14 DAY TRIAL // Unity 8 is coming to the desktop, and when that happens, it will be very similar to the current implementation of Unity 7. In the meantime, we get to witness how new features are being added to the code, in this case, a nice 3D app switcher.
If you are familiar with Ubuntu Touch, you already know that the phone has a nice 3D app switcher that works really well on small devices. It's not that it wouldn't be pretty on the desktop side as well, but there is a lot more space on the PC and the apps switcher needs to be adapted to work with a mouse and keyboard. You can expect people to flip through opened apps and swipe up to close them, even if it's with a mouse.
We've been waiting for quite some time to see what solution the Ubuntu developers will choose for the apps switcher, and it looks that they are keeping it simple. For now, it's much more detailed than what we're used to, but we can see a close button on the window, and there are no animations, although that might change.
Unity 8 won't be default anytime soon
Before you get all excited about the new Unity 8, you should know that the video put together by Popescu Sorin represents the current state of affairs on Ubuntu 15.10 with Unity 8, which is still work in progress. We won't see a stable release until next year, and that is also a stretch.
What we know so far is that Canonical is working to have Unity 8 shipped with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, but not in a default capacity. Unity 7 will remain the default for some time, and it still get various updates and improvements for the foreseeable future. In any case, interesting times are coming, and Ubuntu users will soon get to try out an evolved version of the Unity desktop environment.
