Canonical to Replace GNOME with Unity in Ubuntu 11.04

[Rob Williams]

It's argued that "desktop Linux" just isn't going to happen, but a fair amount of credit has to go to Ubuntu for pushing that prospect quite a bit ahead. Other consumer-oriented distros have existed for quite a while, such as SuSE, but Ubuntu has a couple of things going for it. It's had a good financial backing, a clear direction, and excellent execution. Since the first version came out in late 2004, Ubuntu has become one of the most popular choices around, even becoming the base of other distros.

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Read the rest of our post and discuss it here!

 

[OriginalJoeCool]

I've never tried Unity since I don't own a netbook but this is interesting. Perhaps the folks at Canonical don't like the way Gnome 3.0 is looking.

 

[Rob Williams]

It could be that to be honest, but I'm not sure. I have a feeling Canonical just wants to go it alone to some extent, and not abide by the rules of other development teams. I just hope that when Desktop Unity is released, it's easy to port to other distros, because it looks like it might be fun to use.

 

[OriginalJoeCool]

Oh, I didn't see your post until now. Canonical does enjoy going it alone, which is a good thing in some ways. How different is Unity from Gnome?

I've always wondered if something totally different might come along to really challenge the traditional desktop paradigm. It'd be interesting to know where Microsoft thinks Windows will go. Will we see more use of touch-screen technology, or are we going to be using keyboard and mouse for a long while? Quite naturally for me, I think of LCARS from Star Trek....