I have been debating writing about this since we are mainly a gaming news site (I should really setup another site for all the other Linux news I want to write about!), but Canonical switching back to GNOME on Ubuntu is very big news for everyone.
Question: Is there any interest in me doing a separate site to cover general Linux news?
Mark Shuttleworth, Founder of Ubuntu and Canonical wrote a rather shocking blog post announcing that Ubuntu 18.04 will officially drop the Unity desktop environment. If you didn't hear about it due to living under a large rock, let that sink in for a moment. Ubuntu is dropping a desktop environment they've worked on for years and poured tons of resources into building and rewriting for Unity 8.
I've had some time to let the news sink in now, after initially thinking it was a late April fools joke, when in reality it's very real and it makes perfect sense.
Unity was part of a long-term plan for Canonical with Ubuntu as part of their convergence strategy, which ultimately failed to gain any real traction. There's only so much time and money you can put into something when it's not giving you the results you wanted and it seems Canonical is in need of investors, as it turns out it has had to cut its workforce.
This now means there's going to be a little less fragmentation when it comes to the Linux desktop too. For all the good it does having lots of choice, having likely the biggest desktop-Linux distribution use a more standard desktop will help many things. For one thing, developers will no longer have to work around Unity/Compiz specific issues in games. It will also help the stability of GNOME Shell too, since they have even more people using it and working on it thanks to this.
This, in turn, makes Ubuntu go back to what made me originally love it. A polished GNOME desktop experience released every 6 months with the latest and greatest with a little extra love and polish thrown in for good measure. A good, solid desktop experience to introduce people new to Linux with. To me, it sounds fantastic again.
As expected, Unity 8 looks like it will be carried on by a few developers. Will be interesting to see if this actually gains any traction, or if it will fade away with little interest. Personally, I don't see any need to continue it, we have enough desktops already with GNOME Shell, KDE, Xfce, Budgie, LXQt, Cinnamon, MATE and the list goes on and on. Enough already I say, they all vary a lot in terms of features and time could be better spent on many others parts of the Linux desktop now.
Finally, I'm still very happy after switching from Ubuntu to Antergos. I've now settled with the GNOME Shell desktop with two extensions and it's glorious:
I couldn't imagine having to go back to PPAs again to get extra software, my love for the Arch AUR is never ending.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: liamdaweHave they actually confirmed this anywhere? Mir wasn't mentioned in the initial post from Mark.
Ars Technica says that Canonical Community Manager Michael Hall confirmed it to them:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/ubuntu-unity-is-dead-desktop-will-switch-back-to-gnome-next-year/
RussianNeuroMancer Apr 7, 2017
Quoting: EikeI'm sad that this puts the end to a possible alternative for mobile phones.SailfishOS and Tizen is still around.
Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: STiATThough, in this article, you missed out the most important fact for Linux Gaming: Mir is going away. They confirmed that they'll be switching to Gnome+Wayland, abdoning Mir and Unity. That is the best thing about the news - we finally get rid of the split graphics stack in a critical path.Have they actually confirmed this anywhere? Mir wasn't mentioned in the initial post from Mark.
Arstechnica apparently asked and got a response by Michael Hall:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/ubuntu-unity-is-dead-desktop-will-switch-back-to-gnome-next-year/
I can't confirm it now (arstechnica dns servers are down), but wikipedia obviously did:
Wikipedia: Mir (Software)
QuoteMir is a discontinued computer display server for the Linux operating system that was under development by Canonical Ltd. It was planned to replace the currently used X Window System for Ubuntu.[3][4][5]
QuoteOn April 5, 2017, Canonical announced that with the release of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, the Unity 8 interface would be abandoned in favor of GNOME. When asked if the decision would also mean the end of Mir development, Canonical's Michael Hall said that given the divergent development paths taken by Mir and its competitor, Wayland, "Using Mir simply isn't an option we have."[7]
Last edited by STiAT on 7 April 2017 at 10:52 am UTC
I am currently using i3, which is a tiling window manager, but I hope to switch to a more flexible one in the future. I haven't really liked the result after I configured awesome or xmonad though.
I don't believe, for now, that what we will see in 18.04 will be a stock Gnome 3. I downloaded a ISO from Ubuntu Gnome 17.04 to check it out and my God, what a mess was that. It is too alien for a new user, make no sense for those who came from a tradicional desktop Like Gnome 2 or KDE, exactly like the mistakes Microsoft did with Windows 8, but in a different form. And what STUPID thing to disable by default "tap to touch" option? Now I understand why people did fork the hell of Gnome 2.
With that said, I bet Cannonical will put a makeup in Gnome 3 to make it look like Unity. If not, they will loose more users than they already have.
QuoteQuestion: Is there any interest in me doing a separate site to cover general Linux news?No, there is enough redundancy already.
I'd rather have an ever improving GoL.
Quoting: RussianNeuroMancerQuoting: EikeI'm sad that this puts the end to a possible alternative for mobile phones.SailfishOS and Tizen is still around.
I didn't say there's no alternative, but let me do so: I don't think there's an alternative for smartphones that's viable for me. I bought my first smartphone just some months ago because some people seem to have forgotten how to communicate if you don't have WhatsApp.(*) So a smartphone to be useful to me needs to be a) available in Germany, b) have a decent amounts of Apps, including c) WhatsApp. What's left then?
(*) Yes, this is sad.
Quoting: EikeSailfishOS is decent enough, with android 4.1 app support and you can even install google play unofficially. That being said I think the community is kind of bad/silent and I don't see many of the improvements that I want. I have never tried whatsapp so I have no idea if that works or not.Quoting: RussianNeuroMancerQuoting: EikeI'm sad that this puts the end to a possible alternative for mobile phones.SailfishOS and Tizen is still around.
I didn't say there's no alternative, but let me do so: I don't think there's an alternative for smartphones that's viable for me. I bought my first smartphone just some months ago because some people seem to have forgotten how to communicate if you don't have WhatsApp.(*) So a smartphone to be useful to me needs to be a) available in Germany, b) have a decent amounts of Apps, including c) WhatsApp. What's left then?
(*) Yes, this is sad.
Quoting: KetilSailfishOS is decent enough, with android 4.1 app support and you can even install google play unofficially. That being said I think the community is kind of bad/silent and I don't see many of the improvements that I want. I have never tried whatsapp so I have no idea if that works or not.
I guess the best bet nowadays is Cyanogen/LineageOS. I went with Android (Moto G4) and deinstalling/deconfiguring lots of Google stuff, though.
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