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Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

• mikescandy 10y ago
  This looks like the same shift that has been happening in Microsoft for the past few years. They tried phone convergence (continuum, the one core across devices), but the real focus is now cloud and services. Also, the fact that Microsoft ships Ubuntu as the Linux on Windows subsystem definitely shows an alignment on the companies' plans.
• uam 10y ago
  Does this mean that Ubuntu is moving away from Mir, to Wayland?
  • mhall119 10y ago
    Ubuntu will use what upstream GNOME uses, which means Wayland for the compositor.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
• anilgulecha 10y ago
  Wow.. I see where Mr. Shuttleworth is coming from. I'd like to state that I'm a happy Ubuntu user, and have been using Unity for the past few years and have generally found it to be a good ui for the desktop. I know many many others fall in the same bucket.
• WD-42 10y ago
  Wow. This is a real shock, it wouldn't be out of place for April 1st. This is good news for linux on the desktop. Not that diversity isn't good, but Unity has been stale for years while Gnome has been progressing, but suffering from the fragmentation that Canonical caused. Hopefully this will result in more contributions upstream, which will benefit all linux distributions. This was always the main complaint with Canonical.
• shanemhansen 10y ago
  I can't tell you how happy I am to see convergence dying. My desktop is not just a big phone and people put out some atrocious user interfaces in the name of "convergence". WRT to unity, at least it's improved. Ubuntu w/ unity currently has the best multi-monitor multi-dpi user experience I've seen on linux. I have a retina laptop with 2 external displays and ubuntu unity is the only thing that just works out of the box.
  • gurkendoktor 10y ago
    > My desktop is not just a big phone and people put out some atrocious user interfaces in the name of "convergence". I agree. Sadly, GNOME's huge controls also seem to be optimised for touch screens. There are several semi-maintained hacks to reduce the padding throughout the DE: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_1QSDkzYY2vc/TbVt04mk52I/AAAAAAAAEGw/AiOPnwu8KaM/s2000/gnome_3__adwaita_improved_by_half_left-d3eqzhx.png https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_1QSDkzYY2vc/TbVt04mk52I/A... It's a mess. I wish GNOME just automatically looked like the bottom screenshot when there's no touch screen connected.
    • Spivak 10y ago
      Blame the theme for that one. It a legitimate gripe since it's the default but themes like Arc and Numix greatly tone it down.
    • Kostic 10y ago
      That's a realy old screenshot. GNOME 3 doesn't look like that anymore[1]. [1]https://people.gnome.org/~engagement/screenshots/gnome-3-24-screenshots.zip https://people.gnome.org/~engagement/screenshots/gnome-3-24-...
      • shanemhansen 10y ago
        Random nit: is it just me or is the font rendering pretty terrible in the "web" screenshot?
        • 10y ago
• mtgx 10y ago
  Does that mean they're going to make it easy not to have the taskbar on the side - or god forbid, even put it at the bottom by default? I remember that "convergence" with mobile was the primary reason why the Ubuntu UI was designed the way it was and why the taskbar was put on the side. Yes, I realize a lot of Ubuntu users have already gotten used to it, and some may even prefer it, but I'm sure the majority of new users would feel confused and turned off by it. I would argue Ubuntu has to focus more on gaining Windows users than on keeping the hardcore Linux users.
  • WD-42 10y ago
    Have you ever used Gnome? There is no taskbar :)
    • feborges 10y ago
      yep. Or you could get it with an extension, if you wish. :)
    • Scarblac 10y ago
      To me as a Firefox-and-terminals user, the main difference between the two is that Unity has a fugly taskbar always on the left of my screen where I don't want it, and windows have their menu somewhere unrelated to the window (at the top of the screen). If Gnome doesn't have either, great!
      • tribaal 10y ago
        You can auto-hide the taskbar, and switch to "menus in the windows" in the settings (I mean the UI, not some obscure terminal thing). My mother in law managed to find that option on her own, I'm sure you can as well :)
    • ornitorrincos 10y ago
      didn't gnome2 use to have one?
• s_kilk 10y ago
  > We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Legitimately never thought I'd ever see this. Possibly the best thing that could happen for desktop Linux in this age. Edit: and of course this would mean Ubuntu/Canonical and Fedora/RedHat basing their desktop OS's on the same platform, which can only mean easier development of desktop software and services.
  • NM-Super 10y ago
    I'm a bit torn. I like the design of Unity more than I do that of Gnome, but I think that less fragmentation is extremely desirable. Ultimately, I think it's a good, necessary move. Linux on the desktop will only happen when the environment is at least as uniform as that of Windows—from the perspective of application developers, at least.
    • gerbal 10y ago
      Canonical bending their demonstrated ui talents may just lead to a better Gnome 3 experience.
      • Touche 10y ago
        Do I live in an alternate universe? Do people really think this looks good? http://toastytech.com/guis/ubuntu114defaultunity.jpg http://toastytech.com/guis/ubuntu114defaultunity.jpg
        • simondedalus 10y ago
          they like the absence of all of gnome's chrome and the smooth animations and transitions. me, i like gnome 3 and unity. all told i think this is really good news from canonical, for wayland, for gnome, for desktop linux in general, etc.
        • curt15 10y ago
          It certainly makes better use of space than the thick header bars that gnome ships with by default. At least one Gnome developer seems to think so too https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2015/10/17/time-to-use-header-bars-in-unity/ https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2015/10/17/time-to-use-he...
• mhsabbagh 10y ago
  Funny that it came after 24 hours of my article about those stuff in Ubuntu: https://fosspost.org/2017/04/03/ubuntu-needs-consider-remain-remarkable/ https://fosspost.org/2017/04/03/ubuntu-needs-consider-remain... 3 of them are now true. Karma.
• pmoriarty 10y ago
  Now if they could just abandon systemd.
  • astrodust 10y ago
    Now if people could only get used to it.
    • 5ilv3r 10y ago
      There's always the *bsd family.
  • LeoPanthera 10y ago
    Gnome 3 and systemd are closely intertwined. Running Gnome without it would be a lot of work.
    • goalieca 10y ago
      The death of unix right there
      • davexunit 10y ago
        UNIX was never very good, though. Even at its inception it was a stripped down OS for the PDP-11 because they could not run Multics. C was a stripped down version of BCPL that didn't even have floating point numbers. Looking to the "UNIX way" as the gold standard sets the bar very low.
    • davexunit 10y ago
      It only needs logind, IIRC. I run GNOME 3 without systemd.
  • stcredzero 10y ago
    From where I am sitting, going from upstart to systemd just seemed like an exercise in inconvenience.
• Afforess 10y ago
  Damn. From the horses mouth: https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cloud-and-iot-rather-than-phone-and-convergence/ https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cl... I might be a small minority, but I _like_ Unity 7. I have never used Unity 8, and I thought the Ubuntu phone was misspent effort, but wow. Now I have to figure out if there is a way to style Gnome to look like Unity 7. I wonder what this means for Mir vs Wayland as well.
  • brunoluiz 10y ago
    Well, Canonical was heavily involved with Mir because of Unity, right? So, with this change, I guess we can expect a Wayland related news in the following weeks/months. BTW, I would go even further: will they still invest in the Snap package or they will do the same and go to a community oriented package system?
    • onli 10y ago
      Snap is explicitly mentioned as one of the things they want to focus more on.
      • brunoluiz 10y ago
        But they can change their minds, as they show in this post
      • hsivonen 10y ago
        Just for IoT or for desktop, too?
      • robert_foss 10y ago
        Do they never learn?
        • ZenoArrow 10y ago
          What's wrong with Snaps? I'd say it's a good approach in many cases.
• clircle 10y ago
  I am so happy
• i80and 10y ago
  Page isn't loading, but that's a pity if true :( I ended up dropping desktop Linux entirely last year, but Unity was the only thing that I thought wasn't matched by any other desktop operating system.
• pkd 10y ago
  Let me say that the only thing I am sad about is Unity 8. I genuinely liked Unity and it's easy to use, not-too-resource-hungry interface. I definitely do not like GNOME as much. It lacks the cohesion that Unity has (I understand why, but that doesn't negate the point). I will be happy to see if the best parts of Unity make it back to GNOME - GNOME just feels clunky right now. But I will continue using Ubuntu regardless.
  • AndyKelley 10y ago
    > easy to use, not-too-resource-hungry interface. what? unity? has it changed so much in the last 2 years that its defining features have changed from being difficult to use, resource-hungry, to the opposite of that?
    • mhall119 10y ago
      Unity 8 is a complete re-write based on Qt5 and Mir, it dropped dependency on X11/Compiz and the custom Nux toolkit.
• ThatGeoGuy 10y ago
  I get that they're moving away from convergence, but what does this ultimately mean for Ubuntu as a mobile OS? In the grand scheme of things, what does this mean for users who want a completely FOSS stack for their phone (let's ignore the baseband for now)? As far as I can tell, this just means that your only options are Android or iOS. It's not easy to get a Jolla/SailfishOS phone that will work on most Canadian or USA networks, and with this announcement it seems that Ubuntu phones won't be around for much longer. This coupled with the death of Firefox OS means that there's really not much of a choice. Certainly you can run AOSP with no Google Apps, but not having Google Play Services tends to cause more and more problems, or at the very least means your phone is less and less capable as time goes on. I guess in general we can all celebrate that Ubuntu is moving to GNOME / Wayland and is ditching convergence, but I think the fact that there's no healthy alternative to iOS / Android is quite sad. If Canonical is exiting the mobile space to work on other things, what other alternatives do users have?
  • bananaoomarang 10y ago
    This is my worry. The technical challenge of maintaining a usable mobile OS seems too high for companies like Canonical and Mozilla to have a chance, since getting hardware produced, marketed and into people's hands is a gargantuan task, and supporting Android handset installs is fighting a losing battle. Having said that, I am not sure why? Ubuntu Phone seems largely functional on a few devices, but installing it and using it remains a pain.
    • onli 10y ago
      Jep, I don't understand it. It is completely understandable to drop a product that is not working on the market. It is less understandable to drop a product that never really was on the market, after the big initial investment is already done. Same for FF, same for WebOS: How can you draw the conclusion that something is not working on the market if you never tried making it available to customers, on regular hardware? Only makes sense if there is no money left.
      • jstanley 10y ago
• CaptSpify 10y ago
  I just got the Ubuntu phone. It's the first smart-phone that I don't hate. I do agree that Ubuntu needs to stop with their NIH syndrome when it comes to desktop, but the phone market is just flat out terrible. I would be willing to spend a lot of money for a decent FOSS phone, but there just isn't anything out there. Ubuntu was my only hope |:(
  • jhasse 10y ago
    What about the Fairphone + AOSP + F-Droid?
    • CaptSpify 10y ago
      Have you tried using that? Android without Google play is still an exercise in frustration. And Google is purposely designing it that way more and more as time goes on. I don't think the Ubuntu phone is a great phone, but if I have problems, I can usually fix them myself. Good luck doing that with any android that I've tried on.
      • frik 10y ago
        Android is huge. Android works great without GooglePlay, and just raw Android. You just need another AppStore or just install apps manually. Ask one of your Chinese friends, they have a driving eco system over there.
        • CaptSpify 10y ago
          I've used raw android, and quickly gave up. I've used f-droid, and it is OK. Far from "great" though.
      • jhasse 10y ago
        > Have you tried using that? Yes, works fine and there are a lot of awesome apps, e. g. https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=osm&fdid=net.osmand.plus https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=osm&fdid=net... or https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=youtube&fdid=free.rm.skytube.oss https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=youtube&fdid... > Android without Google play is still an exercise in frustration. What are your pain points? Because not being able to install most of the apps in the Play Store also applies to Ubuntu Phone.
• khc 10y ago
  Does that mean existing resources that Canonical is putting in Unity will be diverted to GNOME?
  • WD-42 10y ago
    Hopefully. The folks on irc.gnome.org seem pretty excited by the news.
• codycraven 10y ago
  Super excited for this. I hate Unity's interface and was instead using Fedora solely for that reason. About 5 months ago I switched to Ubuntu GNOME and have been loving the stability of Ubuntu with the advanced interface of GNOME.
• Grazester 10y ago
  I am happy about this. I hated Unity
  • AuthenticApe 10y ago
    I loved Unity but I am very happy about this. GPL is cancer, literally. The sooner businesses realize it the better.
• abrowne 10y ago
  I've mostly been using the excellent Ubuntu MATE lately, but of the "modern" desktops I've always preferred GNOME to Unity, despite the latter having some good ideas. Ubuntu GNOME exists, but it'll be better with official support.
• winteriscoming 10y ago
  This is going to be interesting. The whole reason I moved away from Ubuntu, which was my goto linux distribution, around a decade ago was because they moved to Unity. I switched to Linuxmint and have been on it ever since. Now that Ubuntu is going back to Gnome, although I may not switch back to it immediately, it will at least be in my mind as an option whenever I keep upgrading Linuxmint.
• franciscop 10y ago
  Wow this is impressive just after the Ask HN they did few days back. It's been few years users complaining and opposing Mir so it seems it just took that last feedback cry. It's great that they listen to their users and also that there's going some love given back to the desktop+server (+IoT). Disclaimer: I am really happy using Ubuntu everyday.
  • sametmax 10y ago
    I really wonder if they events are related though. I can't imagine Shuttlework saying "ok, those guys in HN called it", but on the other hand, the timing given motives match so perfectly.
    • franciscop 10y ago
      I have no idea but my guess is that it's not the reason, but it's the straw that broke the camel's back (that's the saying, right?)
      • sametmax 10y ago
        I wouldn't know I'm not a native english speaker.
• gigatexal 10y ago
  Time to switch back to Ubuntu
• AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
  GNOME has been doing some really cool stuff as of late (http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/03/top-features-in-gnome-3-24 http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/03/top-features-in-gnome-3-2...). I'm still using Cinnamon, because I still like the look a bit more, but it's getting harder to ignore all of the excellent features GNOME provides, including: - Drive support for file manager - Gmail/Outlook support for GNOME accounts and built-in calendars - Working Wayland implementation I'm holding out at the moment, as it's missing one feature from Cinnamon that I really like (the ability to launch and control any audio player from the sound icon in the tray), but when Fedora 26 launches I may finally have to switch over. I hope that Canonical shifting back to GNOME will further its development under Wayland and not spend a crapload of time doing more work for Mir.
  • jhasse 10y ago
    Check out https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/55/media-player-indicator/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/55/media-player-indic...
    • AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
      It looks like it needs to be hard-coded for compatibility with every app, which makes it not so friendly. Wouldn't work with the unofficial Google Music Desktop Player (https://www.googleplaymusicdesktopplayer.com/ https://www.googleplaymusicdesktopplayer.com/), for instance, which I use heavily. EDIT: Nevermind, this ticket looks like it might: https://github.com/MarshallOfSound/Google-Play-Music-Desktop-Player-UNOFFICIAL-/issues/2389 https://github.com/MarshallOfSound/Google-Play-Music-Desktop...
      • jhasse 10y ago
        Ah that's pity. I'm using it for Rhythmbox and Spotify where it works fine. > It looks like it needs to be hard-coded for compatibility with every app By using a white-list? I thought it worked with every app which uses the MPRIS DBus interface.
      • johnny22 10y ago
• jimmies 10y ago
  I cannot wait for Unity to die, and now it does. I was not very happy when they decided to make Unity mac-like by moving the menu to the top bar. It has to be the most idiotic decision around for anyone who has multiple monitors. Even with a single monitor, it is a pain in the ass to move the mouse all the way to the top left corner for the menu to appear, and then orienting myself with the items presented.
  • pkd 10y ago
    You could always use keyboard shortcuts to access the menu. Unity also let you search through the menu items with the Alt key - no manual navigation necessary. I thought that integrated menus are a great idea - even Apple does it. It saves vertical space and looks "at one" with the rest of the system.
    • vrutkovs 10y ago
      GNOME has solved in a radical way by simplifying menus, so you need neither search nor frequent mouse/keyboard navigation. Honestly 'even Apple does it' is a poor argument. If global menu would be a really good and generally accepted idea we'd see it implemented in GNOME and KDE (via extensions at least).
      • GraemeLion 10y ago
        https://vizzzion.org/blog/2016/10/plasmas-road-ahead/ https://vizzzion.org/blog/2016/10/plasmas-road-ahead/ Global Menu being implemented in KDE 5.9.
        • jimmies 10y ago
          I don't mind the principles of it -- and I don't mind it in macOS. At least the menu is always there, the problem with unity is that it is hidden and will slowly appear when you hover the mouse on top. It's really hard to aim for what I want when I actually have to access a function on the menu. I am using KDE on anything I can, and I have no problem with them doing things like the global menu. KDE tends to get things right to my taste.
• paol 10y ago
  I'm entirely convinced that Shuttleworth's vision of convergence will happen. It looks like an inevitability, as mobile computing power continues to grow faster than typical consumer workloads (the same forces already made it possible for $400 laptops to be good enough for most mainstream users). Canonical just didn't have the resources to push a 3rd mobile platform. Hell, even Microsoft gave up (who did have the resources, and IMO made a mistake in giving up).
  • therealmarv 10y ago
    Just my opinion: It will be Chromebook+Android or more the mixture of both. Google is playing well by saying: "The time and technology is not yet ready for this to happen." But I'm also convinced it will happen sooner or later. And I'm sure Apple has some experiments in this direction... iOS and macOS are technically more the same than Android vs. ChromeOS. I just hope I get a good usable *nix terminal with the laptop mode ;)
  • caio1982 10y ago
    Sometimes the market and/or the user base is not ready for a new piece of tech. I agree with you about the inevitability of convergence but perhaps it wasn't supposed to happen just now.
  • Mailtemi 10y ago
    Yep , I thing OS will all go the convergation way. The main problem is that they couldn't gain more apps to that vision. Classic chiken and egg problem. And to be more ironic ,a few weeks ago, I was under the impression that Ubuntu Phone and SailfishOS have stated to getting traction.
• sambe 10y ago
  Damn. Just been forced to switch to Mate at work and find it like living in the past. Lots of defaults seem ugly or unusable (hunting through menus for programs etc.).
  • jhasse 10y ago
    GNOME 3 and MATE don't have much in common though.
    • ZenoArrow 10y ago
      Apart from GTK3.
      • jhasse 10y ago
        Only until recently.
  • mixmastamyk 10y ago
    The advanced menu responds to the windows key and you can start typing to search, if that's what you'd like.
• dflock 10y ago
  Excellent news! I personally think unity is terrible - and it's objectively lacking in several areas, multi-monitor support particularly. The Ubuntu phone thing was a nice idea, but obviously never going to fly, so it's nice to see canonical putting their efforts where their actual users are.
  • ZenoArrow 10y ago
    >" it's objectively lacking in several areas, multi-monitor support particularly." Interesting, considering... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14043855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14043855 Are you basing your views of Unity on recent experience?
    • dflock 10y ago
      Wan't thinking about multi-resolution or HiDPI - or other technical 'support' - but actual ergonomic use of multiple-monitors. It's lack of customisability in the placement of things, as well as the anachronistic global menu bar, mean that using it with, say, 3 large monitors of pretty sub-par.
• klndsklnds 10y ago
  But atleast they made one product from ubuntu mobile: snap (ubunto core)
• klndsklnds 10y ago
  But atleast they made one product from ubuntu mobile: snap (ubunto core)
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• nnutter 10y ago
  Canonical ”raised" like 20 million USD to create a converged phone but the "community/market didn't want it"?
  • wmf 10y ago
    If the cost to build a viable mobile OS is more like $100M, maybe the market didn't want it badly enough.
  • joshlemer 10y ago
    That was $12 million, and that was in 2013, and if I understand correctly how indiegogo works, they didn't get to claim any of that money because they didn't reach their goal of $30 million
• sandGorgon 10y ago
  > We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS This is huge and was my #1 request for the previous post for Ubuntu 17.10. Gnome on Fedora is amazing and I have had people walk up to me and ask me - what OS am I running ? It is so much better for Ubuntu and Redhat to have joint stewardship of Gnome going forward rather than split energy on wasted competition. My next biggest request is flatpak vs snappy - I cant believe that the package management wars are beginning all over again in 2017. Just pick one and be done with it. RPM and DEB will never converge, but we have a narrow window of opportunity with flatpak and snappy.
  • geodel 10y ago
    Flatpak seems more limited in scope as documents say: > Can Flatpak be used on servers too? Flatpak is designed to run inside a desktop session and relies on certain session services, such as a dbus session bus and a systemd --user instance. This makes Flatpak not a good match for a server. Whereas Snap documents say: Package any app for every Linux desktop, server, cloud or device, and deliver updates directly.
    • sandGorgon 10y ago
      I know - however these things are seldom demarcated on merit and more on ideology. I wish the next generation of linux has a single package manager :(
      • geodel 10y ago
        I think in case of Snap, it is part of money making server business. So it is less likely Canonical is going to give up on that.
        • jononor 10y ago
          But then you're competing with Docker images. Not that Docker is that amazing, but I just don't see why anyone would want to use Snap instead of Docker?
• gshulegaard 10y ago
  I may be a minority, but I am very saddened by this. Not because I have any particular love for Unity, but rather I share Mark's conviction that convergence is the future. Love or hate it but Unity was IMO the best shot we had at getting an open source unified phone, tablet and desktop experience...and now this is effectively Canonical not only shutting down Unity, but refocusing efforts away from convergence and towards more traditional market segments. I mourn the death of this innovative path. That said, hopefully this convergence with GNOME will eventually lead back to convergence...but for now that dream is dead it would seem.
  • bandrami 10y ago
    Does anybody besides platform developers want a unified phone, tablet, and desktop experience? I certainly don't; it sounds like a very bad idea.
    • sharun 10y ago
      Engineers overengineering things when they have no new ideas. That's the entire convergence story
    • topranks 10y ago
      Phones are already damn powerful, and will get more so. Why should we all have to buy another completely separate computer if we want to use a mouse/keyboard/monitor, when we already have phones?
      • bandrami 10y ago
        You have that backwards: why should your phone present the same UI when it's plugged into a keyboard and mouse and when it's not docked?
    • raverbashing 10y ago
      Correct It makes no sense from an usability point of view It's like insisting on a steering wheel for a plane. Different means of interaction and limitations and use cases require different interfaces. Also the "Ubuntu on the phone thing", it seems they were doing it because of the wrong reasons (mainly "We like Linux") rather than focusing on the user and the ecosystem
• 0xFFC 10y ago
  I knew this was happening. They invested on Unity8 in quite reverse way. They had opportunity to make unity8 excellent desktop environment (they had money and workforce) and after becoming most popular de in linux environment they could continue that to mobile space(they are most popular linux distro already). Putting money on phone portion instead of desktop portion of the unity8 was biggest mistake i cna imagine. I can't understand rational behind it. Just look at what Microsoft does, they prioritize desktop win10 over mobile win10.
  • GraemeLion 10y ago
    The only thing I can guess is they thought that to succeed in convergence, they would have to win the phone market, and that was the harder market to design for and react to. So, they built for that and tried to win the hardware developers/companies. I suspect they thought if they got that, they could converge things back on the desktop
    • skierpage 10y ago
      That's exactly what Unity 8 in Ubuntu release N.NN was going to do. The converged apps, the latest version of Unity, the new Mir display server, all running on the desktop as well as the Ubuntu Phone builds. The problem was, N.NN kept shifting from 14.04 to 16.04 to 17.04, and now never.00 With each Ubuntu release Canonical made fewer changes to Unity 7 on the desktop (the one I remember is moving from a global menu to a menu in a program's title bar), because the new awesome was around the corner...
• hitlin37 10y ago
  this was expected. Unity 8 has been getting pushed farther and farther and it seemed very unfinished in previews.
• tofflos 10y ago
  Sad to see this. But also glad to see a less fragmented Linux desktop. I've always stuck with Gnome but the video in Mark's announcement looks pretty good. I guess it's true what they say - A system is never a popular as the day it is decommissioned. I hope they can also align their release schedule with the Gnome team. I want to be on the latest desktop and get access to all the new features as they come out - not six months later.
• frik 10y ago
  How much has another company paid, that Ubuntu dropped it?
• skdotdan 10y ago
  Am I the only one who doesn't like this news? I shared the Shuttleworth's view on convergence.
• hitlin37 10y ago
  Do one thing (Desktop) and do it well.
• simlevesque 10y ago
  Today was a good day.
• awinter-py 10y ago
  All I need graphics for is the web. Build a terminal-only window manager with firefox built in.
  • pythonaut_16 10y ago
    Does a tiling window manager like i3 not fit that use case?
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • awinter-py 10y ago
      fair point
    • gremlinsinc 10y ago
      i LOVE i3. Just gotta say best thing ever for my workflow.
• butz 10y ago
  Ditching Unity for Gnome - good news. Dropping Ubuntu Phone - not. First Firefox OS, now Ubuntu Phone. I suppose it shouldn't be that hard to create a fully open source mobile OS, with possible "convergence" functionality (running desktop apps when device is connected to big screen)? Especially now, when all apps are going to web a. k. a. Progressive Web Apps.
  • int_19h 10y ago
    It might not be that hard to create the OS. But it is pretty hard to find operators willing to preinstall it on phones, which is what you need to have any sort of marketshare for it.
    • petecox 10y ago
      Monetization was Canonical and Mozilla's first mistake. A grass-roots movement would stand a better chance through embracing the custom ROM community. The way forward would be to fork lineage os as a base, make it dead trivial to port any device that has a pre-existing 14.1 nightly build, then set up build slaves for the community to test with.
• tradesmanhelix 10y ago
  "Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence" Translation: "We don't really care that much about Linux on the desktop because it's not making us much $$$." Dear Canonical, Your actions are a huge let down to the community. You caused a lot of strife with the move away from Gnome to Unity in 2010, and now you're ripping the rug out from under even more users after feeding us crap about convergence, etc. for the past 4-5 years (?). Nobody asked you to do any of that phone or convergence stuff, but peddling it like it's the next big thing and then pulling it without ever even really shipping a working product is just amateurish and make the whole FOSS community look bad. You and FOSS companies like you - please stop. Next time you have an idea that's going to be the next "big thing" or a "world-changing paradigm shift", ship something before you start hyping it to the tech press. Ubuntu Touch/Unity 8 is just the latest in a long line of embarrassing open-source let downs that took enormous amounts of time and energy away from the community with absolutely nothing to show for it. Signed, A disappointed ex-Ubuntu user
  • kleiba 10y ago
    1. You say that Canonical's move from Gnome to Unity in 2010 caused a lot of strife. 2. Now they're undoing that step. Shouldn't you be happy rather than disappointed?
    • CaptSpify 10y ago
      Why not both? I'm happy they are dropping it, but disappointed that they started altogether. That's a lot of time we as a community could have been working together, but weren't. I can be disappointed in those "lost" years, but happy that we're done with them.
    • tradesmanhelix 10y ago
      Yeah, I can understand how that's confusing. I meant to convey two things: 1. I mean to imply that it was a waste - they created a bunch of controversy, and for what? If they were not committed to Unity for the long-haul, they should never had made the switch away from Gnome in the first place. 2. In the intervening years since 2010, a ton of people have come to use Unity and gotten used to it instead of Gnome, and now Canonical is pulling the rug out from under those people. This whiplash, knee-jerk approach is just a horrible way to treat your users and is very disappointing. This behavior reminds me of MS forcing Metro UI on people in Windows 8 for years and then (mostly) abandoning it without ceremony in Win 10. I don't expect MS to care about anything other than the bottom line, but I had hoped for more from Canonical.
• dumbmatter 10y ago
  This is awesome. When that "What do you want to see in Ubuntu 17.10?" post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821 was up recently, I wanted to say "Get rid of the abomination that is Unity" but figured it'd just be flamebait. Little did I know how close my dreams were to coming true!
  • Grue3 10y ago
    Gnome (for major versions > 2) is even worse than Unity though. They should've chosen an actually usable DM like Cinnamon.
    • Epskampie 10y ago
      I do not agree. I've been using ubuntu gnome for over a year now, and with a few extensions (dash to dock), which are officially supported, I find it extremely usable and stable.
    • mentat2737 10y ago
      I'm an happy GNOME3/Wayland user, with a few extensions GNOME3 is very good.
    • binarycrusader 10y ago
      Respectfully, I disagree. I've been using GNOME since at least 1.2 or 1.4. I've also used Unity in recent years simply because that was the easiest thing to use when using Ubuntu on one of the systems I have it on. However, it took very little effort for me to start using GNOME 3 in its latest incarnation as it is fairly similar to the Unity interface Ubuntu ships in many respects.
    • shady-lady 10y ago
      100% disagree. Used Mint(& Cinnamon) for years. Recently switched to Fedora 24/25 (+ Gnome). I will never go back. Gnome is way more polished and enjoyable to use. Actually enjoyable.
      • 10y ago
• frik 10y ago
  Let's keep Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) an individual company. One of the worst case scenarios is that a big company buys Canonical and f*cks with Ubuntu.
• pjmlp 10y ago
  I like GNOME, but actually was quite comfortable with Unity. While I do understand their change of focus, after all someone needs to pay those developers somehow, and resources are limited, it kind of reminds me about Red-Hat's decision that enterprise was where money is, as they switched their focus away from desktop. Cloud and IoT are basically where enterprise is going and where GNU/Linux is just part of the underlying services, but not the main product being sold.
• doppioandante 10y ago
  Unity has often been criticized because it was a Canonical thing and didn't leverage Wayland, but it's another world compared to Gnome shell. I couldn't like gnome shell no matter what. I was using Gnome shell on a old eeepc. The interface is dumbed down and you have to install a bunch of extensions to make it as functional as Unity. What was worse is that the launcher automatically triggered the search function, and that slowed down the pc to a crawl. I'm using KDE on it now and, even though less stable, it has a decent interface and it is surprisingly snappy.
  • jbicha 10y ago
    Why can't Ubuntu ship some extensions by default? After all, Red Hat Enterprise Linux ships GNOME Classic which is GNOME Shell with some extensions and a tweaked theme.
• hd4 10y ago
  I'm one of the people who asked for less NIH in Ubuntu in the recent thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821 but I didn't think they would take it this far. Jokes aside, it's sad that Unity won't be developed further. I'm one of the ones who loves Unity 7, it's always been faster and less memory hungry than GNOME or KDE for me. I will just have to cling onto the LTS for as long as possible. In the long-term I think this is good for Ubuntu and Linux users in general, less diversity can sometimes help an ecosystem form. I think many users just want a DE to stay out of the way and make life easier, so I hope some of the Ubuntu ease of use focus and community will get injected back into GNOME. I really hope a huge flood of users coming back forces them to look at their memory usage and get it under control.
  • frik 10y ago
    Gnome 2 and KDE 3 were pretty good. Then both shells lost their way. Why do they try to be a bad clone of macOS rather than keep being a Win98 on steriods (KDE 3) or a more simple shell for normal users (Gnome 2).
    • DCKing 10y ago
      I dislike that people speak in such absolutes on this. You're expressing a personal opinion. In my opinion, Gnome 3 is amongst the best desktop shells I've ever used. It's focus on simplicity in the base, while including extensibility using, well, extensions is unparalleled. I like that I can choose my own complexity and features without resorting to editing config files or hacky black magic. It's only marred by a subjective lack of quality, quantity and consistency in applications, as is the entire Linux/Unix desktop. So to each their own. I also think KDE 4/5 are much nicer than KDE3.
      • Spivak 10y ago
        You don't think the dconf database is more or less the same amount of black magic as editing config files?
        • 10y ago
• AsyncAwait 10y ago
  Looks like they saw that RH recently hit $2bn in subscription revenue and went...damn son :-)
• shmerl 10y ago
  Dropping Unity means dropping Mir, which is a good thing. Now developers can avoid redundant efforts, and can focus on Wayland. And it's still a huge pile of work for many complex applications like Firefox, Wine and many others, including graphics drivers, GUI toolkits, libraries like SDL and etc.
• Grue3 10y ago
  Growing Ubuntu for [current buzzword] rather than [last year's buzzword]. Why not just build it for server and desktop because that's what Ubuntu is best at, and not chase the latest fads?
  • cwyers 10y ago
    > Why not just build it for server What do you think Cloud means?
    • majewsky 10y ago
      Exactly. In this context, "cloud" is just the buzzword du jour that makes pointy-haired bosses throw money at IT infrastructure.
• ldev 10y ago
  Not really news, saying "linux distro chases ideas to rewrite instead of sticking to one thing and fixing it and that's why linux desktop won't ever happen" is like saying "grass is green".
• Apocryphon 10y ago
  Firefox OS also (briefly) pivoted to IoT after their mobile efforts failed. Is this a natural pattern?
• DCKing 10y ago
  As an end user, I like this news. Unity was never for me (I run Gnome Shell on all my distros, including Ubuntu), I was not particularly enthused by Ubuntu phones, and Canonical getting on track with Gnome and therefore Wayland means we're making amazing progress to a more unified modern Linux desktop ecosystem. But it's also very sad. Canonical tried to bring the open source technology to consumer devices, failed, and never really looked like succeeding in the first place. Although they made the Linux desktop accessible to new large audiences (including myself), they too cannot make the next step in making the technology a real success on the general consumer market. Ironically, their desktop popularity gave them large popularity amongst developers and sysadmins, which now allows them to have a great business case to sell to enterprises for cloud and IoT. The same guys that boosted the popularity of Linux with a desktop for everyone are now going to be making almost all their money on enterprise licenses for headless systems. Ugh.
• m45t3r 10y ago
  Hope just that Canonical will apply their custom theme on GNOME. As a Arch Linux user, I think that the default GNOME theme is ugly, Unity by default have a much better look.
  • pacofvf 10y ago
    They should use Cinnamon, or just absorb Mint, that's the most popular distro right now anyway, and it is ubuntu-based.
    • WD-42 10y ago
      Is mint really the most popular distro? According to distrowatch, yes. But my suspicion is that mint users just like to tell everyone they are mint users. The majority of Ubuntu users probably just install it and go on with their lives.
      • ufo 10y ago
        I think a big factor is that if you google for "Linux Mint" the distrowatch page is one of the top results, while if you google for "Ubuntu Linux" you get other results instead.
    • anuragsoni 10y ago
      By which metric? Distrowatch ranking? Their page has this to say "The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more." [0] Wikimedia has completely different numbers. [1] That being said, I think that we have reached a stage where its become very easy to switch between Linux Distros. I remember 5 years ago when I tried to switch from Ubuntu to something else, It was pretty noticeable (mostly because of font rendering). But these days I think the situation is much better, and I think it really speaks a lot about the progress that has been made on the usability aspect. [0]http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity [1]https://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm https://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOper...
• karussell 10y ago
  Honest question: how is Canonical making money in the cloud with ubuntu? Everytime someone installs an image with 'Ubuntu' in the name the cloud provider has to pay Canonical? Or what else could be the main revenue stream 'in the cloud'?
  • Elhana 10y ago
    Short answer: Enterprise bosses like support contracts, because it covers their asses. You can basically ask the same question about redhat.
    • karussell 10y ago
      I can imagine this now, but how did they get to this point? I mean RedHat was a small unknown company then probably no one would have bought a support contract from them or at least the prices of these contracts were tiny.
      • akulbe 10y ago
        I pay for a RH support contract... and it's a ripoff, if you ask me. Unless you're a MASSIVE company spending MASSIVE dollars... response time is slow. The turnaround time for a simple issue was like one question and one answer every 24 hours. It took me almost a week to get a simple registration issue worked out. The #rhel channel on FreeNode was WAY more helpful in terms of skill and response time, and that was free. :/ I want to pay, to support them, but I'd like it to be worth it. Currently, it's hard to see where it is.
• severino 10y ago
  Unfortunately, I guess Ubuntu Desktop won't last much, too. Can Canonical make money from that? Nope. They even made their product less appealing when they helped Microsoft run it inside their OS. I always thought Canonical wouldn't be around much longer, and these news seems to confirm that. I'd, as a long time Ubuntu user, miss them.
  • m45t3r 10y ago
    The great advantage that Ubuntu have by being the most popular Desktop distro is not making money from desktop users. The advantage is that some of those desktop users are also developers, so when they need to deploy their system in Server/Cloud/IoT/whatever, they choose Ubuntu because this is the distro that they developed their application to begin with. So yeah, desktop is a afterthought for Canonical, however it is still important.
    • severino 10y ago
      Yes but, can Canonical make a business out of that? They get no (significant) money either from people using their system in embedded platforms or cloud servers.
    • ex3ndr 10y ago
      There no need to use Ubuntu if you can use debian. Debian is almost same and very light. Ubuntu doesn't feels like this.
  • int_19h 10y ago
    > They even made their product less appealing when they helped Microsoft run it inside their OS Why does it make it less appealing? Ubuntu userspace running inside WSL is still Ubuntu. If you need support for it, you'd still go to them, same as if you would if you were running it in a VM or on dedicated hardware.
    • severino 10y ago
      Because those users count as Windows users, for the market share. That means companies don't bother about Ubuntu. They also won't use the rest of the software Canonical bundles, for browsing the internet, writing documents, etc. It's only Microsoft who gets a benefit from this.
• BudFox 10y ago
  The problem was not the vision or community rejection as Mark suggests. It was a failure of mindshare with unpalatable Canonical licensing and suboptimal engagement.
• dhruvmittal 10y ago
  Hopefully now we can all agree on Wayland and start moving a little faster towards {application,driver,etc} support and capabilities. I feel like Ubuntu's Mir pushing was one of the big things holding back Wayland from widespread support and adoption. I'd love to dump X without feeling like I'm shooting myself in the foot sometime in the next few years.
• BudFox 10y ago
  The problem was not the vision or community rejection as Mark suggests. It was a failure of mindshare with unpalatable Canonical licensing and suboptimal engagement. These issues are surmountable, but only if Mark / Canonical look within first.
• chrisper 10y ago
  What about snap? Are they going to switch to flatpak as well?
• avodonosov 10y ago
  I'm not a fan of Unity as a desktop environment, but it's sad to hear about phone - I hoped to have a phone with normal, familiar OS.
• oldgun 10y ago
  Not really a Unity fan or a 'Convergence' fan, but just saddened by the fact so many developers and community enthusiasts get to know that their efforts were in vain.
• nik736 10y ago
  I am simply hoping Apple is working on parts of Shuttleworths' vision where your iPhone becomes your daily driver. Just plug it in to your Display and have a fully fledged iOS/macOS hybrid version to work with. Xiaomi is releasing the Mi6 in some weeks with 8 GB of RAM, so it's only a matter of time until we get comparable specs like we have in MacBooks or even Desktops in the smartphone form factor (which will be incredible in itself).
• mtalantikite 10y ago
  For their embedded device support I'd like to see them go even smaller than what they list on their Core (IoT) devices page. Sure, Raspberry Pi is nice and all, but I wouldn't build an embedded system around it. Lately I've been hacking some projects on the Arduino Industrial 101, which has a small Atheros AR9331 MIPS based SoC, but it ships with a very old OpenWRT that doesn't seem to get much in terms of updates. I spent time building a new image for it based off of the LEDE fork that is being brought back into OpenWRT, then wrestled with various parts of the Linux side of the board, but ultimately I really don't want to be managing build pipelines for Linux system updates. At this point I may just wait for AVR changes to Rust to land and ditch the Linux side all together. That's all to say, it really would be nice to have a small footprint embedded Linux distribution that wasn't mainly focused on routers like OpenWRT (not a knock on OpenWRT). Raspberry Pi and Samsung Artik 10 aren't really something I'd completely consider as embedded systems (also not a knock on either of those boards).
  • nisa 10y ago
    The problem is that all these routers and a lot of the embedded stuff don't get updates due to shitty vendor drivers for a lot of components. Most of the work on LEDE/OpenWRT is from volunteers that just want to make it work. Usally these devices/boards ship with an SDK from the manufacturer that is often based on OpenWRT but has some hard dependency on an ancient kernel, non-GPL sources or messy GPL drivers that need a lot of work until they can be upstreamed to the kernel. That beeing said, LEDE is not only for routers - I think the ubus/procd/netifd system is pretty great - there is uhttpd-mod-ubus that allows you to configure everything via json-rpc (also websocket support is coming) Maybe the tradeoffs from LEDE to run with fine with a current kernel/userland on 32mb (or even 16mb ram) / 4mb flash devices might make it more complicated to use it as general purpose system.
• moystard 10y ago
  It takes courage to reflect on previous decisions and re-consider your product strategy. I am quite impressed by Mark Shuttleworth decision to move away from Unity and the desktop/phone convergence that has been slowing down innovation for Ubuntu, and allowed other distributions to catch up. Every Linux users should benefit from this decision; I am excited to see the improvements they will make to the Gnome environment.
• reality_czech 10y ago
  Hooray, Unity and Mir are dead! Now the next step is to give people a good migration path to Fedora or Debian.
• pluma 10y ago
  Unity has grown on me over the years but I guess I will adapt. I'm not interested in having strong opinions about my OS's UI anymore so I just hope they'll stick with whatever they switch to.
• hackuser 10y ago
  Could it be forked? Is there a community that would continue to develop Unity?
  • skierpage 10y ago
    Sure, this stalwart who works on putting Ubuntu Phone on other devices wants to keep Unity 8 alive: https://plus.google.com/110699558853693437587/posts/7RHujp9u7oW https://plus.google.com/110699558853693437587/posts/7RHujp9u...
  • pawadu 10y ago
    This is a fork of canonical's unity 8 repository as of April 5, 2017. Following Mark Shuttleworth's announcement to abandon unity 8 development, we are planning to continue working with the project. https://github.com/unity8org/unity8org https://github.com/unity8org/unity8org
• signa11 10y ago
  any specific reason why desktop linux seems to be converging on gtk instead of qt ?
  • int_19h 10y ago
    I think it's a combination of largely unrelated historical trends (dating to way back, when Qt was GPL-only, and even before that, when it had its own incompatible license). That said, it's interesting that most commercial desktop software for Linux these days seems to be written in Qt, not Gtk. Also, while this is anecdotal, most new projects (as in, started recently, as opposed to old software having new releases) seem to be trending Qt in my experience. So there's a weird divergence here between the DE and the apps.
    • pksadiq 10y ago
      > I think it's a combination of largely unrelated historical trends ... Some of the facts are still true. Say for example, Qt is now licensed under LGPLv3, which several corporate hate. GTK+ is licensed under LGPLv2.1+.
      • pawadu 10y ago
        How is LGPLv3 different from the usual binary only libraries the corporate buy?? Also, there is a paid Qt license if you don't like *GPL.
    • skierpage 10y ago
      KDE's Plasma shell uses Qt QML to make flexible layout apps that work with touch and keyboard+mouse, just like Ubuntu Phone/Unity 8. Plasma Mobile is KDE's attempt to leverage that into an open source phone OS. Canonical didn't seem interested in working with KDE despite the common tech base. I wonder if Canonical will continue development of any of its Ubuntu Phone/Unity 8 apps, the whole point of convergence was they would work on desktop as well.
• nol13 10y ago
  Sorry for being Unity h8ter :/ I mean I appreciate what you all were doing, but ya, I like MATE.
• brendaningram 10y ago
  Disclaimer: I don't use Gnome or Unity, I'm an i3 guy. I understand that choice in the Linux world is very important, but I also think that choice (taken to extremes) can be crippling. My opinion is that we have too many desktop environments, and too many distros. If we imagine a hypothetical scenario where in June 2010 Ubuntu committed to Gnome as the DE, imagine how much progress would have been made with Gnome in the last 7 years, not just from a coding perspective, but from a community and social perspective. I consider it supremely important that we educate as many computer users as possible about the negative side of proprietary software (lock in subscriptions, proprietary file formats, closed source privacy concerns etc). What Ubuntu did back in 2010 (I think) did major damage toward that vision. I applaud Mark Shuttleworth for making the decision, even if he only got there because of commercial reasons. I really hope that Canonical and Red Hat can work together to make Gnome not just a technological success, but a social one too.
  • noobermin 10y ago
    I'm not entirely convinced this is right. Many people worked on Gnome, I'd bet even more did so than did for Unity and Mir. It's not that having more than one project completely divided the FOSS community's resources up.
    • brendaningram 10y ago
      True, Gnome has had huge development carried out over the last few years. Red Hat / Fedora have been great in terms of contributing to the FOSS community.
  • GutenYe 10y ago
    Switched to GNOME means GNOME will have more developers working on it, and developer matters. Compare to tons of full-paid developers in MacOS, Android and Windows. At the moment, linux still needs more and more High-Quality Desktop Applications.
  • Nightshaxx 10y ago
    I kind of agree, sorta. On one hand, freedom is freedom. You can't say "here have some freedom" then when people do what they want say, "oh I didn't mean that much freedom!" That said , I think Canonical has a responsibility to do things smarter since they (like it or not) are the face of Linux for a lot of people.
• dleslie 10y ago
  I wanted an Ubuntu phone but was waiting for some kind of official store to buy them from, and not flash a phone myself or buy a developer device.
• juskrey 10y ago
  Gnome was getting better without Canonical exactly because nobody was trying to "converge" it - linux ecosystem gains from randomness and branching. Now new centralized efforts to "canonicalize" will dumb it down again.
• tatsuhirosatou 10y ago
  I am quite happy to see this. Although I am saddened by the death of the Ubuntu phone, this means that GNOME will get a lot more development and will receive the love and care of Canonical's excellent design teams. Gnome 3 is already shaping up to be quite a marvel, I am very excited about what will come next. Furthermore, even if the dream of a free as in freedom Linux phone is pushed down a bit down the future, I think that a joint community/Canonical/Red Hat effort will eventually materialize. P.S. I hope for a return to the brown and orange theme too!
• reitanqild 10y ago
  Yes! Yes yes yes! IMO possibly what I think of as the lost years of Ubuntu are over. I tried a few times but concluded that they had decided to go in a direction where I didn't want to go.
• nnain 10y ago
  I like the pragmatism in this letter: "What the Unity8 team has delivered so far is beautiful, usable and solid, but I respect that markets, and community, ultimately decide which products grow and which disappear." Ubuntu has done well in growing the Linux community. I hope they continue interesting work in the future.
• nicolaslekai 10y ago
  This could mean a significant jump in the adoption of Debian, from Ubuntu users!
• wassimsab 10y ago
  The one thing I'd miss from unity is HUD. Too bad canonical didn't focus on it.
• LeicaLatte 10y ago
  Going all in on their strengths and moving away from fluff like 'convergence' is the right thing to do for any company. Happy that Canonical's focus is back on the server.
• afandian 10y ago
  As someone who bought an Ubuntu Tablet in good faith, and received OK hardware but an OS that was profoundly un-production-ready, I wonder where this leaves me. There's no explicit mention of what's going to happen to people running Ubuntu Tablet who paid for a device. Maybe I'll get what I always wanted, which is a traditional desktop OS tweaked for tablet usability. Maybe I'll just get nothing.
• yAnonymous 10y ago
  Unity has its issues (mainly bugs that need fixing), but it offers great usability without the need to configure anything. GNOME on the other hand is a usability train wreck, ran by fucking tools who almost bankrupted the project by funding social justice projects (https://archive.is/jCGA2 https://archive.is/jCGA2). There's no Linux alternative to Unity right now that offers a slick, minimalistic UI with a search interface for programs and files and with good out of the box keyboard shortcuts. Please, by all means, try to prove me wrong here, because right now I feel like going back to Windows after ten years of Linux.
• unlmtd 10y ago
  I actually knew Unity/mir was doomed over 2 years ago. I can also say aptitude is doomed. Nix or a derivative renders imperative system management obsolete.
• vbezhenar 10y ago
  Last Ubuntu I enjoyed was 10.04. They switched to Unity and I didn't use Ubuntu since, I liked old Gnome and switched mostly to CentOS. For me it was like Windows 8 — may be it's good, but it looks completely different so I don't want to deal with it. Now Microsoft returned good old windows with Windows 10, Ubuntu returning to Gnome and Apple's not abandoning macOS. Good times.
• looserof7 10y ago
  I'm really happy about this decision. Nevertheless it would be better if they design and build software by keeping modularity in mind so that other DE like KDE ,... can use them without changing much of the code-base and reinventing the wheel.
• bitL 10y ago
  My translation: Ubuntu is running out of money, maybe already feeling the heat from the decision to provide Linux subsystem in W10, disincentivizing developers from switching to stand-alone Ubuntu, therefore they need to cut things not projecting bringing profit soon.
• cbhl 10y ago
  I think this is the right decision for Ubuntu. I also think that convergence is the future, but I don't think the market is ready for it. Phones run on ARM, desktops run on x86. The non-Pro Microsoft Surface is good, but many people still have a few x86-only legacy applications or devices that need a "real computer". USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 adoption is just barely in its infancy, and it'll be a couple of years before we start seeing it on affordable mass-market phones, laptops, printers, monitors, and so forth. I think we've got another decade or so to go, but the pieces are slowly moving into place. Unity was a bit too far ahead of its time.