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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.

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.
      - wmf 10y ago
        Upstream GNOME is working on Flatpak, so is Ubuntu going to ship GNOME or GNOME-with-Flatpak-stripped-out?
        ZenoArrow 10y ago
        Okay, but from what I've seen Snaps are better (from the perspective of flexibility and simplicity) than Flatpak, isn't this a case where it'd be better for GNOME to adapt rather than vice versa?
        jhasse 10y ago
        We'll see, atm Flatpak has already been adapted pretty well: https://kamikazow.wordpress.com/2017/02/09/adoption-of-flatpak-vs-snap/ https://kamikazow.wordpress.com/2017/02/09/adoption-of-flatp... Try the Firefox Nightly for example: https://firefox-flatpak.mojefedora.cz/ https://firefox-flatpak.mojefedora.cz/
        clvx 10y ago
        In distros yes, but in market snappy has been well received https://partners.ubuntu.com/programmes/iot https://partners.ubuntu.com/programmes/iot . For me the next move of which package manager will be adopted is gonna be based on companies which are gonna develop on it and get support. Only when Red Hat enters the game, you'll see a big adoption of snaps. For now, Canonical is ahead in this game.
        clvx 10y ago
        If they are going to integrate gnome with snaps and snaps having an actual market, I doubt flatpak can compete against them. BUT, it would be easier for Canonical if they do something with their CAL, that'd be the real game changer.
    - apexalpha 10y ago
      Snaps have very real advantages for both users and developers. I'm in favour of them!
      - jhasse 10y ago
        Can you name these advantages over Flatpak?
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        Flatpak is designed for desktop and relies on that environment, snap is designed for both server and desktop use.
        jhasse 10y ago
        For servers there's docker which works great already. We'll see.
- mhall119 10y ago
  Going back to GNOME implies going with Wayland, as Wayland is built-in to GNOME. Wayland isn't like X11, you can't just run the desktop on a different display server.
mswift42 10y ago
Same here. I love the keyboard friendliness out of the box, and especially how sparingly it uses vertical space. I like gnome3 visually, but some design choices by the gnome team I don't understand. While unity uses a global menu, which displays the menu items in several columns, The gnome global menu has 1 column, with for most apps a single entry (quit).
- mlvskmvd 10y ago
  I'm hoping Canonical can cook up a custom suite of extensions to make the GNOME desktop more unity like and maybe even more usable in general. I'm fairly sure implementing unity/mac style global menus on GNOME can be done with an extension. And if they don't contribute as much to the desktop, we'll probably see improvements in other areas such as performance.
- rvern 10y ago
  A blog post by Allan Day addresses the vertical space issue: https://blogs.gnome.org/aday/2014/08/27/gnome-design-saving-you-space-since-2009-or-so/ https://blogs.gnome.org/aday/2014/08/27/gnome-design-saving-....
steveklabnik 10y ago
> I wonder what this means for Mir vs Wayland as well. In my understanding, GNOME Shell doesn't support Mir, only X11 and Wayland, so.
- groks 10y ago
  https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-mir.html https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-mir.html
  - steveklabnik 10y ago
    TIL, thank you!
    - mhall119 10y ago
      Gtk has a Mir backend, GNOME Shell does not.
satysin 10y ago
Making GNOME look like Unity is simple. Getting it to work like Unity is a bit different. The main difference being the global menu bar.
- flukus 10y ago
  Gnome has a global menu bar by default now, I think I had to use the tweak tool to turn it off.
  - firman 10y ago
    Can you give reference about global menu in gnome shell? I can only find old reference to some attemp to implement it[0]. I have tried gnome shell in the past, but I still prever unity because of the global menu. [0] https://github.com/GNOME/gnome-globalmenu https://github.com/GNOME/gnome-globalmenu
    - flukus 10y ago
      I was wrong sorry. It has a single global menu item for the current application which is distinct from the full app menu.
bsharitt 10y ago
Hopefully this means that Wayland is now the unified future for the Linux desktop. I don't think it would be too hard for Canonical to create some installed by default extensions and themes to make Unity users feel more at home in Gnome. The global menu is the only thing I can think of that would maybe be a little too tricky to be worth the effort.
- xorblurb 10y ago
  Wayland is the future is now the equivalent of the year of the Linux Desktop. In a way, maybe the year of the Linux Desktop was more convincing. At least people knew why they wanted that.
  - Longhanks 10y ago
    Wayland is already the default in Fedora 25 and with Gnome on Ubuntu 18.04, it will most certainly be, too.

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.
    - wmf 10y ago
      Upstream GNOME is working on Flatpak, so is Ubuntu going to ship GNOME or GNOME-with-Flatpak-stripped-out?
      - ZenoArrow 10y ago
        Okay, but from what I've seen Snaps are better (from the perspective of flexibility and simplicity) than Flatpak, isn't this a case where it'd be better for GNOME to adapt rather than vice versa?
        jhasse 10y ago
        We'll see, atm Flatpak has already been adapted pretty well: https://kamikazow.wordpress.com/2017/02/09/adoption-of-flatpak-vs-snap/ https://kamikazow.wordpress.com/2017/02/09/adoption-of-flatp... Try the Firefox Nightly for example: https://firefox-flatpak.mojefedora.cz/ https://firefox-flatpak.mojefedora.cz/
        clvx 10y ago
        In distros yes, but in market snappy has been well received https://partners.ubuntu.com/programmes/iot https://partners.ubuntu.com/programmes/iot . For me the next move of which package manager will be adopted is gonna be based on companies which are gonna develop on it and get support. Only when Red Hat enters the game, you'll see a big adoption of snaps. For now, Canonical is ahead in this game.
      - clvx 10y ago
        If they are going to integrate gnome with snaps and snaps having an actual market, I doubt flatpak can compete against them. BUT, it would be easier for Canonical if they do something with their CAL, that'd be the real game changer.
  - apexalpha 10y ago
    Snaps have very real advantages for both users and developers. I'm in favour of them!
    - jhasse 10y ago
      Can you name these advantages over Flatpak?
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        Flatpak is designed for desktop and relies on that environment, snap is designed for both server and desktop use.
        jhasse 10y ago
        For servers there's docker which works great already. We'll see.
mhall119 10y ago
Going back to GNOME implies going with Wayland, as Wayland is built-in to GNOME. Wayland isn't like X11, you can't just run the desktop on a different display server.

mswift42 10y ago

Same here. I love the keyboard friendliness out of the box, and especially how sparingly it uses vertical space. I like gnome3 visually, but some design choices by the gnome team I don't understand. While unity uses a global menu, which displays the menu items in several columns, The gnome global menu has 1 column, with for most apps a single entry (quit).

mlvskmvd 10y ago
I'm hoping Canonical can cook up a custom suite of extensions to make the GNOME desktop more unity like and maybe even more usable in general. I'm fairly sure implementing unity/mac style global menus on GNOME can be done with an extension. And if they don't contribute as much to the desktop, we'll probably see improvements in other areas such as performance.
rvern 10y ago
A blog post by Allan Day addresses the vertical space issue: https://blogs.gnome.org/aday/2014/08/27/gnome-design-saving-you-space-since-2009-or-so/ https://blogs.gnome.org/aday/2014/08/27/gnome-design-saving-....

steveklabnik 10y ago

> I wonder what this means for Mir vs Wayland as well. In my understanding, GNOME Shell doesn't support Mir, only X11 and Wayland, so.

groks 10y ago
https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-mir.html https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-mir.html
- steveklabnik 10y ago
  TIL, thank you!
  - mhall119 10y ago
    Gtk has a Mir backend, GNOME Shell does not.

satysin 10y ago

Making GNOME look like Unity is simple. Getting it to work like Unity is a bit different. The main difference being the global menu bar.

flukus 10y ago
Gnome has a global menu bar by default now, I think I had to use the tweak tool to turn it off.
- firman 10y ago
  Can you give reference about global menu in gnome shell? I can only find old reference to some attemp to implement it[0]. I have tried gnome shell in the past, but I still prever unity because of the global menu. [0] https://github.com/GNOME/gnome-globalmenu https://github.com/GNOME/gnome-globalmenu
  - flukus 10y ago
    I was wrong sorry. It has a single global menu item for the current application which is distinct from the full app menu.

bsharitt 10y ago

Hopefully this means that Wayland is now the unified future for the Linux desktop. I don't think it would be too hard for Canonical to create some installed by default extensions and themes to make Unity users feel more at home in Gnome. The global menu is the only thing I can think of that would maybe be a little too tricky to be worth the effort.

xorblurb 10y ago
Wayland is the future is now the equivalent of the year of the Linux Desktop. In a way, maybe the year of the Linux Desktop was more convincing. At least people knew why they wanted that.
- Longhanks 10y ago
  Wayland is already the default in Fedora 25 and with Gnome on Ubuntu 18.04, it will most certainly be, too.