without revenue.

When Canonical got around to discussing Mir in detail, it made it clear that contributions to Mir from the community could be re-licensed by Canonical as their own. That’s when things went all Game of Thrones. People far smarter than me have some serious concern, and I will listen and learn and try to understand the issues as best as my little gerbil-powered brain can. But I’m not worried. Here’s why. I’ve never misunderstood my relationship with Canonical or Ubuntu. I recognize that there are financial concerns that will drive decisions about Ubuntu’s development. And so long as Ubuntu is a free product from a corporate entity, I’ll remember the warning that if I’m not the customer, I’m the product. It’s similar to the relationship I have with Google, and I recognize the potential pitfalls. The real cost to use free products from profit-seeking entities is eternal vigilance.

I am willing to support Ubuntu, warts and all, for the same reason I use a Kindle and buy Amazon products despite what I’ve seen happen to my beloved independent booksellers: they are pushing for the kind of future I want to see. I believe convergence is where it’s at, one device that behaves as both desktop or “pockettop.” I believe Ubuntu has the potential to challenge Android and iOS, not only offering more competition in the marketplace, but pushing those other OSs to do things they would never have tried without Ubuntu breathing down their necks. I believe that having Ubuntu gain a real foothold in mobile could mean the end of that market’s oligarchy, a revolution that could eventually run the other way, growing the Linux piece of the desktop pie. And I believe Mir is a key component in making all this possible. But the biggest reason I’m not worried about Mir, or Ubuntu, or the idea that Canonical is methodically co-opting the Linux community, is because you simply can’t un-smell a fart. Believe me, I’ve tried.

You cannot simultaneously introduce millions to Linux and FOSS and then make everyone ignore that they exist. In other words, I know more about Linux now because of my interest in Ubuntu. And if Ubuntu ever stopped innovating, stopped pushing the envelope, stopped trying to do grand things and drawing the criticism boldness begets, I would do what Ubuntu taught me to do, a fresh install. Ultimately, I am wary of any argument against Ubuntu that sounds like hipster-speak, as in, “I was totally into Ubuntu before its auto-tune, Euro-trance, psychedelic phase.” And I won’t be scared away by the drama. You think this is drama? I was in a high school jazz band. You don’t know drama, son. So in answer to the question, What is Mir? Mir is a rorschach test. People will see much in it that simply isn’t there. It will likely reinforce their existing beliefs until it comes into better focus and we can test it in the wild. Until then, I’m willing to give Ubuntu and Canonical the benefit of the doubt, that and vigilance are the price I pay for their amazing product.

Oh, and what about those Missy Elliott lyrics? Is it worth it? Let me work it. I put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it. Translation: Is Mir worth it? Let me work with it. I’ll tweak it, fork it, or reverse it. I totally knew Missy was a closet Ubuntu enthusiast! Her early song Linus Torvalds is a Pimp! should have been a dead giveaway. Good luck and happy Ubuntuing!