Today
we go public with the Ubuntu graphics stack for the post X world. Since
the beginning Ubuntu has relied on the X server to support the user
experience and while it has worked generally well; it’s time for
something new. My team is working on a big new component for this - Mir. Mir is a graphics technology
that allows us to implement user experience we want for Ubuntu across
all devices we support.
In
many ways, Mir will be completely transparent to the user. Applications
that use toolkits (e.g. Qt, GTK+) will not need to be recompiled. Unity
will still look like Unity. We will support legacy X applications for
the foreseeable future.
This
is a big task. A lot of work has already been done and there’s a lot
more to go. We’re aiming to do incremental improvements, and you can
find more about this on the Wiki page and in the blueprints. You can help.
From today our project is public, it’s GPL licensed and you’re welcome
to use the source and propose changes.
It’s exciting times, and I hope you enjoy the results of this work!
