Earlier today [Mark Shuttleworth blogged](https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1269) about the evolution of [Mir](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mir), the powerful display server we are building as one component in the Ubuntu convergence story across desktops, phones, tablets, and more, but also as a general purpose display server that other distributions, desktops, and other upstreams can use too.
Mir will be [landing by default in Ubuntu 13.10](https://fridge.ubuntu.com/2013/06/27/mir-plans-in-13-10/) with the XMir compatability layer to ensure we can continue to ship our existing Unity codebase and to ensure that any and all other distributions can ship their desktops too. This will be the first major distribution to ship a next-generation display server, not only on a desktop, but also on phones and tablets too.
I recommend you read Mark’s post in full, but I want to highlight this piece in particular:
> On Ubuntu, we’re committed that every desktop environment perform well with Mir, either under X or directly. We didn’t press the ‘GO’ button on Mir until we were satisfied that the whole Ubuntu community, and other distributions, could easily benefit from the advantages of a leaner, cleaner graphics stack. We’re busy optimising performance for X now so that every app and every desktop environment will work really well in 13.10 under Mir, without having to make any changes. And we’re taking patches from people who want Mir to support capabilities they need for native, super-fast Mir access. Distributions should be able to provide Mir as an option for their users to experiment with very easily – the patch to X is very small (less than 500 lines). For now, if you want to try it, the easiest way to do so is [via the Ubuntu PPA](https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/installing-and-testing-ubuntus-mir-server/4456?tag=main;river-newest). It will land in 13.10 just as soon as our QA and release teams are happy that its ready for very widespread testing.
In a nutshell, we are passionate about encouraging not only Ubuntu flavors, but all distributions (either Ubuntu-derived or not) to be able to harness Mir as a powerful next-generation display server for either shipping their X desktop with XMir or harnessing Mir directly. From 13.10 onwards we will have a production-stable, fully supported Mir ready for everyone to use.
To put it clearly: while Mir will serve the needs of Unity well across a range of devices, it is *not only intended for Unity*, it is intended to serve other environments across a range of devices too.
Last week I reached out to most of our flavors to discuss this work (and discuss many related topics with the Mir engineers), and these discussions are continuing this week. I have also been in touch with some other distributions to discuss Mir support. Obviously we will be working closely with Debian to help get Mir in the Debian archives too.
Mir is Free Software (get the [code](https://code.launchpad.net/mir) or [test from a PPA](https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/opensource/installing-and-testing-ubuntus-mir-server/4456?tag=main;river-newest)), discussed openly on [mir-devel](https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/mir-devel) (see the [archive](https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/mir-devel/)), and we provide weekly updates from *Kevin Gunn*, Mir Engineering Manager every Tuesday at 5pm UTC on [Ubuntu On Air](https://ubuntuonair.com/). We are also refining our documentation to help folks write clients (see the [API](https://unity.ubuntu.com/mir/group__mir__toolkit.html), the [sample client](https://unity.ubuntu.com/mir/demo_client_8c.html), and [other documentation](https://unity.ubuntu.com/mir/)). If you have any other questions about adding Mir support, feel free to get in touch with the Mir team on mir-devel.
**tl;dr: the Mir team are very open to discussing the needs of upstreams and distributions. Get in touch on [mir-devel](https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/mir-devel) or feel free to send me an email and I will put you in touch with the right person.**
