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Ubuntu will be switching back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

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app103:
We are wrapping up an excellent quarter and an excellent year for the company, with performance in many teams and products that we can be proud of. As we head into the new fiscal year, it’s appropriate to reassess each of our initiatives. I’m writing to let you know that we will end our investment in Unity8, the phone and convergence shell. We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
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https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cloud-and-iot-rather-than-phone-and-convergence/

40hz:
I figured it was only a matter of time, and I think they made the right move in dropping Unity.

It never gained the traction that Cinnamon attained. And with Gnome, KDE, and xfce already established, it's becoming increasingly obvious they lost that bid for desktop supremacy.

Besides, Unity was bone ugly and geared for what Shuttleworth was convinced was "the next big thing" (that didn't come to pass) for the desktop market - the touchscreen.

I don't think Unity will be missed. It was mostly a distraction for Cannonical IMO. With that clunker out of the way maybe Ubuntu will get some of its groove back.

Truth is, all Canonical would need to do to go back to the top distro slot is to embrace Cinnamon. Do that and they could suck the wind right out of Mint's sails. Because all Mint did was take Ubuntu and give the users the desktop experience they actually wanted rather than try to pull a Steve Jobs move and try convince them Cannonical's  corporate "vision" of unity was what they really wanted.

If Cannonical offers a better Cinnamon based interface, Mint becomes superfluous.

Deozaan:
Didn't Unity 8 just launch in the last release? Or it's going to launch with 17.04?

mwb1100:
Truth is, all Canonical would need to do to go back to the top distro slot is to embrace Cinnamon. Do that and they could suck the wind right out of Mint's sails. Because all Mint did was take Ubuntu and give the users the desktop experience they actually wanted rather than try to pull a Steve Jobs move and try convince them Cannonical's  corporate "vision" of unity was what they really wanted.

If Cannonical offers a better Cinnamon based interface, Mint becomes superfluous.
-40hz (April 06, 2017, 09:09 PM)
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I think you're right, but I'll probably stick with Mint because the Unity thing just left me with a bad taste for Ubuntu (even though I realize that Mint is based on Ubuntu).

40hz:
...I'll probably stick with Mint because the Unity thing just left me with a bad taste for Ubuntu (even though I realize that Mint is based on Ubuntu).
-mwb1100 (April 07, 2017, 02:08 AM)
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I agree. And I plan on sticking with Mint too. And for the exact same reasons. Besides, Shuttleworth's "sins" against the spirit of Linux go far beyond trying to force Unity onto everyone's desktop.

Not that Mint is totally without fault. Clement Lefebvre pulled what I considered a very petty and somewhat hypocritical move when he had Mint's remaster/remix utility taken off the boards because some people were basically doing with Mint the same thing Mint had done with Ubuntu. Which is to say making a name for yourself by taking an existing distribution, customizing it, and rebranding it as your own.

In fairness, there's a little more to it than that. But even so, it was a surprising and pretty dick thing for Clem to do.

Either way, I'm still with the Mint camp. I've been excludively Linux for my own stuff about two years now and I couldn't be happier. Last week I had to do some work that required Windows 10 and I felt like I was wearing handcuffs. So I don't think I'm ever going back. At least not willingly.

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