14 DAY TRIAL // As we reported earlier this week, the soon-to-be-released Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system won't ship with the latest Mesa 13.0.x 3D Graphics Library, but with Mesa 12.0.6.
If you've read our previous report, you know that we provided users with detailed instructions on how to upgrade their Mesa graphics stack from version 12.0.6 to 13.0.4, but it now looks like Canonical's Timo Aaltonen has prepared a PPA (Personal Package Archive) for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.10 with Mesa 13.0.4.
"Mesa 13.0.x is not going to be in 16.04 LTS. And it has only been days since it received the 'dated' 12.0.6 release as an SRU together with 16.10," said Timo Aaltonen, Hardware Enablement, Field Expert Squad Team Lead at Canonical. "That said, 13.0.4 is now available on ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/updates for both 16.04 and 16.10."
Canonical's Mesa 13.0.4 is compiled against LLVM 3.9.1, here's how to install it
In the blog announcement, Timo Aaltonen informs those who are interested in bumping their Mesa 3D Graphics Library version to the 13.0 series that the packages are compiled against LLVM 3.9.1, which adds various improvements for AMD Radeon users. As such, you'll be able to play some of the latest games that required these components.
Of course, allowing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and 16.10 users to play the latest games is the main reason behind this PPA, and you can install it right now on your computer by opening the Terminal app and copy/pasting the following commands, one by one, hitting Enter after each one. There's no need to reboot your computer for the changes to take effect.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/updates -y
sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade
Timo Aaltonen was also kind enough to inform users that the upcoming Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) operating system, due for release on April 13, 2017, would ship with the soon-to-be-released Mesa 17 3D Graphics Library, which will be backported to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) later this year as part of the Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS point release.