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Ubuntu 18.04 going "back to the roots"
Corben Apr 6, 2017
As you might have already heard, Mark Shuttleworth announced for Ubuntu 18.04 to use Gnome instead of Unity again. They are dropping Unity, Mir and Ubuntu Phone. All developments have stopped.
Mark Shuttleworth admits he was wrong with the future of convergence. Which is quite a brave move in my opinion. This is something I like about Ubuntu. They are trying new things, trying some new innovations, but are able to see and admit if it was a failure or not (like upstart and systemd). Event though their approaches didn't work out, I'm sure the competition had a positive effect.
Dropping Mir also means they will adopt Wayland in the future, which I think is a great news.
But over the years, since Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, I got used to Unity. So I guess I will miss it when upgrading to 18.04.
What do you think about this development?
Guppy Apr 6, 2017
Quoting: CorbenWhat do you think about this development?

That the posted date of your source is dated April 1st, and it's a cruel joke at that, stil Linux Mint Cinnamon is ubuntu enough to satisfy most 'only runs on ubuntu' ports.
tuubi Apr 6, 2017
Quoting: Guppy
Quoting: CorbenWhat do you think about this development?

That the posted date of your source is dated April 1st, and it's a cruel joke at that, stil Linux Mint Cinnamon is ubuntu enough to satisfy most 'only runs on ubuntu' ports.

Nope. The original announcement by Mark Shuttleworth is from April 5th.
MaCroX95 Apr 6, 2017
Quoting: tuubi
Quoting: Guppy
Quoting: CorbenWhat do you think about this development?

That the posted date of your source is dated April 1st, and it's a cruel joke at that, stil Linux Mint Cinnamon is ubuntu enough to satisfy most 'only runs on ubuntu' ports.

Nope. The original announcement by Mark Shuttleworth is from April 5th.

Indeed the post is not april's fools joke. Seems like Canonical has finally seen that all the effort of developing Unity 8 and Mir are nonsense because the community clearly wanted Wayland to get adopted as an Universal display manager which in my opinion is great. I don't know why though the Canonical just doesn't update the Unity 7 to Wayland and keeps having their own Desktop Environment, but apparently they have come to a conclusion that for once instead of going completely their way ignoring everything and everyone they would help and build stronger and more unified Linux desktop.

The linux desktop itself has grown much in recent years (still a small marketshare, but way bigger than it was) and there are a lot of people including me who now use Linux full-time by default and if everyone keeps breaking working things and spliting things apart, it is hard to remain serious in the eyes of software and game developers, especially if the company who does it has so much influence in the linux world as the Canonical does.

Hopefully we will soon see Wayland fully rocking on top of Gnome with all vendors support and later other DEs following the adoption.

Eventhough Unity 7 desktop wasn't at all a bad DE I think that this time Canonical made a right choice and focusing their effort and finances to other things into improving the core of the desktop OS instead of pushing that convergence thing.
Guppy Apr 6, 2017
well yay for it not being a joke - now if we could just slay the monstrocity that is systemd...


Quoting: MaCroX95I don't know why though the Canonical just doesn't update the Unity 7 to Wayland and keeps having their own Desktop Environment

The Unity desktop is almost universally hated for being a desktop targeted at (smaller) touch based interfaces, which makes it *really* cumbersome to use as work desktop. I for one am glad that they have decided against the "launcher" approach and will (hopefully) focus on work flow again.
khalismur Apr 6, 2017
Well they have been losing user base for a while and I guess as a company their reaction was not ill timed.

I hope they maintain a very user-friendly distro and market it that way, hopefully a bit cleaner than before. Many new Linux users take the first steps in our world wearing Ubuntu shoes. And one has only one chance of causing a good first impression.

I have to admit though that is a sad thing that Ubuntu Phone did not become a thing. The iOS / Android products are disgusting for me as a Linux user.
(I have an Android and often times it updates stuff without asking, and why the bloody hell so many applications need that many permissions??? Really wish there were good alternatives...)
Liam Dawe Apr 6, 2017
As I said in Telegram, Canonical was likely losing a fair bit of money on Ubuntu Phone and Unity 8 development since both were essentially going nowhere.

See more here: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/06/canonical_cuts_jobs_with_unity_bullet/ job cuts, investors needed.

Funny really, as Mint is going strong developing Cinnamon and MATE with a good amount of funding each month. Tons of sponsors and lots of user donations, I think it's helped by how open they are as people appreciate it.

Still, it is a little sad, especially the people at Canonical who lost their jobs.
Spud13y Apr 6, 2017
When I saw the titles of two videos about it last night, I thought that this was a late April Fools Day joke. Obviously, it's not. The only thing I really liked about Unity was that the color of the left panel changed with the wallpaper, which is what I like about Windows 8+10. It was kind of sad that with Unity 8 they would have went with black panels and an orange W8/10-like panel for the main menu. I kind of understand with the phones--it's not going to go anywhere because everything likes iOS and Android (even Windows is having a hard time with it, and they're loaded). Anyway, April 2018 is going to be a huge month in the Linux world. A little bit of me kind of wanted them to go with MATE since it's the "true" GNOME 2 successor and it's been well-received (even though they long since stopped shipping with GNOME 2 after I got into Linux), but I guess they'll pretty up Ubuntu GNOME and slap their mainline Ubuntu logos all over that. Even though I probably won't go with Ubuntu anytime in the future, I wish them the best.
slaapliedje Apr 6, 2017
I'll preface this comment by saying I'm truly not trolling...

But what is the point of Cinnamon and Mate? Gnome-Shell has the 'classic' mode and it is (from all I can tell) just like the old Gnome 2 that both of those projects try to be like.

More on Topic, it's about time Ubuntu went back to what made me excited about them in the first place, a Debian based distribution that snapshots Debian Sid with Gnome every 6 months.

When they kept straying from Debian, I just ended up going Debian, which has done a much better job of keeping current lately with their stable release.
lucifertdark Apr 7, 2017
Why would the large service providers pick an untested & almost unknown OS over the already well established OS like Android, Windows or IOS? They're not going to, Ubuntu Phone was doomed to fail from the very start & Mark Shuttleworth should have seen it, I reckon someone fed him a pack of lies about how successful it would be.

They can use anything they like as long as I can still install & use Unity I'll be happy.
Guppy Apr 7, 2017
Quoting: slaapliedjewhat is the point of Cinnamon and Mate? Gnome-Shell has the 'classic' mode and it is (from all I can tell) just like the old Gnome 2 that both of those projects try to be like.

Both are successors - that is they are improving on the original with out straying from what made the originals great.

Mate is a fork off the Original Gnome 2 code, Cinnamon is a completely new desktop written in GTK+ 3 (since v2 anyway).

I prefer Cinnamon over even gnome 2 simply because it adds a lot of nice modern touches with out going off on a hare brained tangent.
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