Ubuntu should maintain its current setup with Gnome, as Unity DE isn't a standard distribution for this system.
Ubuntu should maintain its current setup with Gnome, as Unity DE isn't a standard distribution for this system.
I began using Ubuntu in 2020, specifically version 20.04, so I’m not very familiar with Unity DE. The latest release tends to run slowly on average hardware and is quite heavy. Canonical has started offering packages for Ubuntu as snaps, but they often perform poorly. Sometimes the applications function correctly, yet others are extremely unstable and frustrating. The Snap store is particularly disappointing. Since everything is packaged as a snap, it can significantly degrade the user experience because the store itself is often unreliable—sometimes it crashes or fails to install properly, leaving users uncertain. This might help explain some of your concerns.
The current setup is limited to Firefox unless there’s a recent update I overlooked, and Canonical has recognized the performance problems with Snaps during startup and confirmed they’ll address them soon. Shifting away from Gnome could still be beneficial here. Since Canonical developed Snap and advocates for it as the default on Ubuntu, even if they abandon Gnome, they’d likely continue promoting Snaps regardless.
First time starting up? This delay has happened before many times... (after months of using the system) and others agree, "move away from snaps or snaps sucks." If everything is set to snaps, performance will drop significantly even on a modern machine. What do you think?
Canonical initially intended to transition to their Display Server, Mir, for Unity 8. This change was met with strong opposition from many users. It occurred before Wayland gained widespread adoption and X remained dominant. Although Canonical still supports Mir in some capacity, its current status is unclear. Most other software was being rewritten using Qt, as it became the new Unity base. Canonical still viewed Unity as a core product, making it feel similar to Unity at that time. This appears to be a fork of Unity 7. The ongoing development of Unity 8 is now known as Lomiri, available on GitHub and GitLab. This project is hosted on Ubuntu, not GNOME, which is one of the most stable desktop environments I've used (Fedora Workstation). Personally, I find GNOME's approach challenging, though Flatpaks offer a more efficient alternative. This shift represents the future direction for mainstream Linux desktops, with performance gains expected as adoption grows and hardware advances. Ultimately, hardware improvements will likely make any noticeable differences less significant over time.
Yeah, right now it pretty much is but I believe they intend to make it into a spiritual successor. As I said though, right now its broken beyond reason and honestly, should still be in a private repo, to say it functions is a massive overstatement, it boots and certain things kind of work sometimes maybe, yeah, its a mess....
Hello, I'm the lead developer behind Ubuntu Unity and Unity7. Unity7 was originally created as a standalone environment for GNOME, serving as a direct alternative to GNOME Shell—unlike the Cosmic shell which is an extension using Mutter. It functions independently of GNOME applications and isn't merely a cosmetic update like the Material Shell or earlier versions of Cosmic. Brodie's video discusses UnityX, which: 1) isn't meant to replace Unity7, 2) closely resembles Unity7 with its dock, HUD, and panels, but remains an experimental project not yet a successor, 3) features a highly promotional thumbnail that feels misleading since it's still in alpha.