Ubuntu 13.10

Thursday saw the release of Ubuntu “Saucy Salamander” 13.10, the first version of the Linux distribution to explicitly support smartphones and tablets, as well as desktop PCs and servers. There aren’t any Ubuntu mobile devices on sale yet – London-based sponsor company Canonical hopes these will arrive in 2014 – but there’s a long list of Android devices that can be flashed to use it.

However, while this is the first really touch-friendly version of Ubuntu, it’s incomplete in its mobile incarnation. For a start, there are hardly any smartphone or tablet apps for it yet, as is to be expected at this early stage. But there’s a far greater omission: Ubuntu Touch’s ability to run as full-blown desktop Ubuntu when hooked up to an HDMI monitor and Bluetooth keyboard.

This is because Ubuntu’s new mobile-friendly display server, Mir, is not quite ready yet for the operating system’s desktop flavor. It was supposed to replace the legacy X Window System in 13.10, but “outstanding technical difficulties” mean it will only land in the next version, 14.04, which is due in April. Hopefully.

“The desktop at this stage doesn’t fully support the new graphics architecture that is now enabled on the phone OS,” Richard Collins, Canonical’s product manager for mobile, told me. “It’s something we are working very rapidly towards.”

“At this stage we are looking to have Mir running on [the 14.04] release, probably initially as more of a specific release for [manufacturers] that feel they are in a position to produce hardware that wants that same graphics architecture to run. The full release, in terms of the main codebase that’s fully open, will be from 14.04 and beyond.”