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.
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Have 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/
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Unity was unusable anyway, with their menu on top, for users of focus-follows-mouse.
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RussianNeuroMancer 7 Apr 2017
I'm sad that this puts the end to a possible alternative for mobile phones.SailfishOS and Tizen is still around.
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Though, 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)
Mir 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]
On 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 Apr 2017 at 10:52 am UTC
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Every person is different, so I think having a vast amount of desktops and window managers is a good thing. I have always thought having mir separate from wayland was a terrible idea. Would be better to concentrate on getting wayland to the point where we can stop using xorg completely and have unity as a wayland compositor and desktop. I don't care about unity, but I do think that if they developed it on wayland and using standards then only amount of developers is the limit.
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 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.
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Personally, I always used KDE. But I find funny when people say Unity was a disaster, when the students in my lab never showed problems using it. Very easy to learn DE if you ask me.
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.
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.
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Question: 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.
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I'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.
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SailfishOS 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'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.
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SailfishOS 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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inlinuxdude 7 Apr 2017
Question: Is there any interest in me doing a separate site to cover general Linux news?
Please stick to doing one thing and doing it well. Don't dilute your time/product...
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I've been shown a different log in IRC now https://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2017/04/07/%23snappy.html where Mir will stay for IoT devices.Have 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/
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 7 Apr 2017 at 11:39 am UTC
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lucifertdark 7 Apr 2017
I'd say GOL should stick to reporting & reviewing gaming & games, BUT on those odd occasions when something really big that affects Linux users pops up, like this particular story, then have at it.
ps Snapd or whatever it's called is another one that Canonical should knock on the head.
ps Snapd or whatever it's called is another one that Canonical should knock on the head.
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In the end, this was a good thing. Unity was not bad, but there was honestly no need for it, we already have a bunch of desktop environments and it's best that the most popular distro follows the mainstream instead of trying to break away.
Mir is also gone, which is good, we don't need fragmentation there when the dev community is still small, let Wayland be the future for now.
This is also the final death for Compiz, a composite manager like we never had before or will have again. The development has already stopped years ago, but it still was used as framework for Unity. Eh, when I just remember what awesome effects Compiz had at its peak, people from other operating systems couldn't believe their eyes.
I'm sorry for the effort and money Canonical lost in development, but it's better for all that they finally decided to give up. I haven't seen what Gnome 3 looks like now, but if I don't like it, I'll just improve it with Cairo.
Mir is also gone, which is good, we don't need fragmentation there when the dev community is still small, let Wayland be the future for now.
This is also the final death for Compiz, a composite manager like we never had before or will have again. The development has already stopped years ago, but it still was used as framework for Unity. Eh, when I just remember what awesome effects Compiz had at its peak, people from other operating systems couldn't believe their eyes.
I'm sorry for the effort and money Canonical lost in development, but it's better for all that they finally decided to give up. I haven't seen what Gnome 3 looks like now, but if I don't like it, I'll just improve it with Cairo.
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dmacofalltrades 7 Apr 2017
Same for me - I switched to Debian stable 2 years ago and it is soooo stable that I would not go back to an Ubuntu LTS. It is really a step up in term of stability.
This has been my experience with Linux Mint. My main gaming desktop is still Antergos, but I switched back to Mint on my laptop for a more stable experience.
Although I'm not the biggest GNOME fan, I'm more excited about this news than I expected. Probably because this now means that Canonical can contribute to existing stable projects like GNOME and Wayland instead of spending it on resources that would only be used by their distro. That being said, I am sad that they've abandoned their phone. I was hoping to eventually buy one as an alternative to Android.
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...I find funny when people say Unity was a disaster, when the students in my lab never showed problems using it. Very easy to learn DE if you ask me.
Unity was a disaster. But Gnome 3 was a disaster also! Even though I'm sitting on Fedora, I never used Gnome (apart some time at first, just to taste both "Gnome 2" and "KDE 3" and fall to the later). But I know, variety is a strong point of Linux. Come to think of it... in that sense, Mir vs. Wayland was also profitable in some way. It helped to chose the fittest, like in the evolution process. And now the weak shall become food for the strong!
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.
What? They will go to negative values?
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Is there any interest in me doing a separate site to cover general Linux news?
Hmm .. The 'other' prominent Linux news sites had this story out for a few days now so unless you want to spend all your time trawling through mailing lists like Michel from Phoronix does ( the guy must never sleep ) then i would avoid that. However there is something you could do to improve GOL. keep on improving your benchmarks not just for games but for hardware too.. Of course your not going to initially own all the Nvidia cards or AMD cards, but instead of selling that 980Ti take a chance and keep the thing and invest in an AMD card also ( as you have planned ) this way at least you can properly benchmark games on both Nvidia & AMD.
If you look at Phoronix's most watched news articles it is always MESA / AMDGPU benchmarks & Nvidia hardware / drivers. You don't have to own all the cards, people can get a feel for their card by comparing it to another at least.
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I've been shown a different log in IRC now https://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2017/04/07/%23snappy.html where Mir will stay for IoT devices.Have 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/
This may be still true, though, on the desktop it won't. IoT devices do not really.. let's say bother us gamers, do they? ;-).
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Forgot to add perhaps keep and eye out for interesting Linux gaming, broadcasting & editing software that others might not know about and publish a small article about it.
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Yes please. Just don't be like phoronix and turn this website into a kde, mesa, manjaro, amd etc. zealots center. It's so annoying just reading over 9000 news about the latest commit on amd mesa and all of the hate towards nvidia in general (given that's still the best vendor hardware/software for gaming on linux).
So yes, I'd like you to post news about linux in general, just don't be too obsessive writing at topics that generate traffic through hate and religion like phoronix do.
So yes, I'd like you to post news about linux in general, just don't be too obsessive writing at topics that generate traffic through hate and religion like phoronix do.
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