Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, Canonical has been working hart at Mir lately, their own display server, created to be a replacement for the old X.org server. While the initial plans were to integrate Mir in Ubuntu 13.10, the adoption of Mir has been rescheduled for performance reasons. Most likely, Mir will be used by default on Ubuntu 14.10, which will also come with Unity 8.
The Ubuntu developers have improved Mir a lot lately, adding SDL2 support and screen rotation. Now, a screencast utility has been added for Mir, coming with support for redrering to an off-screen buffer.
For those who don’t know yet, Canonical has been working a lot lately at both, Mir and Unity 8. While the two are already implemented by default on the Ubuntu Touch images, Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander and Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr still use the good old Unity 7 and the X.org system.
Mark’s Shuttleworth big dream is to reach full desktop-mobile convergence somewhere between the releases of Ubuntu 14.10 and Ubuntu 15.04 (between October 2014 and April 2015). Also worth mentioning: most likely the first smartphone with Ubuntu Touch pre-installed will be released in 2015.