14 DAY TRIAL // The Mir Display Server, one of the biggest changes in the Ubuntu operating system since Unity, has landed in the Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander) repositories.
Canonical initially announced that Mir would be available in Ubuntu 14.04, the next LTS release, but along the way they realized that it could be done a lot sooner.
The plan is now to integrate Mir in Ubuntu 13.10, which is due to arrive in just a few months. Moreover, the team of developers from Canonical in charge of Steam had to implement it before August 29, which is the infamous day of the Feature Freeze.
Past this point, no new features are introduced in the upcoming distribution and the developer only focuses on getting everything ironed out and as bugless as possible.
“The Mir team have been working hard to get Mir ready and in the archive ready for Feature Freeze on the 29th August. I am pleased to report that Mir is now available in the Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy archive and available for use.”
“Good progress is being across all fronts with Mir and we are on track for our Ubuntu 13.10 commitment,” stated the Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon on his blog.
The installation is quite simple and can be done from a terminal, in the same way a user would install any application. You will need root access and a terminal. Just enter the following commands:
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install mir-demos unity-system-compositor
When the process has finished in the terminal, just reboot the computer. You won't be able to tell if Mir is running, if everything went smoothly.
Users should also keep in mind that Mir is still under heavy development and bugs are bound to happen. According to Jono Bacon, the development team will be focusing on bug-fixing and performance optimizations when the primary feature development is completed.