The Community Has Brought The Unity 8 Desktop To Ubuntu 18.04

Besides bringing Ubuntu Touch to new mobile devices, the UBports team has also managed to continue their community-driven work on advancing the Unity 8 convergence desktop after Canonical abandoned work on it last year. They now have Unity 8 working on top of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

The UBPorts' fork of Unity 8 is now working on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS where as previously they were focused on older versions of Ubuntu. Installation instructions can be found via this GitHub repository with this being work found outside of the official Ubuntu archives. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and 18.04 LTS users can make use of the project's install scripts where they have assembled an APT archive with their own packages of Unity 8 complete with Mir.

Here's a video one of their project members posted today of their Unity 8 work on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS in its current development form:

Unity 8 is still of alpha quality, but it's an alternative for those missing out on the old Unity experience or still hoping for the dream of a fully converged Ubuntu desktop experience. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with GNOME Shell remains the default desktop for this next Ubuntu Long Term Support release due out in April.