Ubuntu News Archives

While the Mir display server isn't being relied upon by the desktop in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, it is being used right now by Ubuntu Touch and Canonical developers are still working on its development in a steadfast manner for deployment in a future Ubuntu Linux release. Here's some of the latest commits to Mir.

With my upgrade to a new Intel Haswell ultrabook from ASUS, I am no longer relying upon an Apple Retina MacBook Pro and thus no OS X... I also switched from Unity to Xfce with my Linux environment. However, so far it hasn't been a totally positive experience.

Besides running benchmarks this weekend on the ASUS UX301LA with Linux and Windows, I've also been running some desktop environment tests of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

The feature of Ubuntu on phones that Mark Shuttleworth is talking up this weekend is... the bottom edge of the phone in Ubuntu.

The latest work out of Canonical's Mir team for the Ubuntu display server is beginning to form its own custom renderer fore its demo-shell.

Robert Carr at Canonical has ported Google's Chromium web-browser to Mir. The "Mir-Ozone" component allows Chromium to run natively on Mir, which in turn is based on Wayland code.

Our latest benchmarks of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in its current development form come from testing it on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud.

The Ubuntu flavors that participate in doing development builds are today releasing their first beta of the 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" release.

The latest Ubuntu App Showdown is now taking place for trying to promote more applications for Ubuntu's SDK that's important for their mobile endeavours as well as their Linux desktop.

As of today it's become more easily possible to try out the experimental Unity 8 desktop interface (compared to the Unity 8 mobile version for the phone/tablet) and powered by the Mir Display Server when running the latest Ubuntu 14.04 packages.

Last week we were in on the conference call announcing Ubuntu shipping on phones from two vendors in 2014 along with talk of other new Ubuntu phone goals. Now with Mobile World Congress having kicked off in Barcelona, we have a look at the first Ubuntu Phone set to debut later this year from BQ.

As of this morning the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" feature freeze is now in effect.

A new feature added to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" is the Unity desktop finally adding back support for locally integrated menus.

Mark Shuttleworth has just revealed there's two manufacturing partners for Ubuntu Mobile and they will have devices shipping in 2014.

Besides announcing two partners shipping Ubuntu phones in 2014, Mark Shuttleworth's comments around the app ecosystem were also interesting.

Ubuntu 14.04 right now is officially still with using the Linux 3.13 kernel but Ubuntu kernel developers have begun toying with the Linux 3.14 kernel.

This morning I wrote about Mesa 10.1 likely going into Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, but if you were hoping this means Ubuntu will enable VDPAU driver support for open-source hardware-accelerated video decoding, that improvement to video playback isn't going to happen with the official Ubuntu Mesa/Gallium3D driver packages.

It looks like Mesa 10.1 will make it into Ubuntu 14.04 LTS ahead of its feature freeze.

While Mir is not going to premiere in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and might not even be ready for Ubuntu 14.10, upstream development of this next-generation display server for Ubuntu to compete with Wayland is still being developed at full-speed.

After it came out some months ago that Canonical was trying to charge Linux Mint for its usage of Ubuntu as a base for the Linux distribution, the lead Kubuntu developer has made it clear that anyone is free to base off their KDE-focused Ubuntu distribution without fear of being charged.

It looks like on Wednesday will be Canonical's first big Ubuntu Phone/Mobile announcement since the failed Ubuntu Edge crowd-funding campaign.

Ubuntu developers can soon look forward to many improvements in the Ubuntu App development platform via its SDK.

Curious how Ubuntu's "convergence mode" is working out for having an application written against their SDK running across phones, tablets, and desktops? Here's a video demonstration.

Ubuntu is in need of more Developer Membership Board nominations for those interested. There were three DMB seats being opened up for expiring terms but there have been insufficient nominations to date.

Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS was released this week and while the "Precise Pangolin" Long-Term Support release will still be maintained through 2017 with package updates, this was the last planned point release / ISO with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS just being a few months away. However, now it looks like an Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS will happen to port some of the hardware enablement changes.

The nearly two-year-old Ubuntu "Precise Pangolin" has seen a point release today bringing it up to its 12.04.4 LTS as it brings in the key software components originally found in Ubuntu 13.10.

SDL, the library commonly used by cross-platform games for abstracting large portions of their input and output handling, now has support for running on Canonical's Mir Display Server for Ubuntu Linux.

The latest piece of the desktop Linux stack that Ubuntu developers are planning to replace with their own home grown solution is a file manager.

Mir, the display server currently powering Ubuntu Touch and will be on the desktop side with Ubuntu 14.10, is working on its screen-casting support.

After yesterday sharing a few early OpenGL benchmarks between Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS and 14.04 LTS in its current development form, here are a number of processor and system benchmarks between the two Long-Term Support Ubuntu Linux releases.

Unity 7 in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS will be picking up some new features even though Canonical's major focus is on Unity 8 that will come past this next Long-Term Support release.

Various flavors of Ubuntu 14.04 have come out today with their Trusty Tahr Alpha 2 spins.

Canonical's Mir Display Server for Ubuntu Linux now has screen rotation support in the form of implementing it via its OpenGL renderer.

Canonical developers are currently deciding whether to drop OpenJDK from the main Ubuntu Linux archive and move it into the universe repository for the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS release.

Mark Shuttleworth and other Canonical employees have in the past talked about 2014 as being when Ubuntu Touch will begin appearing on devices... Now that 2014 is here, the word now is that it will likely not be until 2015 when an Ubuntu Phone is coming out of any major device manufacturers.

Canonical, the legal entity around Ubuntu Linux, is still operating at a loss of millions of dollars each year. Making the rounds on the Internet this morning is Canonical's UK financial report for the 2013 fiscal year.

Canonical developers have started a new week by releasing Mir 0.1.4, to benefit Ubuntu Touch users and those early adopters on the desktop side looking to move early to Mir.

A Canonical developer has introduced a new utility this week called "mirout" for handling display information on Mir.

It looks like the first official Ubuntu Phone may have been outed this weekend just ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show this coming week.

A new feature to the Mir display server being developed by Canonical for Ubuntu Linux is the Compositor Report.

While Wayland 1.4 is set to be released next month with many new features and has seen contributors from many different companies, the Mir Display Server for Ubuntu continues to be developed exclusively by Canonical.

Canonical has announced an early Christmas present for Ubuntu Touch fans in the form of support for dual-booting with Android.

Canonical developers tagged the Mir 0.1.3 release before calling it a week.

Many Ubuntu-based distributions are doing their 14.04 "Trusty Tahr" Alpha 1 release today, except for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Alpha 1 itself.

The 14.04 "Trusty Tahr" operating system release will be the first version of Ubuntu Linux shipping SSD TRIM support by default.

The latest developer package uploads into Ubuntu 14.04 "Trusty Tahr" allow for cross-compiling CMake-based projects, e.g. compiling Mir and Unity 8 for ARM from an x86 system.

It is possible to install Valve's SteamOS modified Linux kernel onto an Ubuntu Linux installation, but I would recommend against doing so, at least for now.

The latest open-source project being forked by the Ubuntu developers at Canonical is the GNOME Control Center. In Ubuntu 14.04, there will now be the Unity Control Center.

With the latest Ubuntu Touch image there is now support for running Mir on the Google Nexus 10 tablet.

With Canonical now focusing on making Mir ready for its desktop premiere in Ubuntu 14.10 but already shipping and supporting Mir for Ubuntu Touch, it's time for another Mir display server update. This week's Mir 0.1.2 update carries at least 52 changes.