Ubuntu To Abandon Unity 8, Switch Back To GNOME

[Herem]

I've tried Gnome many times, but IMHO it's just awful. If Unity is going it looks like it's time to switch to a KDE based distribution instead, farewell Ubuntu.

[Holograph]

I respect this decision. I know they aren't specifically doing this to encourage more - shall I say - unity among Linux distros but it has the same result.

[franglais125]

the end of linux desktop for good, great decision after 4 four years working in something and back for something unusable like gnome

Holy shit. Is this your reaction? We have been telling you for years that this was not the correct path, and you kept trolling gnome on phoronix and omgubuntu. You are unbelievable.

[schmidtbag]

I feel roughly as shocked about this as I did about Trump winning the US election. If they just gave up on phones, I would understand. If they just gave up on Mir, I'd be like "finally". If they just gave up on Unity, I'd be a little bit surprised. But since they're surrendering all of these at the same time, that's a shocker.

As someone who doesn't use any of these things (let alone Ubuntu) none of this really affects me all that much, but, I am certainly glad there'll be more of a push for Wayland development. Even though Unity isn't my cup of tea, it's still a good cross-platform interface, and I think they should at least keep maintaining that.


I really wish Canonical had the foresight that these things were an inevitable failure. So much wasted time and money that could've gone toward improving other things.

[Slartifartblast]

No surprise at at all, what a pity they wasted so much time and resource on it (Unity) instead of contributing to Weyland. I assume they are abandoning Mir as well ?

PS is anyone else finding the forums really slow and unresponsive ?

[Mystro256]

I for one hope that they keep and improve Unity7 (and port it to Wayland, in case they also ditch Mir). I really can't stand GNOME, although I've tried so hard in the past. Well, if you com from GNOME to Unity, you may not notice any shortcomings, but the other way around, you'd see GNOME is pure pain in the window management and multi-tasking department.

Honestly I thought if anything, they would do this rather than switch back... unless they plan to take the cinnamon route of things and fork portions of the desktop, such as the shell.

[Steffo]

Well, despite I never technically understood, how they would not only stabilize Unity 8/Mir in this short time until 18.04 release, but adding missing features, too (I asked myself many times: "In which world do they live?!"), this really surprises me! I looked at the date of the blog post to make sure, this wasn't posted on 1. April.
But very nice to see, that they join forces with community again. I hope, they learn in the future. Personally, I would like to see Unity 8 implementing Wayland. That would have cost less money and time, because of the reference implementations and the community, but I think, it's too late, to even think about it, now.

[MiUNX]

Good news, but I don't like gnome (nor do I use ubuntu). Elementary OS has the superior user friendly interface.

[PHLAK]

I for one was growing excited to give Unity 8 an honest try, it was starting to look real good. However, I'm also kind of happy/relieved that they'll be switching back to Gnome. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Mystro256]

I've tried Gnome many times, but IMHO it's just awful. If Unity is going it looks like it's time to switch to a KDE based distribution instead, farewell Ubuntu.

MATE isn't half bad