Mir Won't Ship Even In Ubuntu 14.04

jones_supa writes "As can be recalled, Mir didn't make it to the Ubuntu 13.10 release to replace X.org as the display server. Back then it suffered of problems in multi-monitor support, along with other issues. Now it turns out that Canonical's product will not make it even into the next LTS version (14.04) of the Ubuntu desktop. Mir itself would be ready for showtime in the schedule, but there are problems with XMir, which is the X11 compatibility layer that ensures Mir can work with applications built for X. The comments came at the Ubuntu Developer Summit: in an online event Mark Shuttleworth stressed that the 14.04 desktop has to be rock-solid for customers with large-scale deployments, such as educational institutions. In the meantime, you can already try out Mir in your Ubuntu system."

Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Taken on its own, it does make sense. LTS needs to be usable (technically, inb4 "unity") on the widest practical range of hardware and be supported for 3 years. If Mir needs to be delayed so X applications can run on 14.04, so be it.

Re:Interesting

[HaZardman27]

I'm actually beginning to wonder if Canonical isn't noticing a trend of users switching from Unity to other desktops, and if this is a way of combating that. If Unity is the only major desktop using Mir as opposed to X or Wayland, than it's probably going to be more of a pain to switch desktops, and that software written for Ubuntu might not be as portable across different Linux desktop environments.

problems with multi-monitor support?

[Laxori666]

Why are people still struggling with this? I mean, why is it so technically challenging? It's a simple concept and it's been around for years...

Re:Interesting

[DrXym]

So it's really baffling to me why Cannonical is reinventing the wheel here

I think the main reason is by owning the display tech they can shut their competition out of the mobile / tablet space. Mir is dual licenced - proprietary or GPLv3. They can do what they like under their proprietary licence while hamstringing their competition with the onerous requirements of the GPLv3 (e.g. not being able to link proprietary drivers, limits on DRM). It's probably why Intel walked away from the project.

The Ubuntu wiki is tries to provide technical reasons but it's all pretty vague - it alludes to issues like lack of support for 3d input devices and a few other problems with the protocol but these don't sound very convincing arguments to write everything from scratch.