Unity 8 and Mir are Canonical’s future generation desktop environment and display server, currently used on Ubuntu Touch (the mobile version of Ubuntu) and Ubuntu Desktop Next (an Ubuntu flavor created for testing Canonical’s latest technology: Mir, Unity, Snappy packages, etc).
Unity 8 and Mir have been recently updated, receiving both under the hood optimizations and new features. From the mailing lists:
Changes implemented in Unity 8:
- Spent some time on profiling continuing efforts with some tools we obtained from one of our hw partners
- Scope multimedia playback ready to go, just in the landing queue
- Continued working on social media features for scopes
- Continued working on life cycle for visibility, completed reviews now under test
- Completed one launcher feature parity item, quit on tooltip work continues for wiggling on notification & download animation
- Slim greeter work for integrating with liblightdm (step towards multiuser)
- Switcher iteration work towards desktop continues, also implementing phase 1
- Work continuing on new ubuntu shape in scope cards & new icon shapes
- Battled shell rotation landing, got bit by some dependency and ci-train having a wreck….but QA is testing over the weekend
Mir changes:
- Continued on buffer semantic changes (that will help nested bypass), have multibuffer stream exposed out to client, now working on the server to client direction
- Also work on dynamic double buffering (to move in and out of triple)
- Continued work on detecting hung client applications as a helper for shells
- Coordinating with upstream on input changes we proposed
- Still working through qtubuntu updates against mir for things like menu support
- Released an updated glmark2 package
- Mir-on-X pieces continue to get reviewed and land
- Still working on getting end-to-end input-to-render test instituted as part of the mir project CI
- Working on security stuff for mir snap
Canonical has created a special PPA that permits everybody to install and test Unity 8 and Mir, on the newest Ubuntu versions: Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf, Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet, Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn and Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr.
So, if you want to install and test Unity 8 and Mir, do the following.
$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:unity8-desktop-session-team/unity8-preview-lxc
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get install unity8-lxc
$ sudo unity8-lxc-setup