Work will start with as little patches as possible

Apr 19, 2017 21:20 GMT  ·  By

As most of you are aware, Canonical decided to no longer develop its Unity user interface for the main flavor of Ubuntu Linux and, instead, switch to the well-known GNOME desktop environment starting with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

But it looks like work on this massive switch from Unity to GNOME will start soon, as part of the development cycle of the next release of the Linux-based operating system, Ubuntu 17.10, which hits the streets sometime in October 2017. On April 18, the Ubuntu desktop team held a first meeting to discuss the move to GNOME.

You can see the entire IRC log here if you're all that curious about what was discussed during the meeting, but the most interesting fact that we'd like to reveal here is that Will Cooke, Canonical's Ubuntu Desktop Manager, said GNOME would become default session in Ubuntu 17.10 and use the Wayland/XWayland.

Work on Ubuntu 17.10 starts now, Alpha 2 to ship with GNOME by default

While the release schedule of Ubuntu 17.10 is yet to be decided and published on the Ubuntu Wiki, Canonical's Michal Hall revealed the fact that the second Alpha is the target for Ubuntu to ship with the GNOME desktop environment as default session, which will be the first public "Call for testing" for the Ubuntu community.

Therefore, the first daily builds and Alpha release could still include Unity 7 by default, as they're based on Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus). After that, the team will start removing their specific patches for apps, etc., and slowly make the switch to GNOME and Wayland, then add extensions as needed or required by users.

They'll also have to decide if they'll drop the LightDM login manager and replace it with GDM (GNOME Display Manager), as well as Mozilla Thunderbird as default email client, as Evolution integrates better with GNOME. The move to GTK+ 4 could also be a big problem for them due to issues with the current themes used in Unity.

It is a lot of work, no doubt, and Ubuntu 17.10 happens to be the perfect testbed for this massive switch to the GNOME desktop by default instead of Unity. However, we shall know more when more such meetings take place and Canonical's Ubuntu engineers reveal what's coming to Ubuntu Linux later this year.