Vulkan Support On Mir Still May Be Months Away

Back when The Khronos Group published the Vulkan 1.0 specification in February, we were told by a Canonical developer Vulkan support on Mir would come for Ubuntu 16.04. That didn't happen for Ubuntu 16.04 nor for last month's Ubuntu 16.10 and it looks like it may still be months before seeing support for using Vulkan on the Mir display server.

We've been waiting for Vulkan on Mir and each Mir release we see the feature bug tracker push it back by yet another release. That bug report was updated a few weeks back by Cemil Azizoglu a few weeks back and seems to have gone unnoticed. Cemil Azizoglu serves as the team lead for the Mir Display Server at Canonical. Here's what he said:

I don't have an official date for Vulkan support but estimate that we are still some months away. We are currently revamping our surface objects for Vulkan and Mesa integration as well as Mir Version 1.0 release.

Then earlier this month the target for it was bumped out to 0.26. It's sad to hear that it still might be some months still before seeing Vulkan integration on Mir, but then again Ubuntu 17.04 is continuing to ship the X.Org Server by default while the Mir + Unity 8 session is expected to remain experimental, so those wanting to run Vulkan Linux games or develop with the Vulkan API can still easily do so. As of this week's UOS event, the reported goal is to still have Unity 8 and a Snaps-based default by Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, by which time hopefully there will be the Vulkan Mir support -- assuming not yet another delay in Unity 8 taking over the Ubuntu landscape.