Unity: what does this mean for GNOME?
At this stage, most people will have heard the news: Ubuntu 11.04 will ship with Unity as the default desktop shell. This raises a few questions: what does this mean for GNOME, and the adoption of GNOME Shell? Will this further affect the relationship between Canonical developers and others working on the same problems?
First things first: what Canonical is doing here is not new, by any means. Novell developed the slab on their own, based on their user testing and to their own design, before proposing it for inclusion in GNOME once it was released in Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop. Nokia have developed custom user interfaces.
In such illustrious company, forgive me if I think that Canonical’s management has seriously underestimated the difficulty of the task in front of them.
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Unity
So they forked off eventually... well it was in the air, and for a number of reasons it was their only possible way forward.
Reading in depth about this decision, one can see that it's a very well engineered move. The skin is what the market is going towards, it's something people is getting accustomed to with Android and the iPad; pimp it up with Compiz C++ (a great piece of code) and you have a full blown desktop UI that people will want, and something the Linux desktop sorely needs to go forward.
Compiz C++ is very hardware friendly and efficient and will work on older rigs, while being perfectly in line with the times or ahead on newer machines. This is why it's going to be the WM for Unity.
This is going to work out well, and kill Gnome Shell before it is born. Unfortunately they had no other choice, it's simply impossible to develop a great home desktop with the Gnome community, because it's made up mostly by Red Hat developers that don't give a damn about the home desktop. And they will fence Canonical off even if the latter want to contribute by demanding that every proposal be submitted as design intent and then go through their own process, a process where the home desktop does not matter.
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What a bunch of B.S!
They are not going to switch to Unity Interface for 11.04. This is just something they threw out to get some buzz going about Ubuntu and get their userbase all riled up and talking about Ubuntu.
re: bs
augh, dirty rats! I hate being manipulated.
There sure is a lot of angry users over their announcement. I figured this could be the beginning of the end of their dominance if they really go through with it.
A lot of people won't be able to adapt to such a different interface and it will require ample hardware with 3D acceleration.
Oh, as far as your theory: They put Sam Spilsbury on the payroll. That kinda sounds like a commitment.
Same ole same
There sure is a lot of angry users over their announcement. I figured this could be the beginning of the end of their dominance if they really go through with it.
A lot of people won't be able to adapt to such a different interface and it will require ample hardware with 3D acceleration.
Oh, as far as your theory: They put Sam Spilsbury on the payroll. That kinda sounds like a commitment.
Remember the ugly wallpaper with the orange splotches they said was going to be the default wallpaper that got people all riled up then they changed it. Same ole crap.