14 DAY TRIAL // Ubuntu is planning on converging its operating systems, and this approach will become a lot more obvious in the next couple of years. In the meantime, we found out some interesting things about the future of Ubuntu desktop and Canonical's plans for it.
If you are an Ubuntu fan, then you know that Canonical is working on a new iteration of the Unity desktop environment called Unity 8, which is already available on phones. What some of you might not know is that Ubuntu for phones (or Ubuntu Touch) is powered by Mir, Canonical's display server, and a new type of packages, currently named Click. We say currently because that's their extension, but you might have also heard about Snappy packages, which are essentially the Click packages evolved.
An Ubuntu operating system based on Snappy packages is already available, but it's only the Core edition. The desktop version is still pretty far away from such implementation, but it's getting there. Very soon, we'll have an Ubuntu desktop running Mir with Unity 8, which means that it will basically be identical to the phone versions. That is convergence. The good news is that X.org is not to be forgotten, either.
Ubuntu Personnel Snappy will run X apps
Right now, Ubuntu for desktop uses the old but trusted X server. And it's fair to wonder what will happen with all the apps that are built to run on X and not on Mir, but Canonical has already figured this part out. Ubuntu will run X native apps on Mir, so nothing will be lost.
"Our snappy Ubuntu Personal is currently being born and it’ll be around the 16.04 release before we consider it a 1.0 release that we are happy with. The key objective of Ubuntu Personal is to address end users on mobile, and HW converged devices on top of a snappy Ubuntu platform. Ubuntu Personal will be using Unity 8 and Mir as a default, with support to run any 'legacy' X.org based application transparently. All the applications you have fallen in love with on the Ubuntu phone will also be available on Ubuntu Personal," wrote Ollie Reis, Director of Product Strategy Engineering for Canonical.
Ollie also explained the overarching plans of Canonical for the next couple of years, and you can read more about that in our initial report.