Ubuntu Unity Existed Before The GNOME Shell?

[AdamW]

I'll call it as I see it. Mark Shuttleworth is right on this one.

I was using Unity in January 2008! It was released as the default desktop on Ubuntu Netbook Remix *beta* for the EeePC and other small form factor laptops.

Unity had a stable released in April 2008 and shipped in Ubuntu 8.04 under the title of "Ubuntu Netbook Remix".

Later on, the GUI in Ubuntu Netbook Remix got renamed to "Unity" but it was still the same software.

Ubuntu Shell clearly came *AFTER* unity. There is no doubt about it.

People looking at the Unity repos / commits need to go back and see where that "Unity" codebase came from.. It came from Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Which will take them to late 2007/very early 2008. Which certainly was before Gnome shell.

See my above post. Read Mark's announcement of Unity: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/383 - it certainly doesn't say anything about it being a continuation of the UNR codebase. Rather, it talks about "in order embrace it for our Netbook UI, we’ll need to design some new capabilities, and implement them during this cycle" - the blog post clearly suggests that Unity was developed as part of the now-forgotten 'Ubuntu Light' thing, and then they decided to adopt it in UNR (and even later decided to adopt it in the main distro).

Arguing that Unity and UNR are the same thing is something of a stretch at the least, I've never heard Mark do it, and he doesn't do it in that G+. He doesn't mention UNR at all, just flat out asserts that Unity existed before Shell. If he was doing so on the basis that UNR and Unity are the same thing, I'd have expected him to say so, either there or at any previous point in time.

edit: I can't address or contest your assertion that Mark talked about it at that event, I wasn't there; I don't recall seeing such a description online. If someone can find one, I'll retract that.

edit2: here's the Netbook Remix launchpad:

https://launchpad.net/netbook-remix

Here's the netbook-remix-launcher launchpad (it is/was separate):

https://launchpad.net/netbook-remix-launcher

I can't find any linkage between the two in code terms. ume-launcher was written in C, Unity was initially written in Vala apparently. I'm reading the early Unity changelogs - https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~unity-...art_revid=3187 - and there's no indication of code being 'carried across' from any of the UNR projects. The tree layouts are entirely different. I'm not about to get bzr out and start diffing (god, I *hate* bzr) but I can't find any indication that they're anything other than two totally different codebases.

[alexThunder]

[QUOTE=AdamW;318531]No, they're just not the same project. Unity obviously has some roots in the UNR interface, but they're substantially different technically, organizationally and even in terms of goals. Here's Mark's first post (I think) about Unity:

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/383

Note how he keeps talking about it as a new thing. "The fruit of that R&D is both a new desktop experience codebase, called Unity", "The dual-boot, web-focused use case is sufficiently different from general-purpose desktop usage to warrant a fresh look at the way the desktop is configured", "Those constraints and values lead us to a new shape for the desktop, which we will adopt in Ubuntu’s Netbook Edition for 10.10 and beyond.", "Unity exists today, and is great for the minimalist, stateless configurations that suit a dual-boot environment. But in order embrace it for our Netbook UI, we’ll need to design some new capabilities, and implement them during this cycle.", etc etc etc.

Mark clearly saw Unity as a new thing, not a continuation of UNR. (And boy, that blog post reads interestingly in a current context ;>)

which we will adopt in Ubuntu’s Netbook Edition for 10.10 and beyond

Come on, this doesn't need to get more difficult.

OK, I thought I'd made it clear, but I've updated the post to make it clearer.

That's better.

I agree the concept of 'existence' can be a bit slippy for software,

Yes, just let me rearrange that part of your post:

in this context I think it's pretty damn clear that Shell 'existed' in the sense Mark and Ioannis meant: there were designs, mockups, working code, public discussions and arguments involving Canonical...

Unity obviously has some roots in the UNR interface, but they're substantially different

There is, what they said, what they meant - which obviously are different things (that's true everytime people are speaking about things). And yet, you still find an exact truth for a concept you already found out to be slippy, just to be able to call Shuttleworth a liar furthermore?

I feel I should outline (in addition) that I don't consider Shuttleworths comment any more sensible, but, well, he didn't start this specific discussion

As I said before, I'm here to find out, which criticism makes sense having reasonable points and who's just hating. So, to which group should I put someone who found a damn clear truth in context he himself calls slippy?

[deanjo]

"Have you ever seen Canonical folks calling Red Hatters idiots, tragi-comic, crap or other names? Have you ever seen a Canonical upstream think it's OK to tell a competitor to get fucked with their patches? I doubt it. But that's normal behaviour towards Canonical by some of your more vocal colleagues, now talking loudly about Mir."



red hat and canonical are like two dogs and linux is the chew toy they are fighting over...

they are probably going to tear it to pieces.

Nothing new for Mark,

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/81

Ubuntu is structured to empower our community to get things done, and to maximise the opportunity for collaboration between teams that share a common vision (even if it?s not 100% of their vision, such as between the Gnome, KDE and XFCE desktop teams). While we?re always open to new members, we thought it would be a good idea to identify a dedicated week where new members would be the focus for our whole project.

If you have an interest in being part of a vibrant community that cares about keeping free software widely available and protecting the rights of people to get it free of charge, free to modify, free of murky encumbrances and ?undisclosed balance sheet liabilities?, then please do join us.

[AdamW]

alexthunder: well yeah, he says 'adopt'. If Unity was a continuation of UNR, why would you have to 'adopt' Unity into UNR? That doesn't make any sense.

See my just-posted post: I just went and looked at the early Unity codebase compared to the UNR codebase, and there just does not appear to be any overlap. They clearly not the same code.

"And yet, you still find an exact truth for a concept you already found out to be slippy, just to be able to call Shuttleworth a liar furthermore?"

It seems very clear to me. Introducing UNR to the discussion is what's muddying the water. Unity is a project. It has a code repo, with clear commit dates in it. Neither its code, nor its changelog, nor its commit history, nor its initial announcement gives any indication at all that it is a continuation of UNR: on the contrary, they all give strong indications it is a fresh new code base.

Shell is also a simple, singular project with a code repo with clear commit dates in it. Which substantially predate Unity's. It is demonstrable that Shell was functional and recognizably Shell five months before Unity's first commit. To me, that's a pretty damn simple argument. It only gets messy when you start making this argument that Unity is somehow the same thing as UNR: that requires you to bring in questions of intent and meaning and blah blah. To turn the tables on you, you are the one who brought up the UNR connection, it is incumbent upon you to prove it. I don't actually have to sit here going through commit logs to try and prove Unity and UNR aren't the same thing, the burden is upon you, I'm just doing it because I'm insatiably curious.

"just to be able to call Shuttleworth a liar furthermore"

I did not. I very carefully and intentionally made sure not to do that, as it's a very dangerous assertion to throw around.

"So, to which group should I put someone who found a damn clear truth in context he himself calls slippy?"

You're pulling a single word out of context. In context, I was clearly saying that I don't think it's a particularly difficult concept in this specific case.

[mether]

Sadly just GTK/GNOME, no Qt.

Unless you meant just Qt and not KDE as well, Red Hat has atleast 3 full time KDE developers

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_contributions#KDE_developers

Red Hat does have more focus and people working on GNOME and has always been the case.

[Sidicas]

See my above post. Read Mark's announcement of Unity: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/383 - it certainly doesn't say anything about it being a continuation of the UNR codebase.

It's right here

http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/debian-meetings/2010/debconf10/high/1115_The_Unity_Desktop_Environment.ogv

00:40
"Unity is a combination of several years work. Inspired initially by the explosion of Linux on netbooks. "
That was in 2010.

If you look through the video, there are plenty of screenshots and references to UNR in there.


/thread.

[AdamW]

Really? You consider "Inspired initially by the explosion of Linux on netbooks" to mean "Unity is the same project as UNR", so conclusively as to write, like some kind of slashdot idiot, "/thread"? Wow, you're off my list of 'sane people on Phoronix'.

edit: So I watched the video, and he talks about the two major revisions of UNR, then says "Based on all this experience, we started the Unity design process" and then "Unity was in development for about eight months and first showed up in Ubuntu Light".

That's all he said that's relevant to this debate AFAICS. I'd say that supports my interpretation: he says they "started" the Unity design process based on the "experience" of doing UNR. Note: experience, not code. And he talks about Unity being in development "for eight months" - talking about it as a separate thing from UNR.

Even if you want to argue it the other way, it clearly isn't "/thread". Don't be silly.

[Sidicas]

Really? You consider "Inspired initially by the explosion of Linux on netbooks" to mean "Unity is the same project as UNR", so conclusively as to write, like some kind of slashdot idiot, "/thread"? Wow, you're off my list of 'sane people on Phoronix'.

OK, remember when Canonical's work on libappindicators got rejected by Gnome even though Gnome didn't have an alternative to it at the time? It got rejected because of why? Because Gnome started planning for an alternative.
Canonical had patches, Gnome had planning. So who do you suppose started working on it first?

[duby229]

I suspect that in 5 years from now we'll be hearing all about how even tho mir failed as a project it was still revolutionary as "the first" of its kind.

[AdamW]

OK, remember when Canonical's work on libappindicators got rejected by Gnome even though Gnome didn't have an alternative to it at the time? It got rejected because of why? Because Gnome started planning for an alternative.
Canonical had patches, Gnome had planning. So who do you suppose started working on it first?

I linked to Jeff Waugh's comprehensive timeline of that issue in my post, I'm not going to rewrite it for you. But seriously: I post a video of an entire working desktop shell that existed five months before Unity, and you want to argue about patches for a new notification system? Note, even the earliest mention of 'app indicators' from Canonical - January 2009, according to Jeff's timeline - post-date the first commits to gnome-shell git and the first Shell design discussion.