Mir Office Hours

Mir
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We host Mir Office Hours every month

Everyone is welcome. No prior arrangements are necessary. You don’t need to sign-up, or register. Just click on the link to join, for as little or as much time as you can spare, at any time during the event.

We’ll schedule these every month, trying to alternate between western- and eastern-hemisphere friendly times.

Agenda

(DRAFT)

  1. The missing links
    We met with a couple community members recently to talk about what it would take for Mir to be a viable underpinning for smaller desktop environments like LXQt, MATE, Xfce… — post-X11. Miriway and Miracle already serve as good indicators that we’re a lot of the way there, but let’s talk what are the most important missing pieces to the puzzle. Some use cases that were identified I’ll leave in a comment below, but let’s make sure we cover a couple:
    • server side decorations
    • input capture
  2. The non-missing links
    When talking about the missing links we’ve identified some missing knowledge, too. The following use cases are already, or are soon going to be, available:
    • screen sharing through the Screencast portal (Firefox, Chromium)
    • remote desktop through e.g. wayvnc (including headless with the mir:virtual platform)
    • fractional scaling (in progress)
  3. Documentation
    We’re in the process of moving the Mir documentation to ReadTheDocs (here). What would you like to see there?
  4. Retrospective on this format
    • Does it work?
    • Would you be OK recording (most of) it for UbuntuOnAir?

If you have any questions you’d like us to answer or topics to cover, please feel free to ask them live, or leave them as comments below - we’ll be able to prepare better and select some to make space for in the agenda

Notes

We’ll post notes from each meeting in a comment below for posterity and discussion.

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Meeting notes 2024-04-23

Attending

@alan_g, @matthew-kosarek , @saviq , @Conan_Kudo & @tsimonq2

1. The missing links

We met with a couple community members recently to talk about what it would take for Mir to be a viable underpinning for smaller desktop environments like LXQt, MATE, Xfce… — post-X11. Miriway and Miracle already serve as good indicators that we’re a lot of the way there, but let’s talk what are the most important missing pieces to the puzzle. Some use cases that were identified I’ll leave in a comment below, but let’s make sure we cover a couple:

1.1 server side decorations

@Conan_Kudo: wants plugin API to load engine
@alan_g: X11 SSDs, not plugins
@Saviq: any prior art?
@Conan_Kudo: KWnin plugin, Sway theming engine

@alan_g: Needs work to expose a sensible API
@alan_g: to raise Mir issue

@alan_g: Simplest thing: enable existing X11 decorations that ask for SSD

1.2 input capture

@Conan_Kudo: Need something like Barrier/Synergy/InputLeap

@Saviq: we have a lot of support - e.g. wayvnc, but not the access control that portals offer.

@Conan_Kudo: Extending XDPWLR?

@Saviq: Would needs to wrap more protocols & do mediation - but good for other projects too

@Saviq: Mir needs a portals strategy

Action: Talk about “portals” in Madrid - external or internal

2. The non-missing links

When talking about the missing links we’ve identified some missing knowledge, too. The following use cases are already, or are soon going to be, available:

2.1 screen sharing through the Screencast portal (Firefox, Chromium)

@Saviq: has a POC using XDPWLR, asked for pointers to integration

@Conan_Kudo: portals started as systemd listening services, portal frontend invokes backend, XDPWLR is a “shim” around Wayland Extension Protocols.

@Saviq: Frontend config doesn’t include Mir, is there a session override?

@Conan_Kudo: Portal preference config file - https://invent.kde.org/plasma/xdg-desktop-portal-kde/-/blob/master/data/kde-portals.conf?ref_type=heads

discussion: this doesn’t work well with XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP being Miriway/Frame/Miracle-wm

@Saviq: This going to be problematic in controlling access

Action: Talk about integration in Madrid

2.2 remote desktop through e.g. wayvnc (including headless with the mir:virtual platform)

This works well already. (ubuntu-frame-vnc, miriway.vnc-server)

2.3 fractional scaling (in progress)

In progress, a few weeks to go before it all lands

3. Documentation

We’re in the process of moving the Mir documentation to ReadTheDocs (here). What would you like to see there?

@Conan_Kudo: How much of https://arewewaylandyet.com/ works?

@alan_g: “Is Mir Desktop Ready Yet?”

@Conan_Kudo: Yes

@Conan_Kudo: Has “how to on Fedora” gone from developer page?

Action: @alan_g to I’ll check

4. Retrospective on this format

4.1 Does it work?

@Conan_Kudo: Yes
@Saviq: Yes

4.2 Would you be OK recording (most of) it for UbuntuOnAir?

@Conan_Kudo: A good idea, but some discussion shouldn’t be “out there” for various reasons

@Conan_Kudo: Maybe also a Mir channel?

Action: Record future meetings

5. AOB

@Conan_Kudo & @matthew-kosarek are close to Miracle-wm being in Fedora