In Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, the giant, insane, cyborg bear named Shardik is known by the forest dwelling people around his territory as Mir, the world beneath the world. Ubuntu’s naming of Mir probably leans more towards the African heritage deriving the name from “Mayor”, or “Leader”, but personally I like the insane bear analogy better. ThePowerBase.com has a story linked to fridge.ubuntu.com reporting that Ubuntu plans to ship their controversial replacement for X11 in the next version of Ubuntu, 13.10, by default, along with XMir, an X11 compatibility layer running on top of Mir.
Ubuntu announced Mir in March of this year, and assuming no delays on 13.10, that will mean a mere seven months of development from announcement to the users desktop. Shipping a complete replacement for X11 in such a short time frame is ambitious, to say the least. Ubuntu appears to be hoping to use this release as a major beta testing ground:
