14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical has assured its community that the Ubuntu desktop version is not lagging behind the Ubuntu Touch and that they are just aiming towards complete convergence.
After dropping the support for XMir from Ubuntu 13.10, which was one of the announced features of the new operating system, a part of the community has expressed its concern regarding the focus of the development team.
More precisely, Canonical has been accused of putting more resources into Ubuntu Touch and diverting them from the development of Ubuntu desktop, which would account for the decision to drop XMir for the time being.
A Canonical representative has assured everyone that the goal of the development team is complete convergence and that they are actually playing catch-up with the mobile and tablet versions of Ubuntu.
“There is one Ubuntu platform that will support everything from mobile phones, to tablets, to netbooks, to laptops, to work stations, to servers, to clouds, to instances running workloads in those clouds.”
“Currently, we are playing catch up on phones and tablets, but the goal remains full convergence, full support for all of these from a single code base. In no way is there less of a commitment to desktop users and the integration that you mentioned, we just haven't reached the point where we can really start that integration,” stated Rick Spencer, a Canonical vice president for Ubuntu Engineering.
Canonical announced a few days ago that they would not implement XMir in Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander), even if it was a goal set for this release cycle.
Among the problems cited was fact that they didn't have enough time to deliver a satisfying experience for the desktop version. On the other hand, Ubuntu Touch will proceed with Mir, all according to plan.
XMir is an implementation of X running on Mir. It's designed to work as a “buffer” for the developers who don't want to go straight to Mir.