Mir Office Hours

Project Discussion Mir
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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 for apps 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