Ubuntu is an operating system for the server, the cloud, the desktop, and the mobile device.  One single OS.  That makes it different from Apple’s OSes (Mac OS X on the desktop, iOS on the mobile) and Microsoft’s current OSes (Windows 8 on the desktop, Windows RT on the mobile, and Windows Server 2012 on the server and in the cloud).

Screenshot of Unity7 running on Mir (click to embiggen).

At least that’s the plan.  It’s not yet the reality because there isn’t really a shipping Ubuntu for mobile.  Sure, there’s lots of preview releases, but only a shipping version is a shipping version.

So what needs to be done before we have full convergence to a single OS?

Well, one of the things Canonical has been working on is a replacement for the venerable X11 display server traditionally used in most GNU/Linux environments.  They’re developing something they’ve called Mir, from the Russian мир meaning “world” or “peace” (but not “world peace”) and the name of the Soviet space station, in keeping with a general space-exploration theme in and around Ubuntu, for reasons.  It’s also a German language pronoun (first person singular dative case), as in “show me,” because the original architect was a German national.  Really, I’m making this up as I go along and if you’re not one of the tl;dr crowd consider yourself appreciated. This new display server has been discussed in great detail elsewhere and is under active development.  The important take away is that in order to run effectively on the mobile form factors, the X11 server needs to be replaced.

This is where Unity8 comes in to the picture.  You may have read elsewhere about “Unity Next”, which was a working title for the new Unity in the queue.  It’s now more formally known as Unity 8, because it supersedes the current Unity 7 as the one single Unity (there can be only one).  Unity 8 is designed to run natively on the Mir compositor, fancy term for what X11 called a display server.  That’s what will be on the mobile offering, currently dubbed “Ubuntu Touch”.  It’s also what will be on the desktop in the fully converged world.

A replacement for X11 is fine for a phone or a tablet and all, but Ubuntu already has a good thing going with the classic GNU/Linux milieu on the desktop, which is heavily dependent on X.  We can’t just throw all that away.  So, we need an X11 server running on top of the Mir compositor so all those legacy applications folks and grown to know and love will continue to run just like forever.  This is where something dubbed Xmir comes in to play:  It’s an x.org driver that fits in to the x.org X11 server just like the nVidia, AMD, and Intel drivers do and lets the X11 server run on top of Mir.  Cast your gaze at the screencap in this article:  you’re seeing Unity 7 running on Mir on Saucy (the clue is the unity-system-compositor line in the process tree seen in the screencap).  This is just like magic.  And, because accelerated graphics are still a work in progress, it’s mighty slow magic at this pre-release point.  Oh, and yes I see the crash reporter running in the process listing.  I do these things so you don’t have to.

What we’re going to do for the Saucy Salamander release of Ubuntu is make a Unity8 Desktop preview available for those who want to take it for a test drive.  You’re going to be able to choose to have the option of logging in to either a regular Unity7 session with X11 running, or a Unity8 session without X11.  And that, folks, is where the excitement starts.

We shipped Unity 7.0 in Ubuntu 13.04.  The version we’re going to ship in Ubuntu 13.10 is Unity 7.1.

Screenshot of “100 scopes” in action in Saucy Salamander (click to embiggen).

I don’t want to mislead you here:  there is some new functionality coming and in fact has already landed in release previews.  What most people will notice is something we’ve been calling “100 scopes”, which is a greatly expanded set of sources for your searches.  I’m not sure if there are actually one hundred sources or if it’s a good deal more or less, it’s just a name, but it does seem like there are significantly more data sources that are used to satisfy your queries.

One of the other aspects of this “100 scopes” work is that many of the back ends — processes that run in the background performing searches for you so the graphics user interface will continue to operate smoothly — were rewritten to reduce the amount of memory and CPU they consume.

Some of the other upcoming new functions being added include the ability to purchase items from their source directly through the Dash.  In other words, you can search for what you desire using the Dash, select a result, and purchase it directly from, say, Amazon, without even opening up your browser.

Some other changes are going on behind the scenes, mostly related to the exciting mobile-desktop convergence store that’s at the heart of Ubuntu’s future.  That, however, is another story for another day.

I’d also like to emphasize that the work that Canonical is doing for the phone form factor will not be affecting the work my team is doing on the Ubuntu desktop, at least not for Raring Ringtail. We have a single common Unity that runs across all the form factors, but part of the expression of Unity is that it works appropriately under different circumstances and what’s appropriate for the desktop is not always appropriate for the phone, and vice-versa. This is not Microsoft Windows 8, we’re not going to try to turn your desktop into a big touch-based phone without the dialy-talky bits. I fully expect improvements and enhancements that are a result of the work done for the phone to make their way onto the desktop over the next few releases, but for 13.04 we’re a team focused on bug fixes and usability enhancements.

But I am very excited about the phone.

Your humble author working hard at UDS in Copenhagen.

Last October at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Copenhagen Canonical decided it would dedicate a team of developers exclusively to the task of maintaining and enhancing the Unity desktop shell for the next official release, codenamed Raring Ringtail, scheduled for April of 2013.  I was asked to lead that effort.

Over the last several Ubuntu releases I heard and read a lot of comments to the effect that Canonical was always pushing new features into the Unity desktop shell and ignoring the existing problems.  This was not really true, a good deal of effort was devoted to fixing bugs and in fact two squads (an internal organizational unit within Canonical) spent a mini-cycle doing just that for the 12.10 release, but because a whole lot of new features landed the fact that the old features were working better was lost in the noise and dust.

Dedicated Unity Maintenance Team for 13.04

For 13.04 this has all changed.  Oh, there’s still ongoing feature development work, there’s no reason to stop that, but for the first time we have a full team dedicated exclusively to the goal of fixing problems in the existing Unity desktop shell software.  We’re not working on adding new features.  We’re making what’s there work and work better.

Of course, Unity in 13.04 will not be perfect:  there have been hundreds of problems reported and many of them are unreproducible by any of my team and the original reporter may not follow up with additional information when requested.  It’s also a fact that although we are a full and dedicated team we do not have unlimited resources so we have of necessity triaged and prioritized bugs with the desktop and design teams, and there may be someone’s favourite bug that is just going to go unloved for this cycle.  It’s also true that some consider some designed features of Unity to be bugs and we’re not going to “fix” those, so don’t expect Unity to suddenly start working like Microsoft’s Windows XP user interface come next spring.

All of the work we’re doing is fully in public view, managed through Launchpad.  We have ongoing involvement by community contributors and of course we welcome as much help as any of you can give use (there are always more bugs to fix, code to review, automated test cases to write, and interactive testing to do). We’re proud of what we’re doing, and we’re excited to be able to do it.  I’m looking forward to a smooth, better-than-ever Ubuntu desktop in 13.04.

For a non-insider (that is, someone who is not an official Debian Developer), getting a package into the Debian distribution and, by proxy, into the Ubuntu distribution requires getting the attention of someone with sufficient interest and privilege to do the actual upload. It’s called finding a sponsor in Debian parlance, and it’s sometimes a bit of a challenge.

The traditional approach for the last while is to build a source package for your software, make it available somewhere over the internet, and then post a message to the debian-mentors@lists.debian.org mailing list and hope that someone takes the bait. This is usually followed by pleads in IRC and follow-up messages to the mainling list.

Recently, a new workflow was set up in which you file a bug against the sponsorship-requests pseudopackage and hope that someone is interested. Among the advantages of this new workflow is that (a) it’s similar to other Debian workflows you need to learn when packaging software for Debian (for example, the WNPP pseudo-package) and (2) there is a place where sponsorship requests are aggregated.

It’s a fast, easy to use, and (in my experience) effective way to find a sponsor for your package in Debian. Here’s the basic workflow you need to follow.

1. State your intention by filing and ITP or ITA bug with WNPP.
2. Package your software.
3. Upload the source package to mentors.debian.net.
4. Use reportbug or send an email to submit@bugs.debian.org with a carefully formatted message — see this for an example.  There is no reportbug template available for the sponsorship-requests pseudo-package, so using your usual mail program will probably be easier for now.
5. When your new bug is confirmed, link to to your WNPP bug if necessary (and it should be necessary). The command “bts affects SRbug + src:srcpkg . block WNPPbug by SRbug” will do.
6. Sit back and wait.

This new workflow is remarkably similar to filing an upload request through Launchpad.  I assure you it’s a complete coincidence and convergent evolution at work.