libinput is now used as the default input library

Dec 22, 2015 20:12 GMT  ·  By

Today, December 22, Canonical's Kevin DuBois had the great pleasure of announcing the release and immediate availability for download of the Mir 0.18 display server for the Ubuntu Linux operating system.

One of the most interesting features implemented in the Mir 0.18 release, according to the changelog, is initial support for the next-generation Vulkan low-overhead and cross-platform 3D graphics and compute API (Application Programming Interface), such as latency improvements for nested servers and hardware decoded multimedia optimizations.

The Mir team also managed to work on support for plugin renderers, which should prepare the display server for IoT (Internet of Things) devices, so that it doesn't have to rely on the CPU (Central Processing Unit) or the GLES and Vulkan stack. Additionally, they fixed a graphics corruption that affected Xmir.

"If a new Mir release was on your Christmas wishlist (like it was on mine), Mir 0.18 has been released! I’ve been working on this the last few days, and its out the door now," said Kevin DuBois. "Special thanks to Mir team members who helped with testing, and the devs in #ubuntu-ci-eng for helping move the release along."

What's coming to Mir 0.19

In addition to the changes mentioned above, Mir 0.18 adds better support for multi-monitor configurations, along with scaling buffers improvements. The libinput library is now used by default on the Mir display server, as a replacement for the deprecated Android input stack. Of course, numerous bugs reported by users since Mir 0.17 have been fixed.

Upcoming versions of Mir should introduce many convergence and IoT features, buffer swapping improvements for Vulkan, latency improvements for nested servers, more flexible screenshotting support, better autodetection of platforms, and additional polishes to the window management API. Download Mir 0.18 right now from our website if you want to compile it by hand.