Ubuntu Wiki

Why are you not shipping Mir + XMir on the desktop?

A: We always planned to ship Mir + XMir on Ubuntu 13.10 Desktop but after months of furious XMir development we needed to make a judgement call about whether we could assure a quality overall Ubuntu Desktop experience with XMir across all supported configurations. While Mir is in good shape for this and XMir is close, we didn’t feel that the user experience around XMir's multimonitor feature was meeting the parity standard.

Will I still be able to run XMir on the desktop?

A: Mir and XMir are available in the Ubuntu archives and can be installed from there. Please find instructions on how to install XMir here.

Will Mir be available for Ubuntu for phones?

A: The Mir team are on track to ship Mir on Ubuntu for phones by default soon. Mir is already on the images but the team are fixing some final bugs before switching it on by default.

Does this announcement mean that the Mir project has failed?

A: Not at all. Mir has made significant progress, and has been built with a full CI test suite, resulting in a reliable core, and a testament of this is Mir powering the Ubuntu for phones images. The only change is that we needed a little more time to assure the high quality our Ubuntu Desktop users expect, so we decided to do the right thing and not switch Mir on by default.

How does this affect flavors?

A: Flavors are in a good position to experiment with Mir in their releases. Mir and XMir are currently available in the archive and are getting regularly updated as the codebases grow and mature. This provides a great testing ground for flavors.

How does this affect Ubuntu Tablet/TV?

A: Tablet and TV has not been a priority focus in this cycle as we get the phone form-factor up and running. As such, we did not commit to Mir running on Tablet and TV in 13.10.

Has the recent revert from Intel triggered this decision?

A: No. It is completely unrelated. This decision was made by our engineering management team and was based solely on the current quality feature set we defined for XMir, independent of any discussions with Intel.