Why it is good that ubuntu has abandoned unity

In case you haven't figured it out so far, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth recently announced that the Unity 8 user interface would be discontinued and would no longer come with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS next year. Instead, Ubuntu 18.04 will arrive with the default GNOME desktop.

Below we will try to reveal the good and bad parts of this decision and how it will affect all users of this well-known operating system.

Main advantages of leaving Unity

The first thing to note is that since it is an operating system with so many users, any major modification that suffers will have a considerable impact on all other Linux distributions.

The abandonment of Unity means a change of direction for Canonical, but with the main advantage that the company has freed up resources that it used to no avail in order to focus on other projects.

In a blog post where he announced the abandonment of Unity, Mark Shuttleworth stated the following in this regard:

“We will continue to work to create the most convenient open-source desktop in the world, in addition to maintaining all current LTS versions and continuing to work with our business partners to distribute the desktop and support all corporate customers. In addition, we will also delight the millions of Internet of Things and cloud software developers who want to further innovate in these fields. ”

If you are an Ubuntu user, you can be sure that future versions of the Ubuntu desktop will be even more consistent with other Linux distributions, and this will only benefit the entire Linux community in the long term.

Main drawbacks of leaving Unity

The first thing that disappeared along with Unity is Canonical's dream of creating a convergence between desktop and mobile devices. As happened with Firefox OS a while ago, probably all tablets and mobiles with Ubuntu will end up disappearing from the market.

Also, another drawback is that the security and privacy benefits that we found in the mobiles with Ubuntu will no longer be available to anyone, and everyone must settle for Android or iOS.

The biggest drawback right now is the development of Mir, which was to be Unity 8's graphics server. Shuttleworth doesn't mention Mir in his posts, but chances are this platform will cease to exist. Without Unity 8 and without convergence, there is no reason to use Mir instead of Wayland.

If you have never used Ubuntu without Unity, it will probably seem like a big change to you at first, but the GNOME interface also has many advantages that you will surely love.

Anyway, you will still have the possibility to benefit from Unity 7 in the new Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus), and even download a trial version of Unity 8 until the release of the next major version of the operating system, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, planned to arrive in April 2018.