The Ubuntu GNOME distros blog post tells you everything you need to know:
There will no longer be a separate GNOME flavor of Ubuntu. The development teams from both Ubuntu GNOME and Ubuntu Desktop will be merging resources and focusing on a single combined release... We are currently liaising with the Canonical teams on how this will work out.
Old hands in this field may recall a similar refocusing happened to Red Hat back in 2003. Red Hat dropped its desktop, then called Red Hat Linux, and started up Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in the process becoming the boring enterprise-focused company it is today. But it created the community based Fedora to serve as what Red Hat Linux had once been so not all was lost.
While this is the likely script for Canonical over the next few years, it is equally possible that it may not actually go this way. Canonical may stick with its desktop and still make it a major focus of its development because while the money is in enterprise, what made Ubuntu very nearly a household name is not enterprise, but community.
(Score: 2) by migz on Saturday May 06 2017, @09:40AM
I'm glad that you are not ashamed to admit you run as root. I used to feel the same way, when I started playing with unix.
I previously worked in IT security and there I learned of my hubris.
Might I suggest that you have a play with OpenBSD. The experience of working with a truly security focused os is worthwhile (just like programmers should try functional programming). It is very well documented. I learned a lot, and I hope, that even if you don't change you mind about running as root, you might not be so quick to judge those who choose not to.