14 DAY TRIAL // Remember when Feral Interactive, the UK-based game publisher, asked Canonical to update the old Mesa 3D Graphics Library packages in the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) and Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) operating systems?
Well, that didn't happen, yet, and users who want to play the latest Linux games have to either compile the latest Mesa 3D libraries from sources or rely on either the well-known Oibaf or Padoka PPAs (Personal Package Archives), which include only development, but highly optimized versions of Mesa and related libraries.
For those who don't want to install those development versions of Mesa on their Ubuntu boxes, there's also the Padoka Stable Mesa PPA, which was recently updated to the latest stable Mesa 13.0.3 3D Graphics Library, and now a user asks Canonical to backport it to the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS HWE (Hardware Enablement) stack.
"There are stable packages at https://launchpad.net/~paulo-miguel-dias/+archive/ubuntu/pkppa for Mesa 13 for Xenial and Yakkety, so can you offer it as an installable package for the upcoming Ubuntu 16.04.2 and 16.10? I ask because Canonical is offering an HWE kernel to get the latest and it should also apply to Mesa," said the user.
Mesa 13 could land in Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS on January 19
There's no answer from Canonical, but they're currently working hard on the second maintenance update to the long-term supported Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) operating system, versioned 16.04.2, which promises to backport the Linux 4.8 kernel series and the updated graphics stack from Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak).
However, Ubuntu 16.10 doesn't yet offer the Mesa 13 libraries, but it looks like Canonical's Timo Aaltonen is now testing the Mesa 13.0.2 packages in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, which, most probably, were backported from the devel version, Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus). So, fingers crossed for Mesa 13 to land in Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS next week!