Mir Release 2.3.2

[alan_g]

Mir 2.3.2 Release

We are pleased to announce the release of Mir 2.3.2.

For Ubuntu, Mir is available from the Mir PPAs .

It is also available as a source tarball .

Summary

This release is focused on improving the desktop experience and particularly working with X11 based applications. This includes basic cut & paste now working for X11 based application and HiDPI support for X11 applications.

Changelog

ABI summary:

• mirinputplatform ABI bumped to 8
• mirwayland ABI bumped to 2

Enhancements:

• First pass at copy/paste between Wayland and XWayland
• Hint to Firefox that it should use Wayland when launched by miral
• [Error handling] Report information from nested exceptions
• Use standard key repeat values
• [platforms] Enable linux-dmabuf on X11 and Wayland platforms
• [platforms/linux-dmabuf] Support the full range of driver-exposed formats
• [platforms/gbm-kms] Don’t warn about being unable to find the current mode of disconnected outputs
• [platforms/gbm-kms] Log exceptions in probe better
• [miral] Document miral::Window
• [miral] Document miral::display_configuration_options()
• [miral-kiosk] Allow wayland extensions to be configured in kiosks (and enable pointer confinement by default)
• [Wayland] Enable xdg_output_unstable_v1 by default
• [Mir-on-X] Improve HiDPI support for XWayland
• [mir-shell] Improve launching of GNOME Terminal.

Bugs fixed:

• Print help text to stdout instead of stderr. (Fixes #1043)
• [Wayland] Send sub-pixel input events to clients (Fixes: #1814, #1828)
• [miral] Clamp window resize to min/max. (Fixes #1821)
• [miral] Shrink initially maximized windows on restore. (Fixes #1817)
• [Wayland] Better help message when WAYLAND_DISPLAY in use. (Fixes: #1851)
• [platforms] Disable natural scrolling on the X11 and libinput platforms. (Fixes #1813)
• [miral-app] Use mktemp instead of deprecated tempfile (Fixes #1924)

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A note about using Nvidia

During testing of this release we noticed that one of our example servers (miral-shell) doesn’t work correctly on the Nvidia stack on Ubuntu 21.04. We tracked that down to a change in eglwayland.

This issue doesn’t affect any other servers we are aware of, our other examples and egmde are unaffected.

[alan_g]

Using the HiDPI support

There’s currently no utility to manage the HiDPI support for Mir servers, so here is an example of setting it:

1. Install the mir examples
   sudo apt install mir-demos mir-graphics-drivers-desktop

2. Switch to a VT
   Ctrl-Alt-F4

3. Start up miral-shell, capturing the log
   miral-shell &> miral-shell.log

4. Exit miral-shell
   Ctrl-Alt-BkSp

5. Extract your machine’s display configuration from the log. E.g.

layouts:
# keys here are layout labels (used for atomically switching between them)
# when enabling displays, surfaces should be matched in reverse recency order

  default:                         # the default layout

    cards:
    # a list of cards (currently matched by card-id)

    - card-id: 0
      eDP-1:
        # This output supports the following modes: 2560x1440@60.0
        #
        # Uncomment the following to enforce the selected configuration.
        # Or amend as desired.
        #
        # state: enabled        # {enabled, disabled}, defaults to enabled
        # mode: 2560x1440@60.0  # Defaults to preferred mode
        # position: [0, 0]      # Defaults to [0, 0]
        # orientation: normal   # {normal, left, right, inverted}, defaults to normal
        # scale: 1
        # group: 0      # Outputs with the same non-zero value are treated as a single display

      DisplayPort-1:
        # (disconnected)

      HDMI-A-1:
        # (disconnected)

      DisplayPort-2:
        # (disconnected)

6. Paste this into ~/.config/miral-shell.display, uncomment “scale” and change it to 2

7. Create a ~/.config/miral-shell.config as follows:

echo x11-scale=2 >> ~/.config/miral-shell.config`
echo display-config=static=/home/$USER/.config/miral-shell.display >> ~/.config/miral-shell.config
echo app-env=GDK_BACKEND=wayland,x11:QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland:SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland:-QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME:NO_AT_BRIDGE=1:QT_ACCESSIBILITY:QT_LINUX_ACCESSIBILITY_ALWAYS_ON:MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1:_JAVA_AWT_WM_NONREPARENTING=1:-GTK_MODULES:-OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP:-GNOME_ACCESSIBILITY:GDK_SCALE=2 >> ~/.config/miral-shell.config

Now when you login to “Mir shell” you will be running all applications (both Wayland and X11 at scale 2).

[Conan_Kudo]

I’ve pushed out Mir 2.3.2 to Fedora 33, 34 and Rawhide. It should show up in the next day or so, depending on mirror sync latency.

[burstxd]

I don’t see ‘Ubuntu on Mir’ on display manager after the installation… Is that normal? Wayland is very buggy…

[alan_g]

@burstxd

I don’t see ‘Ubuntu on Mir’ on display manager after the installation… Is that normal?

Yes. There has been no “Ubuntu on Mir” since 17.04. If you install as above you should get a “Mir shell” option for login (some DEs require a reboot before showing this).

You can also get a simple Mir based desktop called “egmde” using the egmde snap.