14 DAY TRIAL // Once again, Kevin Gunn was more than proud to report on the latest work in the Unity 8 user interface, LXC for Xapps, and the next-generation Mir display server for the Ubuntu Linux and Ubuntu Touch operating systems.
Therefore, we can report today that the Unity 8 user interface received multiple enhancements and fixes, among which we can mention GU changes that will land in Ubuntu Touch as part of the forthcoming OTA-5 update, several test cleanups, as well as various QtMir improvements for multi-monitor support.
Additionally, the input info usage landed in Unity 8 to toggle the windowed mode, there's more work done for the launcher parity, and some new features landed in the Slim greeter. On the other hand, the Mir display server received several multi-monitor support improvements, and numerous bugs were squashed.
According to the announcement, the Mir 0.14 release will land pretty soon with client API break. A critical bug on AP tests in u-s-c, which caused osk input loss, has been fixed, and work started on patching u-s-c screen blanking issues, which will land in Ubuntu Touch's OTA-6 update.
Moreover, all the tests have been ported to the new buffer semantics and are now ready to be implemented in Mir, the team started preparations for implementing the Vulkan API (Application Programming Interface) from the Khronos Group, and work began on unblocking mouse rendering by Unity 8.
LXC for Xapps gets new features
The LXC for Xapps technology, which is used for running X11 apps packaged as DEB files in a segregated sandbox on top of a Unity8/Mir infrastructure, received support for creating and destroying containers directly from the GUI, and support for installing packages by name.
Last but not least, some work was done for making the container more user-friendly by multi-threading the Python code to interact with all the C++ and QML code. Upcoming versions of LXC for Xapps will also receive support for searching packages.