Hi Guys, very sad news. Ubuntu is officially discontinuing the unity 8, ubuntu phone and tablets and convergence. In a world dominated by Windows 10, Android and iOS what does it mean? To me it means only one thing : ubuntu is going to be dead very very soon even as a desktop OS. http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/04/ubuntu-18-04-ship-gnome-desktop-not-unity I was never so sad or shocked on any software's death. Was waiting for years for these projects to complete. I am really really sad and shocked. :-(
It's only the DE, Unity. From 18.04 Ubuntu will adopt Gnome shell instead. They probably should have done it back in 2011, the "convergence" idea behind Unity never made sense to me.
Might be they decided to cut their losses short and refocus on the fundamentals, which may make sense. Perhaps they'll concentrate on desktop and cloud and drop the rest. Can't wait to see what happens next.
I've never flashed a phone with a non-standard rom, I guess it's time to try that with my Aquaris stuff. Damn. Mrk
I don't see this as the end at all. While I'm sure that Unity has its fans, I don't believe it has been popular overall, considering that I don't see many people using it in other distros. It was likely propped up by being the default in Ubuntu more than anything else. Plus, GNOME Shell seems to have become a lot more accepted than it was initially. And with the extensions, it's possible that Canonical would customize their implementation so that Unity users would be more comfortable with it.
Mrk, not surprised when GNOME Shell has matured. Or Ubuntu could migrate to Budgie Desktop. How many people still run Unity?
14.04 I went with Xubuntu on all my machines that run a desktop as it suited my workflow better than Unity. Earlier this year I moved to Gnome under Centos on my own machines (to match the distro/desktop my employer uses).
Interesting read at www.zdnet.com/article/ubuntu-switches-to-gnome-desktop-and-gives-up-smartphone-hopes/
Mrk is crowing.... I told you so - the market doesn't want a stupid convergence thingy - it wants a productive and capable Linux desktop. Period.
As an Android to Windows Phone to back to Android user, it is apparent that the world does not have room for anything other than Android and iOS. Things like an Ubuntu or Firefox phone just aren't going to happen. I wish these companies would stop wasting resources on it and focus on their main product. Oh wait, they're doing that now. Nevermind.
Android is the most popular OS on handhelds and smart phones. Apple IOS takes up the rear and Windows and Linux are fighting for the leftover scraps. Convergence thingy again or in the hype of the day, IOT? Yeah, sure.
Unity is dead. Long live Ubuntu! Rollercoaster ... of Linux. Again. In this article, I discuss the recent announcement by Canonical to stop the development for phone and convergence, why this happened and what it implies, the technological and strategic directions and challenges, Gnome 3 alternative, fragmentation, uncertain future, and more. Take a look. http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/ubuntu-unity-dead-future.html Cheers, Mrk
If Unity is finit, Ubuntu still has a family of desktop flavors to choose from: KDE, GNOME, MATE, Budgie, XFCE and LXDE. They're aren't going away any time soon.
I understand why they scraped unity 8 but I fail to understand why they scraped unity 7 and went back to gnome.
Good article. I subscribe to most of your insight, which you had expressed before, and which mostly matches my own (I'm always right, as someone usually says). Unfortunately what plagues the Linux world is inherent to it, fragmentation for lack of a better word. There's need for an entrepreneur that brings under one roof the development of most components for a final polished OS ... oh, wait, that's Mark Shuttleworth. But no, he had to punch above his weight and chase rainbows. Steam also likes rainbows (Steam Machines, remember). Canonical and Steam, if they had joined efforts on the desktop/gaming aspect of things ... oh, well, let's see how things evolve.
I think they did right. It's better to dream and aspire than settle for mediocrity. You don't aim for 2-3% user share or anything small and humble. You aim for absolute total domination, even if you never achieve it. But if you don't have that ambition, you'll never grow. Mrk