14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical has changed its plans regarding the adoption of the Mir display server and now it intends to bring it a lot sooner.
In the initial announcement of Mir, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS was designated as the first OS to carry the new display server as the default option.
The past few weeks have been filled with discussions around Mir, Canonical, and the future of the other Ubuntu flavored distros.
Canonical has now shortened this waiting period and made a surprise announcement. Mir will be the default display server for Ubuntu 13.10, which is due in October, this year.
Here is a short rundown of the Mir road map:
• Ubuntu 13.10: XMir on Mir by default, with a fallback session to X where there is no Mir driver support, supported for 9 months.
• Ubuntu 14.04 LTS: XMir as default with the fallback session removed, full Mir driver support, traditional LTS support for 5 years.
• Ubuntu 14.10 and beyond: Mir stack as default, including rootless X support for legacy X applications, supported for 9 months.
XMir is actually X & Unity7 running on top of the system compositor Mir, and the Mir stack means the system compositor with Unity 8 as the session shell on top.
“Our Display Server Mir has gone from a proof of concept, sufficient to justify its announcement in March this year, to high quality, high performance component that we think will deliver the fastest, cleanest display experience for the Ubuntu platform,” stated Olli Ries, the director of product strategy engineering from Canonical.
Another piece of information that has been slipped in this very large and important communique is that the X server will be available as a fallback mode in Ubuntu 13.10, but it will be removed in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
This new bold announcement from Canonical will most certainly agitate the developers of the other Ubuntu flavors, but they will have plenty of time to adjust their development accordingly.