Blog posts written by Alan Griffiths

Alan Griffiths
25 February 2021

Creating Graphical Shells – Try Mir in a Virtual Machine

Internet of Things Article

What is Mir? Mir is a set of libraries for creating graphical shells for Linux on a range of hardware. This means that there are a number of shells based on Mir and they work on some very different form factors. Mir is what glues together the “shell” experience, the applications and the hardware: Mir ...

Alan Griffiths
3 July 2020

A snap confined shell based on Mir: Mircade

Internet of Things Article

Mircade: An example snap confined user shell There are various scenarios and reasons for packaging a Snap confined shell and a selection of applications together in a confined environment. You might have applications that work well together for a particular task; or, you may want to offer a number of alternative applications and have them ...

Alan Griffiths
24 July 2019

Mir support for Wayland

Internet of Things Article

What is Mir, what is Wayland, do I care? Shells for graphical interfaces come in many forms, from digital signage and kiosks that just show a single full screen application; to desktop environments that manage multiple applications, multiple screens and multiple workspaces. Traditionally, shells are built from a number of closely coupled ...

Alan Griffiths
19 December 2018

Unity8: a project that uses Mir

Desktop Article

Unity8 is a graphical shell targeting a range of devices and form factors including phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. Unity8 uses the facility to customize Mir’s default window management to give its “convergent” experience. In addition to the phones and tablets supported by Ubuntu Touch work is in progress to adapt Unity8 for use on ...

Alan Griffiths
19 November 2018

egmde: a project that uses Mir

Desktop Development

Display servers solve a large and complex problem. Mir provides a broad and powerful library to solve those problems, but there is a learning curve to use Mir effectively. It is really helpful to have a step-by-step example that covers enough of the issues to get a decent start. To address this need there’s a ...

Alan Griffiths
4 October 2018

How mir-kiosk enables a graphical IoT using Mir

Internet of Things Case study

If you have a problem… if you just need support for one fullscreen application… and, if you can use snaps… maybe you can use… mir-kiosk. Many devices need to provide some sort of graphical output or display (with the options of keyboard, mouse and touchscreen input) to the user. Some examples include interactive kiosks, digital ...

Alan Griffiths
21 September 2018

IoT Graphics: Mir Release 1.0

Internet of Things Article

The Mir team is pleased to announce the milestone release of Mir 1.0.0. This is the first major release targeted at IoT device makers and enthusiasts looking to build the next-generation of graphical solutions. Mir is a display server and is used by other projects to draw graphics on the screen. The Mir team have ...