14 DAY TRIAL // Unity 8 is making great strides and it's looking more and more like a proper desktop. Canonical is getting ready to ship this new desktop by default next year in April, and everything is falling into place.
Many users were worried that the upcoming Unity 8 desktop would look a lot like the phone counterpart, but they couldn't be more wrong. In fact, Unity 8 will look a lot like Unity 7, at least in terms of general design, so users should see a too bigger difference. It remains to be seen how the scopes on the phone will be adapted for desktop use, but there is plenty of time for that.
The implementation of Unity 8 on the desktop is actually part of a much bigger convergence plan. The Ubuntu devs are not doing the same work twice and they want to have the same desktop (more or less) work on two different platforms, with the obvious differences. When all is said and done, there should be a single version of Ubuntu running on all the platforms. They are already using the same base, so they are halfway there.
Unity 8 is working now on Ubuntu 15.04
Canonical separated Ubuntu 15.04 in two branches, one with the "old" Unity 7 and one with Unity 8. As you can expect, the one with Unity 8 is still under development and it will remain like that for quite some time. We might get to see Unity 8 and Unity 7 under the same roof with Ubuntu 15.10.
Until then, all we can do is check on the progress made by Canonical and wonder how you can have a desktop for a Linux distro first implemented on the phone and then on the PC. The video listed below is made by Popescu Sorin and it illustrates some of the features. Please ignore the low resolution of the video.
You can download Ubuntu 15.04 with Unity 8 and give it a try, but please remember that it's still an early work and it's not representative of the final desktop.
