14 DAY TRIAL // Is everyone ready for Unity 8? Probably not, but the transition is happening as we speak either way, and the new desktop should become default sometime next year, probably in October. A lot of people are counting on Canonical to be more tactful this time and not alienate a good part of the community.
One of the things that Canonical did wrong, and admitted to it, was the method used by the company when they switched from GNOME 2 to Unity. The new desktop environment was launched for six months on a netbook edition of Ubuntu and then pushed to desktop users. People still remember that and a lot of users are still not over it. Not everyone wanted to move from GNOME 2, even if that was clearly the way forward, as demonstrated by the direction of the GNOME project.
Canonical is now working to release a new version of Unity that in theory should have feature parity with the old one, but it's likely that something won't survive from one generation to the next, and we're going to get some features that for now are available only on phones. So, here are some minor things that I hope will survive the transition. For some of the features, I have information that they might be preserved, for others there is no indication whatsoever.
Stuff that we really need, or maybe just me
One of the most important features I cherish in Unity is the ability to easily switch between workspaces. I know that multiple workspaces are coming to Unity 8, and I've seen some work done in this regard, but I can't say that I like how it's going to be implemented. I hope it won't be similar to the GNOME 3 implementation, which doesn't seem right at all.
Themability is another important factor. Even if many Ubuntu users prefer the default theme, it doesn't mean that everyone will. The new Unity will need new themes, and I can only hope that they won't lock the default one down. For now, the developers are saying that they don't know what it entails, so it's possible that we won't be able to use themes for Unity 8 from the get-go.
The desktop itself is pretty important, and it would be nice if the developers kept it. For example, neither GNOME 3 nor elementary OS has an actual desktop that you can use without modifying it. The Unity 8 that's coming to Ubuntu is being adapted from the phone version, but that doesn't mean that it should use the same desktop policy. Let's hope that the desktop will stay in place.
Indicator support might not seem an important aspect, but I'm tired of tweaking systems so that I can have something as simple as a Dropbox app. The indicators in Unity 7 are finally OK, and they work wonderfully. It would be nice if this functionality remained in place.
The final thing on my list (the lists of other users might be more extensive) is the LIM feature (locally integrated menus). These menus have been added in the header bar of the window, when it's not maximized, and I haven't heard anything regarding their implementation in Unity 8.
If you have other things that you want to see in Unity 8, please leave a comment below.