It looks like Unity 8 won't be ready in time

May 4, 2015 22:57 GMT  ·  By

Canonical wanted to have Unity 8 and Mir ready for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS in order to provide them by default, but it looks like that is not going to happen. Instead, the community will be able to choose the default desktop they want for that particular LTS release.

Unity 8 is the latest version of the desktop environment that powers Ubuntu, but for now it's only available for phones. The developers have been working around the clock to make it ready for the desktop flavor, but they still have a long way to go. It's true that they've made some progress, and it's already showing, but they don't have enough time.

Making Unity 8 default would mean that it's already a very stable experience, Mir is already working properly and has support from companies such as Nvidia or AMD, and that Canonical is finally able to move past Unity 7. As you can see, it's not all that easy.

Unity 8 is not ready for prime time just yet

An Ubuntu user asked during the Q&A part of Mark Shuttleworth's Ubuntu Online Summit keynote if Unity 8 would be ready in time for the 16.04 LTS version, and he responded promptly. "Unity 8 will be an option for 16.04 and we'll let the community decide the default for 16.04," stated Mark.

As you can see, he was rather vague in his answer, but that was probably his intention. It's very likely that by 2016 we'll already have two different Ubuntu desktop version, one packaged with Snappy, powered by Mir and Unity 8, and another one based on .deb packaging with Unity 7 and X. It's still too early to tell what he wanted to say, but it's clear that he didn't want to promise something that wasn't going to happen.

To be fair, Canonical never promised that Unity 8 would be the default in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, only that it was one of their goals. If the developers need more time to make it work, there is no need to pressure them for an early release that wouldn't be up to par.