14 DAY TRIAL // Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) is going to integrate full support in Mir for the latest Vulkan 1.0 specifications.
Vulkan is stealing all the headlines in the Linux world and with good reason. It’s an incredible leap forward for the open source platform, even if Vulkan is technically aimed at all the major operating systems, including Windows, Android, and even Tizen.
From the looks of it, even if the hardware industry was well aware of the schedule for the release of Vulkan 1.0, there were some people surprised by the announcement and companies were not ready from the get-go with drivers and proper support. It’s true that some of them have landed Beta drivers, but we were expecting more.
Vulkan is a portable low-level graphics API that is built to work across many GPU vendors and operating systems, which means that in theory it should become much more efficient than the existing OpenGL or DirectX solution. You’ve read that right, for now this is pretty much in theory as Vulkan requires a lot more work and optimizations.
Vulkan for Mir
That doesn’t mean that companies and developers mustn’t prepare for it. This is why Canonical aims to have Vulkan support in Mir, in time for the Ubuntu 16.04 launch.
“It's officially out. Full support in the Mir display server will be landing in time for inclusion in Ubuntu 16.04,” wrote today on Google+ Stephen M. Webb, who is a software engineer working for Canonical.
This isn’t exactly a surprise since Canonical is also in talks with Nvidia, Intel, and AMD. They need these companies to provide driver support for the new Mir display server, and since these hardware makers are trying to make Vulkan happen, it is only natural for Canonical to do the same.
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) is expected to arrive on April 21. It will most likely have two versions, one with X server and Unity 7, and one with Mir and Unity 8.