Linux Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander review - the star didn't show up, but the show must go on (part 2)

The road to XMir

In 2013 Canonical announced they were developing a new display server called Mir that would replace currently used Xorg as input and display server. Xorg was developed back in the days and after 20 years it ended up being outdated. Mir was developed to support hardware acceleration having in mind modern video implementations and different kind of hardware. So Mir will ensure touchscreen gestures, switchable graphics hardware and multitasking support. The decision by Canonical to build its own server from scratch has raised harsh arguments. In fact there was already an alternative project called Wayland to develop a new display server. Linux Community considered it as the best candidate and they thought Canonical’s proprietary solution could cause duplications and delay the achievement of a viable solution. Canonical, on the other hand, believed that Wayland didn't meet Ubuntu’s needs. I won’t go into this hot topic. If you’re interested in more details about it, I will forward you to this article.

Ubuntu Touch

One of the most important developments resulting from Mir is Ubuntu Touch, that supports touchscreen on several mobile phones. You can consult the complete list of supported devices online.

Ubuntu Touch is very interesting because it supports common multitouch gestures like swiping and switching through menus without using hardware buttons. I will refer you to a sample video for a better understanding. It still needs development because several features have not been implemented yet, like an app store or web shortcuts to Facebook and Gmail. Users can download the Beta Version but, before installing it, it's warmly recommended to back up your phone data because the setup procedure will delete any existing information. For more details, visit this page.

Even though at the moment is surely unthinkable to speculate about a possible open-source competition to the major brands in this market, the growth outlook for this new feature is nonetheless very stimulating.

Final considerations

The new Linux release seems to be much more important as an anticipation of what will come next than in itself. Though it features some interesting implementation, most of all Smart Scopes and touchscreen support, it looks like an unfinished work. 

The 14.04 version to be released is supposed to be a long-term support version which will prepare the ground for the coming updates. If you want to have a flavor of what the new Unity 8 desktop will look like, Ubuntu 13.10 has an available preview of the Unity 8 touch environment that will be used on phones and tablets. To test it, you only have to install the “unity8” package from the repositories in Ubuntu 13.10. After installing the package, run the unity8command at the command line. The QML-based Unity 8 touch environment will open in a window.

The most important outcome of the 13.10 version is undoubtedly the increased reliability and stability of the operating system. Several bugs present in earlier versions have been corrected. The software does what it's supposed to do and does it good. The installation process is quite smooth (also in a virtual machine) and pretty fast, compared with the previous versions.

Ubuntu 13.10 marks an important checkpoint toward Linux evolution, but doesn't bring anything particularly exciting, like the halfway break of an uncertain match where still much is expected to happen.


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