Your submission was sent successfully! Close

Thank you for contacting us. A member of our team will be in touch shortly. Close

You have successfully unsubscribed! Close

Thank you for signing up for our newsletter!
In these regular emails you will find the latest updates about Ubuntu and upcoming events where you can meet our team.Close

Build smart display devices with Mir: fast to production, secure, open-source

Alex Cattle

on 29 November 2019

This article is more than 4 years old.


Industrial robots, home appliances, advertising screens, office information boards… devices of every type around us are getting connected. As they do, their screens turn from single purpose displays to reconfigurable, multi-purpose smart display. As the amount of code required to build these displays, the production time and maintenance burden have increased, this has prompted device manufacturers to reconsider how they can build smart display devices faster and more securely based on open source frameworks.

Mir is a library for writing graphical shells for Linux and similar operating systems. Compared to traditional display servers, it offers numerous benefits that are important for IoT devices: efficiency, speed of development, security, performance, and flexibility. All are required by the devices of today, and even more so for the devices of tomorrow. In this whitepaper we’ll explain how Mir, alongside Ubuntu Core and Snapcraft, lets developers build devices that are ready for the future of IoT, while offering stable, secure and performant solutions to the problems the industry faces today.

In this whitepaper you will learn:

  • The history of Mir and why it was developed to solve reusability and security issues in IoT2
  • The technical architecture of the Mir display library and how Mir compares to alternative IoT technologies
  • Example use cases of Mir and how to get started on your smart display project with Mir

In submitting this form, I confirm that I have read and agree to Canonical’s Privacy Notice and Privacy Policy.

smart start

IoT as a service

Bring an IoT device to market fast. Focus on your apps, we handle the rest. Canonical offers hardware bring up, app integration, knowledge transfer and engineering support to get your first device to market. App store and security updates guaranteed.

Get your IoT device to market fast ›

smart start logo

IoT app store

Build a platform ecosystem for connected devices to unlock new avenues for revenue generation. Get a secure, hosted and managed multi-tenant app store for your IoT devices.

Build your IoT app ecosystem ›

Newsletter signup

Get the latest Ubuntu news and updates in your inbox.

By submitting this form, I confirm that I have read and agree to Canonical's Privacy Policy.

Related posts

Space pioneers: Lonestar gears up to create a data centre on the Moon

Why establish a data centre on the Moon? Find out in our blog.

Canonical at India Mobile Congress 2024 – a retrospective

With an ambition to become Asia’s technology hub for telecommunications in the 5G/6G era, India hosts the annual India Mobile Congress (IMC) in Pragati...

6 facts for CentOS users who are holding on

Considering migrating to Ubuntu from other Linux platforms, such as CentOS? Find six useful facts to get started!