Days after merging the code, Intel has pulled support for XMir from its Xorg driver branch. According to a report by OMGUbuntu, the escalation comes after a commit from Canonical’s Christopher Halse Rogers from 4 September to Intel’s xf86-video-intel driver was reverted on 7 September.
The report said that Intel’s decision wasn’t completely impartial. The technology giant has a stake in the success of Wayland, which is the next generation display server on Linux. It has employed several developers to work on it full time.
OMGUbuntu also quoted Michael Hall, who wrote on Google+ that Intel was trying to win the race by tripping the competition and not by running faster. Canonical, on the other hand, is set to enable Xmir in the Ubuntu 13.10 for all hardware that supports it.
The company is planning to include the patches in its downstream packages, even though the removal of XMir support from the Intel drivers is a backward step of sorts. So, if an user is using Intel graphics on Ubuntu 13.10, it will continue to support XMir like it has done till now through the patches.
According to Canonical’s Alan Pope, the impact of Intel’s decision will mean more work for Canonical.
