14 DAY TRIAL // System76's CEO Carl Richell is reporting today on some of the upcoming changes the Linux hardware company plans to make in regard to the look and feel of the GNOME desktop environment shipping with the next major Ubuntu release.
As you are very much aware by now, Canonical is moving away from their unique and gorgeous Unity user interface to the GNOME 3 desktop environment for the Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) operating system, due for release later this year on October 19, 2017.
If you're a System76 user, you should also probably be aware of the fact that System76 is always on top of things updating their desktop and laptop computers to the latest stable Ubuntu release. Right now, they are still shipping PCs powered by Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) and Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus).
But later this year, after the release of Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark), they'll start shipping computers powered by this new OS that features the latest GNOME 3 desktop environment, and they've designed a new theme for it to provide their customers with a consistent experience. The theme is called Pop.
"We like consistency. We like it in everything from quality across products to packaging to our web and print design. Our new Pop theme was born from the desire to provide customers with a consistent experience all the way through to the OS. Pop is bright, beautiful, and very System76," reveals Carl Richell, System76 CEO.
They want you to submit bugs and feedback
There's a lot of time until then, but there's also a lot of work to be done to accomplish their consistency vision. Therefore, they plan on tightening up the Online Accounts experience of the GNOME 3 desktop environment, install Geary as default email client, and integrate GNOME Initial Setup into the Ubiquity installer.
System76's engineers will also work on making KDE Connect a first class citizen on the GNOME 3 desktop environment to provide their customers with seamless notifications from their Android devices. Also, they plan on submitting patches to Ubuntu to force the Update Manager utility to no longer disable their PPA.
As you can see, there's a lot of work ahead of them, so they need your help. For starters, you can install the Pop theme on your Ubuntu 17.04 or Ubuntu 16.04 LTS computers, no matter if you're using Unity or GNOME, and submit any bugs you might encounter, as well as feedback, be it positive or negative.
Details on how to set up the new Pop theme are provided on Carl Richell's latest blog post, where the System76 CEO reveals the company's "mobile integration" and "world class first use" visions for next year's Ubuntu 18.04 LTS release, with the promise to make the GNU/Linux desktop incredible again.