Mark Shuttleworth made a shock announcement on 5th April that Canonical were abandoning
mobile convergence and would therefore cease funding development of the Unity desktop.
Ubuntu 18.04 was to see the return of Gnome as the default desktop.
Some people were happy with the news, but there were quite a number of people who were
rather saddened by it.
Despite all the criticism against Unity from the noisy minority, there was a silent majority
who did enjoy using it.
In fact Gaming on Linux carried out a small survey and found Unity was the 3rd most popular
desktop.
Ubuntu with Gnome desktop will be very different in terms of layout and behaviour to Unity.
The Unity launcher will be gone, as will the global menu, heads up display or HUD, and
the easy ability to search for files in the dash.
Just because funding for Unity has ended it does not mean the desktop will vanish, for
example Canonical pulled funding from Kubuntu some years ago, yet the distro is going
strong, having found new funding from Blue Systems.
However, I think getting new financial backing for Unity could be difficult, since Canonical
stood the most chance of making convergence work in Linux, yet they failed to
turn a profit due to lack of interest in the market.
But it does not mean the community can’t pick up the project and take it forward, and
that is exactly what has happened for the newer Unity 8 desktop, in fact it has been
forked twice, the first fork called Yunit is focusing on Desktop, and the other fork
UBPorts is focusing on Mobile.
Both forks have significant work to carry out as Unity 8 was some way from being a finished
product when Canonical pulled the funding.
For one thing Unity 8 is well entwined with the Mir display server, which unfortunately
never received support from any of the major Graphics card companies, and that forced Canonical
to develop the entire display system themselves, which I suspect was no small undertaking.
As for Unity 7, the Desktop we have been used to for some years on Ubuntu Desktop and Laptop
computers, well it uses Compiz and Gnome plug-ins, and there have been no forthcoming forks.
Although Canonical have said that Unity 7 will remain in the repositories.
Great, so no problem then?
Well not exactly, Unity 7 with Compiz has not really been entirely stable, and thats
as things stand now.
What happens when progression happens with Gnome, GTK, the Kernel, and X11.
Oh and Compiz doesn’t work with Wayland display server, so its stuck with the ancient
X11.
Who can say what will happen, maybe things will be ok, but I’m going to guess at some
point Unity 7 will fail with the newer versions of Ubuntu.
The current supported versions of Unity 7 are in Long Term Support releases of Ubuntu
14.04 and 16.04, which are supported until 2019 and 2021 respectively.
And I suppose I should also mention that at time of recording its also supported in the
interim release of Ubuntu 17.04, but that is the final version.
So four years left with an officially supported version of Unity.
But won’t the system be very old and stale after so many years?
Well you can upgrade the kernel using the Hardware Enablement Stack, and also utilise
third party Launchpad repositories to install fresher newer software onto your computer.
Okay let us look at the alternative, having a Unity-like styled desktop from another distribution.
For the past three years I have been using a Unity-like style in KDE and I absolutely
love it.
I have the top panel shrunk to the right-hand side, and I allow applications to display
underneath it, thereby maximising vertical space.
The application dashboard is very fast, responsive, and I would say superior to Unity dash.
It can search for both applications and documents.
Results for documents can be found with just one single letter or number as the search
term.
The left-hand panel is setup in the same style as the Unity launcher, and you have the same
behaviour in launching / switching applications with the Super or Windows key and numerical
keys.
The only thing I miss is the heads up display, but I believe that KDE Plasma will see a HUD
implemented in a future version.
The KDE Qt applications are different to Gnome GTK applications, and at this point I will
annoy Gnome users by stating that in my humble opinion the Qt applications are superior.
Honestly it wouldn’t be so bad if Gnome didn’t keep removing features each release.
Although I suppose some would say simplified.
I say they are a nothing but a hollowed out husk of what they used to be.
Dolphin is one of the best file managers available in any OS.
Kate text editor comes with fancy code highlighting, and also a scrollbar which can allow you to
zoom into segments of your code further down the page without actually scrolling to that
point.
Clementine is one of the prettiest music players.
I could go on, but there are so many Qt applications to choose from, and development is happening
at an aggressive pace.
A Unity style is achievable in Gnome with the use of several add-ons.
At least if you did like the GTK applications from Ubuntu then they will be available and
working natively in the Gnome desktop.
A global menu is in development, and there is also a HUD called Plotinus which is also
in development.
When I tested out Plotinus it only worked in some GTK applications, and actually failed
in Firefox and Inkscape because the activation key clashed with existing keyboard shortcuts.
The application launcher can find both files and documents, although in my experience it
heavily favoured applications as search results, to the point that I sometimes had to type
the full document name before results would appear.
As I mentioned the GTK applications are the same as in Ubuntu, so won’t discuss them
any further.
There are other desktop options, for example the Cinnamon desktop from Linux Mint, which
can be turned into a very nice looking Unity style.
The applications look very similar to Gnome, but tend to have more features as they were
forked from earlier in GTK3 development, for example Nemo file manager still retains split
screen browsing and type-ahead search.
The application launcher in Cinnamon allows you to find both documents and applications,
however there is a caveat in that the document searcher only looks for previously opened
documents.
Unity, Plasma, and Gnome searchers will search for documents on the system regardless of
whether they have been opened or not.
But if its too much effort to customise a desktop then you could go for a point-and-click
desktop switcher, for example Zorin, Ubuntu MATE, or LXLE.
I think the Unity style in Zorin was only in the pay-for version.
Its been a long time since I last looked at LXLE, so things might have changed with the
disto.
Lets look more at the other option – Ubuntu MATE.
In my last review of Ubuntu MATE 17.04 the Mutiny (Unity styled) desktop was rather unstable,
however the Ubuntu MATE developers will be investing time and resources into improving
the desktop for Ubuntu 17.10.
I expect we will see a better functioning Global menu, HUD, and improved launcher.
The applications look as though they fell out of Gnome classic desktop, well put it
this way if you used Ubuntu 12.04 or before it will take you right back to those days.
They have at least advanced on from GTK2 to GTK3, yet retained the classic look, and plentiful
older features.
Caja file manager, like Nemo, has the split screen browsing and type-ahead search, but
also has an additional feature of customising folder colours.
I don’t know if the launcher will be able to find documents, I’m going to guess not,
but who knows how much things will change in the next few months?
So what is the best option?
Well unfortunately there is no perfect solution.
It is a shame that the Global menu in KDE doesn’t work with GTK apps, and the Plotinus
Hud in Gnome does not work with Qt apps.
It seems both desktops fail to work properly with applications from their opposite number.
This was a feature that Unity managed very well.
Whichever way you look at it both Gnome and KDE Plasma desktops take a bit of effort to
turn into a Unity style.
My tutorial videos for each are a similar length, with KDE being slightly longer to
demo.
Although it does have more features to customise, and I got distracted showing how to improve
the font rendering for GTK apps.
Have a look at some of the videos on my channel, I’ve done reviews of Gnome, KDE Plasma,
Cinnamon, and MATE desktops, as well as another 20 plus desktops that we have available in
Linux.
I’ll leave a few links in the video description.
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Thank you all for watching and as always I will see you later.