Wayland Is Still In Ubuntu 14.10

While Canonical is putting all of its eggs with their Mir display server to fulfill their desktop convergence strategy and providing the next-generation Ubuntu display experience, Wayland isn't totally off-limits for users -- at least through Ubuntu 14.10.

Still packages and found within the Ubuntu Utopic (14.10) archive are the various Wayland packages. Right now within Ubuntu Universe is Wayland 1.5, the Weston 1.5 compositor release, and various other Wayland-related packages like for VA-API acceleration, the basic GLMark2 benchmark for Wayland, etc. Granted, most of these packages were just supplied by the upstream Debian base and are of no special interest to Canonical. The Wayland packages for Utopic can be found by this package search.

With now having X.Org Server 1.16 there is also the mainline XWayland support for running legacy X11 applications on Wayland.

Ubuntu 14.10 on the desktop will still use the X.Org Server by default while Mir continues to run on the Ubuntu Touch/Phone form factors with the Android drivers. The Wayland packages just reside in the universe archive if you want to play around with them or wish to try an experimental Enlightenment or GNOME desktop (among others) with Wayland. Wayland 1.5 is the current stable release but is quickly being succeeded by Wayland 1.6 although it's likely too late for making this quarterly update into the Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn release.