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by researcher11 3369 days ago
FLAVOR: Ubuntu Desktop

HEADLINE: Dump Mir!!!!!

DESCRIPTION: I know Canonical has put a lot of effort into Mir and at this stage it is probably "too big to fail". But for various reasons my bet is that it will fail. I think this is Canonical repeating Microsoft's Metro mistake. I have a $12K dollar desktop and I don't want an OS optimized for phones !!! I will be able to avoid it but I would rather your engineering effort was better placed.

ROLE/AFFILIATION: Software Engineer / Data Scientist
3 comments
NoGravitas 3369 days ago
They really ought to be using Wayland. There are technical reasons for Mir vs X11, but not really any for Mir vs. Wayland other than NIH.
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researcher11 3369 days ago
I think most people are unaware of Mir vs Wayland and the issues that Ubuntu using Mir will cause. I only know about it because I was thinking about building a tiling window manager (because I'm weird like that).

I think there is a good chance that Mir will be technically inferior to Wayland and a better chance that Ubuntu UI designers will reinvent the user experience from a phone perspective.

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komali2 3369 days ago
Ok, I'll bite, how do you spend 12,000$ on a desktop? Just keep throwing videocards at it?
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researcher11 3369 days ago
Pretty much. It's probably worth $6K at replacement cost today. It's for deep learning and I included what I spent on it and I've refreshed the 4 GPUs once. The current config is probably still good for a couple of years. Now if I need more GPUs I'll just get a second box. The irony is that I graphics power coming out of my ears yet I spend most of my time in vim and tmux.
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problems 3362 days ago
Just out of curiosity - are the GPUs really the best bet for you at that point? I believe you can buy dedicated FPGA cards, some of which support OpenCL workloads even which might offer you better performance - though they might cost a shitpile too.
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petermcnister25 3369 days ago
Not OP just honestly curious, of the $12k how much is dedicated to Canonical (donation/others)?
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researcher11 3369 days ago
I don't like the direction they're going and I'm certain giving them more money won't change it.

It's in the ~$100Ks. I usually pay people directly to build things I think the world needs and then have them give it away.

I'm not here to brag and I'd like to stay anonymous so I'm going retire this HN account now.

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