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Unity 8 Desktop Session Arrives in Ubuntu 16.10 (omgubuntu.co.uk)
The latest updates to Ubuntu 16.10 Yakkety Yak add a Unity8 desktop session to the Ubuntu login screen. OMGUbuntu adds: Added to the Ubuntu meta package, the new Unity 8 desktop session will be available to try on all new installs and upgrades of Ubuntu 16.10, but only as an alternate login session to Unity 7. Unity 8 is not -- repeat: not -- going to be the default session in this release. Shipping it as a preview session is a great idea. It means to try Unity 8 on Ubuntu 16.10 you won't need to install a set of packages, or faff around with special set-up, or add a PPA. When at the Unity Greeter (aka the login screen) just click the session selector button, followed by 'Unity 8,' and then proceed to login as normal.
It's been many months since I last tried Unity 8, and I'm quite disappointed to see the current state. With the focus Canonical has claimed towards convergence, I expected it to present a much friendlier interface by now... yet it doesn't appear to have progressed at all. Are they spending all their time on it fixing Mir, or building yet another web browser which no one is going to use?
At this rate, when will it be ready for "real" users? 18.04? If that's their pace, why bother? Considering the other *complete* desktops are already building steam with Wayland, can Unity 8 hope to be anything except underwhelming when it finally crosses the finish line? Wayland's bound to be more feature-complete and stable than Mir when all is said and done due to the multiple desktop implementations being built on it, and those desktops have years of development over the components that Unity 8's now building from scratch.
I've always been an Ubuntu supporter, but Canonical just seems too stubborn to steer away from the lighthouse now. It's frustrating to see a company I like wasting their time and resources hoping for a revolutionary product where there's no particular market or demand, as they've done with the phone.
Except, you know, having forced unity down our throats to begin with. A change we didn't want, for reasons that are still unclear, and which has done nothing but dilute and corrupt the Ubuntu distro.
No one likes Unity. No one. Not one single person. The only people who use it are Linux-noobs who were suckered into believing Ubuntu with the default desktop is a good choice.
Why is this still being developed? No one who knows better uses it 'cause it's crap.
Shuttleworth is NOT Steve Jobs although he wants to be. He doesn't have the magic ability to tell people that a crap product is great and have them all blindly believe it.
(I am not a troll. I'm a professional Linux developer, and noobs and senior people alike - without exception - find Unity to be unusable garbage)