Unity 8 And Snaps Are Conquering The Ubuntu Desktop After Ubuntu 16.10 (softpedia.com)

prisoninmate writes: Today is the last day of the Ubuntu Online Summit 2016, and the Ubuntu developers discussed the future of the Ubuntu Desktop for Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) and beyond. It looks like Snaps (Snappy) and Unity 8 with Mir are slowly conquering the Ubuntu Desktop, at least according to Canonical's Will Cooke, Ubuntu Desktop Manager. Work has already begun on pushing these new and modern technologies to the Ubuntu Desktop, as Ubuntu 16.04 LTS has just received support for installing Snaps from the Ubuntu Snappy Store. Canonical's Will Cooke has mentioned the fact that the Unity 7 desktop enters its twilight years, which means that it gets fewer features and it's being reduced to only critical and OEM work. This is because Unity 8 desktop is getting all the attention now, and it will become the default desktop session somewhere after Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak).

Comments

Re:Who Cares?

[StormReaver]

Does anybody actually still believe Linux is a viable desktop platform any more?

My customers and family love Kubuntu, so yes. Even Steve Ballmer admitted that Windows is so bad that it would have died a long time ago if Microsoft hadn't suckered the world's developers into programming directly to the Windows API.

So by "conquering"

[jofas]

... They mean " being forced on users. Classic canonical.

Re: So by "conquering"

[jofas]

Oh, here we go. "Fork it yourself!" Is that the answer for everything now? Canonical isn't just astronaut money, you know. Users put Ubuntu on the map and as such should be treated as stakeholders.
Your comment "I've been using Ubuntu for years and it works for me." speaks volumes. How have you dealt with Gnome 3? Unity? Ever had non-PAE support yanked out from under you? How did you like when Canonical blindly followed Debian and ripped out ffmpeg?
You may enjoy telling others to go build their own car when they're not satisfied with it, but many who put effort into filing Launchpad bugs *and* coming up with solutions may not appreciate your use-it-or-get-fucked attitude. Off with you!

A proud user...

[ADRA]

of Xubuntu. Centos with XFCE is ok too. Really, the only thing that XFCE is missing for me (and probably others) is a set of pre-canned layouts to select from in order to prevent more of the esoteric configuration.

I'm all for adding new types of applications in new and novel ways until the cows come home, but the way I launch applications hasn't changed since '95. Call me old fashioned, but it fcking works and I love it.

Re:Who Cares?

[chipschap]

Millions (billions?) of users disagree.

I think this is a misinterpretation. Yes, millions are using Windows. This is not an active vote for Windows over Linux. The fact is that millions of computers are shipped with Windows pre-installed, and most buyers go with the flow and use what's in front of them. They're not going to install a different OS and probably aren't any more capable of doing so than they would have been with installing Windows if it hadn't already been done for them.

Whether Linux is "ready" or "as good as" Windows is an entirely different question. Quite a few people think it is. But I won't get into that argument here. But Windows' high market share doesn't prove very much.

Re:If Unity 8 is the future...

[Austerity Empowers]

The release was DOA if you had skylake w/nVidia, for example. It was a known bug and went out the door. For the first time in years Ubuntu didn't "just work" on my computer. Worse, even if you asked it to take updates while installing, one of which would have fixed the issue, it failed to do so.

Perhaps the problem is that it was set for April 2016 and shipped in April 2016 when maybe it needed to be in May.

Wait! I can fix this.

[fahrbot-bot]

... according to Canonical's Will Cooke, Ubuntu Desktop Manager.

apt-get remove ubuntu-desktop-manager