Approximately Six year ago, Canonical made #Unity the default shell in Ubuntu. This was acclaimed to be a step to bring Ubuntu to hitherto unavailable devices like Tablets and Mobiles. I personally was not amused. The unity shell was available in one for or the other for sometime before that. Namely in the netbook remix of the Ubuntu.
Last week, Mark Shuttleworth, Founder of Ubuntu and Canonical, confirmed in a post on the company’s official blog today that the company is giving up on Unity and that the default Ubuntu desktop will be shifted back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
Shuttleworth reiterated the company’s commitment to the Ubuntu desktop that millions of users across the globe rely on. It says that Canonical will continue to produce this open source desktop, maintain existing LTE releases, work with commercial partners to distribute Ubuntu, and provide support to corporate customers. Nothing is changing on that front.
He points out that the community viewed the Unity effort as fragmentation and not innovation even though the aim was to deliver it as a free software, an alternative to the closed alternatives currently available to device manufacturers.
It is out of respect for the market’s wishes (or mounting pressure from the community) that Canonical has decided to shelve this project and shift the desktop back to #GNOME starting next year.