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It's a strange autumn where I live. The leaves haven't even thought of changing color yet and the days are still warm enough for short sleeves. All the analog world clues that a new version of Ubuntu is coming are missing. Coincidentally, the Ubuntu that Canonical has delivered this autumn is likewise most notable for what's missing.
Canonical has indeed delivered Ubuntu 13.10 on time. Saucy Salamander as this release is known has a few new features, but the real news is what's not there -- Mir/XMir.
This release was to mark the turning point of what may be Ubuntu's biggest leap to date -- replacing the aging X graphics stack with its own homegrown Mir system. Mir is <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/11/ubuntu_1310_to_ship_with_mir_instead_of_x/">Ubuntu's replacement for the X Window System</a> and is designed to help Ubuntu shed the confines of the desktop. Mir will allow Canonical to run Ubuntu on mobile and tablet devices, as well as the desktop, sharing a common code base among the various form factors.
While Mir is the end goal, for the beta period leading up to this release Ubuntu has been testing a halfway-to-Mir solution dubbed "XMir". The "X" in XMir refers to the fact that Mir is, for now, shipping with good old X server and will, when faced with unsupported drivers, gracefully fallback to X. In my testing XMir worked as advertised, handling two Intel graphics cards with open source drivers and falling back to X on a proprietary card.
However, a mere two weeks ahead of the final release Canonical changed its mind about using Mir as the default in this release. Citing "outstanding technical difficulties", Canonical developer Oliver Ries <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2013-October/037695.html">announced</a> the company would push back the move to XMir as the default graphics system.
Next Spring's 12.04 is a long term support release, which makes it unlikely that Canonical would make the move to XMir then either. That means XMir/Mir may not move to default status until this time next year.
As noted I have had zero problems with XMir on three different machines, but apparently I was lucky. It seems that dual-monitor setups were having problems. "The multi-monitor support in XMir is working," writes Ries on the Ubuntu mailing list, "but not to the extent we'd like to see it for all of our users." Given that proper handling of dual-monitors is supposed to be one of the big wins for Mir over X, it makes sense to postpone the move to default status if the experience isn't up to snuff.
Naturally if you really want to you can still install XMir. The package is in the Ubuntu Archives and the wiki has <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mir/Installing">instructions</a> on how to get it running. For most people it's probably not worth it, unless you just want to test Mir on your hardware. That said, Mir is supposed to be better with hardware that offers on/off discrete graphics. That is, laptops with cards like the NVIDIA Optimus, which allows you to toggle the discrete graphics card depending on current use -- e.g. on for 3D-intensive applications, off when you want to save power. If solutions like <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee">Bumblebee</a> (now a standard part of Ubuntu) aren't working for you, Mir might be worth a try.
Despite XMir not making the cut on the desktop, XMir for Ubuntu mobile remains on track. In the same message announcing that desktop XMir had been postponed, Ries goes on to say that native Mir and Unity 8 are coming to Ubuntu phones.
That, more than anything else, is emblematic of Ubuntu 13.10. In fact you can sum up this release in three words -- mobile, mobile, mobile.
The desktop release has the usual slew of minor updates, bug fixes and improvements, but aside from Smart Scopes -- which aren't really new, just greatly expanded -- there's little in the way of new features for the desktop version of Ubuntu 13.10.
The biggest news is that the Unity Dash sports some new search Scopes, over 100 in fact to search everything from your Firefox Bookmarks to Flickr photos to Picasa, Google Drive, Facebook, Wikipedia and many, many more. Like several new features in the Dash, Smart Scopes are a carry over from 13.04.
Smart Scopes first arrived on the scene in 12.10 with the controversial Amazon Scope, which added Amazon search "suggestions" to the Unity Dash. Canonical's plan was to include even more Smart Scopes in 13.04, but that didn't happen. Now Smart Scopes are here. The Unity Dash will now search across everything from Wikipedia to Reddit to Flickr.
How useful this is will depend on how you use (or want to use) the Unity Dash. If you see the Dash as little more than a glorified application launcher, the new clutter of results is going to get in your way. Fortunately you can turn off Smart Scopes on an individual basis (right click the scope) or completely using the settings panel.
If you use the Dash like a HUD version of Google then the new Smart Scopes will be a welcome addition. And the good news is that Smart Scopes get smarter, though it does take a while. In my review of the beta I questioned the learning abilities of the Scopes, but I'm happy to report that, while it's taken a bit longer than I expected, Smart Scopes have indeed become smarter the more I use them.
That said, I ended up disabling them anyway. I just don't find Smart Scopes particularly useful most of the time. On the rare occasion that a long forgotten photo from my Flickr stream serendipitously appeared I momentarily really liked Smart Scopes. The rest of the time I found myself wishing them away. What Smart Scopes need are a kind of keyword search capability like some browser URL bars offer. In other words, when I want to see results from Flickr, let me prefix my search with flickr: search term. Or amazon: search term. And so on. As it is I find Smart Scopes just clutter my results so I decided to forgo the potential serendipity and disabled them completely.
Other noticeable new features in 13.10 include a new keyboard applet for quick switching between keyboards (handy for those of you frequently writing in multiple languages). Ubuntu has also fixed a regression that made some Gnome apps -- notably the Nautilus file browser -- look out of place in Ubuntu's default theme. Despite some talk of replacing Firefox with Chrome as the default browser in 13.10, Firefox is still there. Other standard Ubuntu apps like Shotwell, LibreOffice and Thunderbird have all been updated, but there are no major changes in the default app suite.
If the new Smart Scopes don't tempt you to upgrade, well, that's understandable. There's not much else to 13.10, which, as it turns out, is not so saucy of a salamander after all.
There is, however, plenty of new and exciting things happening in the larger Ubuntu ecosystem. The desktop release may not have much pizazz this time around, but an entirely new phone platform helps make up for it.
As was the case with OS X when iOS first came on the scene, Ubuntu's desktop may take a back seat to the new mobile platform for a bit. That doesn't mean Canonical is abandoning the desktop, it just means that resources are limited and just like any other company, Canonical has to apply them to what needs them the most. Right now that seems to be the mobile platform, but I'd be surprised if it stayed that way.
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