The progress on Unity 8 and Mir is slow, but it's happening

Sep 18, 2014 15:05 GMT  ·  By

Canonical is also working on the Unity desktop environment and the Mir display server, alongside all the other projects. The devs have just released a small update to let us know what is happening on these fronts.

Ubuntu developers may be focused on some important releases right now, like the upcoming Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) or the new Ubuntu Touch for mobile devices, but they are also involved in projects like Mir and Unity 8.

The current generation of Ubuntu OSes uses the Unity 7 desktop environment, but a new one has been brewing for quite a while. It's already present in the mobile version of Ubuntu, along with the new display server Mir, but the intention is to bring it to the desktop as well.

The leader of those two projects, Kevin Gunn, usually posts some information about the progress made by the developer and this week we also got word of a few changes, although they are pretty sketchy.

According to the devs, some blockers for some of the touch/edge issues have been corrected, several translation bugs have been fixed, a few Dash UI-related bugs have been corrected, the team is now working on Mir 0.8, Mir 0.7.2 has been promoted, and the work on other high-priority bugs is still ongoing.

You can download Ubuntu Next that features the new Unity 8 and Mir, but there isn't much to see. It will be a while until it gets a definitive direction.