14 DAY TRIAL // Ubuntu developers are working on implementing a fresh version of the cairo library in Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) in order to get support for high-resolution displays (HiDPI).
Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) will be supported for five years, so it's safe to assume that the operating system will run on some high-resolution displays, even in the near future. The prices are prohibitive for now, but very soon they will become the norm and Ubuntu must be ready ahead of time.
“Better support for Hi-DPI screen is a topic that is being discussed for the coming LTS. One required component is cairo. Since upstream didn't roll tarballs, since scaling support landed, I just did a git snapshot and uploaded it to the ubuntu-desktop ppa.”
“Testing/comments are welcome, if you want to test that version. Having an official upstream tarball would be nice, but until that happens we can still try moving forward by testing their current codebase,” said Ubuntu developer Sebastien Bacher.
We can only hope that, by the time of the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is released in April, a final stable version of cairo will be available. Until then, we'll settle with the development version.