(the awkward self-follow up to fix a missing subject, mea culpa)
my name is Olli Ries and I am the Director in charge of Mir, Unity and other things here at Canonical. I wanted to update you on some revised directions regarding our display stack for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
In June I informed you of our plans to implement XMir (a X server integration on top of Mir) as default in 13.10 and 14.04, given that quality criteria are met. For Ubuntu 13.10 we decided to not pursue XMir as default due to outstanding issues specifically around the multi-monitor experience.
Following Mark's vUDS keynote from Tuesday, I wanted to provide more clarity for Ubuntu 14.04. Ubuntu 14.04 on the Desktop will sport Unity 7 as the default desktop with ongoing quality improvements as the key focus. This will be powered by a traditional X.org based display stack.
We are also working on providing a Unity 8 preview session as an option, which we aim to have running on Mir. Stephen Webb's team is dedicated to bringing features that are only available on the Ubuntu for phone images to this Unity 8 session on your desktop, for example the set of core applications.
Mir and XMir continue to be available in the Ubuntu archives and can be installed as opt-in in Ubuntu 14.04 for desktops. This is important for developers who desire to start developing on top of Mir, e.g. for tool kit support.
Mir continues to ship on the Ubuntu for phones images as the default display server.
The revised plan is based on feedback from our community, flavors and commercial partners and we feel this is the right decision in favor of delivering a mature Ubuntu 14.04 LTS release that will be the base for millions of deployments across the globe.
Going forward we are expecting to see Mir being part of the default display stack in 14.10 and following releases, where the key focus is to bring the vision of convergence to our users. The received feedback puts us in a strong position to align with our partners on our shared goal of providing the next generation of user experience on top of Mir.
best regards,
Olli
