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Merge: charon (04/05 22:56 GMT)

Accepted submission by charon at 2017-04-05 22:56:22
News

Ubuntu Unity is dead: Desktop will switch back to GNOME

requerdanos [soylentnews.org] writes:

Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] reports that Unity, Ubuntu's controversial [lecterror.com] self-developed desktop environment, is no more.

Six years after making Unity the default user interface on Ubuntu desktops, Canonical is giving up on the project and will switch the default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME next year. Canonical is also ending development of Ubuntu software for phones and tablets[.]

Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical posted online [ubuntu.com] about the change to, as he put it, "Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, rather than Phone and convergence":

I took the view that, if convergence was the future and we could deliver it as free software, that would be widely appreciated both in the free software community and in the technology industry, where there is substantial frustration with the existing, closed, alternatives available to manufacturers. I was wrong on both counts...
I’m writing to let you know that we will end our investment in Unity8, the phone and convergence shell... We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS[.]

Some love Unity; for others, it never caught on. Will it be missed, nostalgically and/or technologically?

Ubuntu to switch to Gnome for release 18.04

Demose [soylentnews.org] writes:

Ubuntu is abandoning its convergence plan along with its mobile operating system and Unity desktop. Ubuntu 18.04 will be based on Gnome. More can be read in this blog post [ubuntu.com].

Ubuntu dropping Unity to return to Gnome.

Jonathan writes:

Mark Shuttleworth has just announced that Ubuntu will go back to using Gnome [ubuntu.com] in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

"We are wrapping up an excellent quarter and an excellent year for the company, with performance in many teams and products that we can be proud of. As we head into the new fiscal year, it's appropriate to reassess each of our initiatives. I'm writing to let you know that we will end our investment in Unity8, the phone and convergence shell. We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS."

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