14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical's community manager Alan Pope on Tuesday announced a call for testing where GTK and GNOME Shell themers, as well as CSS experts, are invited to help them finalize the Unity to GNOME Shell transition for Ubuntu 17.10.
As you probably already know by now, Canonical has dropped the development of its GNOME-based Unity user interface for upcoming Ubuntu releases, focusing on a rich GNOME Shell desktop experience for the next major release of the Linux-based operating system, Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark).
Ubuntu 17.10 is currently under heavy development, with a first Beta release knocking at the door at the end of the month, and it now looks like the Ubuntu Desktop team reached a point where they need community's help to polish the new default GNOME Shell desktop environment.
"With such a significant change, we need all the eyeballs we can get on every part of the desktop experience," said Alan Pope in a blog article. "We’re inviting a small number of community contributors to join us in the London office on Thursday evening to help out with this effort."
They're looking for CSS experts, GNOME Shell/GTK themers
Even if they want to, they can't bring everyone to Canonical's headquarters in London, so they're looking for experienced GNOME Shell and GTK themers, CSS experts, as well as people who are very good at identifying issues with the default Ambiance theme, and fix them if possible.
So if you're in London or nearby, and you meet the requirements mentioned above, and you want to help Canonical get their new GNOME Shell desktop ready for prime time for Ubuntu 17.10, go ahead and mark the August 24 date on your calendar. The testing session will last about 5 hours, from 4pm to 9pm.
To let Canonical know that you're interested in participating, make sure that you fill out this form until Friday, August 18, 2017. Pizza and beverages are provided for the invitees, but if you can't attend, you'll be able to help remotely via IRC in the #ubuntu-desktop channel, or by attending the respective Ubuntu On Air hangout.