Hello Linux Geeksters. Mir 0.1.7 (which is now implemented on the current images of Ubuntu Touch) has been recently released, coming with bug-fixes, support for screencasting, a shell authorization feature has been added, while the cursor support for Unity 8 and the compositor/gl renderer split interfaces are under work.
But Canonical has already started the work at Mir 0.1.8, which will get a mirserver ABI bump, logging support for HWC events, decorations for the Mir demo-shell and multi-monitor improvements, among others.
For now, Canonical is optimizing Mir for phones and tablets only, but this does not mean that the improvements won’t be adopted also on the Mir for desktop version. Most likely, Mir will be set as default on Ubuntu 16.04, the next LTS release, but it may be available in an usable form, for Ubuntu 14.10.
The story so far:
Canonical has been working a lot at Ubuntu Touch, the mobile version of Ubuntu. While the initial plan was to make it available for all the Google Nexus smartphones and tablets, the developers have dropped the support for Galaxy Nexus, Google Nexus 7 2012 and Google Nexus 10, Ubuntu Touch being officially available only for the Google Nexus 4 smartphone and the Google Nexus 7 2013 tablet.
Until now, there aren’t a lot of applications for Ubuntu Touch available, Canonical’s Mark Shuttleworth hopes that by the time the first Ubuntu Touch powered phones hit the market, the top 50 Android/iOS apps will be available for Ubuntu Touch.
While Canonical is working its own email client for Ubuntu Touch (based on Trojita), a Telegram client specially optimized for Ubuntu Touch and Unity 8 is on the way, so the Ubuntu Touch app ecosystem is still growing.
Also worth mentioning, 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).