Ubuntu Unity Faces Possible Shutdown As Team Member Cries For Help

darwinmac writes: Ubuntu Unity is staring at a possible shutdown. A community moderator has gone public pleading for help, admitting the project is "broken and needs to be fixed." Neowin reports the distro is suffering from critical bugs so severe that upgrades from 25.04 to 25.10 are failing and even fresh installs are hit. The moderator admits they lack the technical skill or time to perform a full rescue and is asking the broader community, including devs, testers, and UI designers, to step in so Ubuntu Unity can reach 26.04 LTS. If no one steps in soon, this community flavor might quietly fade away once more.

Well, yes

[alexru]

Unity sucks. It sucked when it was released and it still does. No wonder there is no demand for it.

Re: Well, yes

[fluffernutter]

Lol came here to say exactly this. Unity was were I realized that gnome sucks in general.

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

[shanen]

And y'all have no constructive contribution. Just a loud gripe worthy of an AC? At least you could say which, if any Linux distro is better? I've tried a number of them, and none was perfect, so I keep coming back to Ubuntu and regretfully concluding that Linux will never be an OS option for the "rest of them", AKA the regular folks without computer-related degrees or 10,000 hours of practical experience. But I think the real problem is the broken financial model...

And yet that FP was modded insightful? Rat

Re:If it ain't broke don't fix it.

[AleRunner]

And y'all have no constructive contribution.

Actually the comment that " Unity was were I realized that gnome sucks in general" is an important valid contribution. How much effort is all of this worth?

Unity was created as an attempt to compete with Gnome on top of the Gnome / GTk infrastructure. It was abandoned by Ubuntu not because they became all lovey dovey with RedHat / Gnome, but because they realized that they couldn't get enough value from it different from Gnome even with their professional staff working on it.

We have two similar other Desktop Environments, which is to say community based spin offs of GTk/Gnome; Cinnamon and Mate. That's before mentioning other GTk based desktops like LXDE, Xfce. The level of fragmentation already seems pretty high. If there's value in the Unity code, maybe it could find a place integrated to one of or multiple of the other DEs rather than being an entire other DE on it's own and increasing that fragmentation further?

If that can't be done, then maybe Ubuntu's decision, which was made by the original development company, was the right one?

Re:

[shanen]

Let me rephrase it:

If enough people are willing to donate enough money to keep the feature, then it should continue to live. If not, then that feature should die and go away. However, the same thing could be said at various levels, and another important function of the CSB would be mapping and tracking alternatives... Some of that would involve prioritization of crucial projects, but my fantasy continues with a couple of ideas that could create some space for "guided" donations.

Re:

[bobmagicii]

they should just rewrite it in rust like all the other dumb shit ubuntu has ruined with it lol

Re:

[AntronArgaiv]

Unity was why I quit using Ubuntu and eventually landed on Mint MATE. Didn't like tiles then, don't now.

Unity

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to google this and it turns out Unity is a Ubuntu offshoot.

Re:

[brunes69]

No, it isn't. It is YALDE (Yet Another Linux Desktop Environment)

It has nothing at all to do with Ubuntu the company.

Re:Unity

[alexru]

They created it, so they have something to do with it. It was an era when they wanted to be on the phones (ha ha), so they decided to bring down the quality of a DE to the phone level. They had to abandon it and go back to Gnome because it was unusable mess. The gnome managed to devolve in that time, unfortunately.

But they fixed it!

[Gravis Zero]

The see, all the real problems were in X11 but moving to Wayland fixed all there problems. How? By creating even larger problems to overshadow those problems. You're welcome Linux community members!

Re:

[Tablizer]

GUI (non) standards still wag the desktop dog after several decades on both Windows and Linux. And the DOM. Why is that? Eye-candy addiction?

Re:

[Gravis Zero]

What does the Document Object Model have to do with anything?

Re:

[martin-boundary]

Psst! Nobody does applications these days. We just do web pages, but we like to call them "apps" to fool oldtimers. (actually, we wanted to call them "applets", but that was already trademarked, and "apples"... don't even go there!)

Re:

[PPH]

We just do web pages, but we like to call them "apps" to fool oldtimers.

No. They are applications in their own right. Disguised as web pages (to sneak through port 80/443 firewall rules), and freshly downloaded for each use (to bypass any possible IT quality assurance checks and software approval processes). The link you clicked on yesterday might be benign, but today it hoovers up all your private data. And any attempt to tighten up browser security settings will trigger episodes of developer PTSD and will be countered by CloudFlare blocking to make sure your browser is set to

Re:

[znrt]

it's not fair to blame this clusterfuck on wayland. the problem seems to be with maintaining the current version which still runs on x11/compiz. wayland support was planned for unity x but i don't think they got very far.

i'm not going to miss unity at all, i disliked it from the get go, and stunned when it was forced as ubuntu's default. iirc i was using windowmaker at the time. but to each their own, it seems it still has a few fans, some of them will have to pick it up. including porting it to wayland! to

Re:But they fixed it!

[rtkluttz]

There is no way to fix something that is flawed in concept. Everything about unity is screwed up right down to the intended design. Touch centric interfaces have no place in real computing for real work. Touch is acceptable only on consumption only devices. The massive romper room icons, the inability to handle multi-screen in certain configs (like over and under) and so many more usability nightmares that just cant be fixed because its broken to its core. Phone interfaces don't belong on real desktops.

Re:

[martin-boundary]

...but I want my mid-air hovering window interface!

(for about 30 seconds only, 'cause I have no stamina and I can'tt keep my hands in the air longer than that)

Re:

[Thelasko]

Phone interfaces don't belong on real desktops.

The sad part is Microsoft got the memo a decade ago, but Unity and Gnome keep trying to make it happen.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

No no you see there are no problems with Wayland! Wayland is just a protocol which means the problems are all somebody else's fault. This is COMPLETELY different from X11 which is also just a protocol, but the wrong kind.

It's the community, not the technology or the idea

[Tony Isaac]

The success of an open source project does not stem from the brilliance of the idea or the elegance of the design. It comes from the dedicated and focused efforts of the community that supports it and builds it. If Unity doesn't have that community, it's not going to do well. A lesser project with a large, dedicated community around it, will ultimately make the cut.

Commercial software is like this too. The secret sauce is not the code itself, but the company that backs, maintains, enhances, and manages the code.

Re:

[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

The success of an open source project does not stem from the brilliance of the idea or the elegance of the design. It comes from the dedicated and focused efforts of the community that supports it and builds it. If Unity doesn't have that community, it's not going to do well. A lesser project with a large, dedicated community around it, will ultimately make the cut.

Commercial software is like this too. The secret sauce is not the code itself, but the company that backs, maintains, enhances, and manages the code.

The article and linked posts indicate Ubuntu Unity consists of one qualified developer who no longer can spare the time and and a few moderators who lack necessary technical skills.

Unite

[tresf]

I test-drove Ubuntu Unity a year ago and it was nice, only overshadowed by Gnome after Ubuntu has added critical functionality to make it usable. When it shipped with Ubuntu it was controversial, and in hindsight, probably the wrong direction, but the Desktop experience is still more intuitive than a stick Gnome desktop. My major issue with Unity was performance-related.... But the hate seems misdirected, it's really not all that different from what Ubuntu has now. I don't particularly care for choice paralysis that is the Linux DE, but Unity seems to be unfairly hated. Hopefully the team gets the help they need.

Tactless Ambition

[kurt_cordial]

Bring something to the table.

Pffft

[bleedingobvious]

10cc of Vibe Coding will clear that right up!

Just shut it down it was broken from the start

[jopet]

Unity seems to have been created based on the idea that Ubuntu might spread on mobile devices and tablets and some of the UI design choices may make sense there.

For the desktop it always has been a terrible choice, copying the flawed design concepts of GNOME where it the obsession with removing "clutter" makes it impossible to easily discover what can be done, forces users to memorize cryptic key combinations as if it is 1980ies again and makes it impossible to configure UI components the way the user wants (e.g. with icons or mini-apps in a panel) and rather forces down the same UI layout on all users, very much like Windows does.
Would love to see it go away.

Re:

[kbrannen]

I agree, if it doesn't have a community, just stop working on it; assign the few workers left to other projects. There are other DE for Ubuntu that work well, like KDE, or XFCE.

It scares users away

[Tirs]

Unity was the reason I switched from Ubuntu to Mint.

A modern opensource desktop ..

[sirv]

.. is mission impossible. Even if all open source developers would somehow coordinate and work on a single Linux desktop, even then probably impossible to accomplish.

Re:

[FictionPimp]

Eat this for it is my RAM.

Re:

[allo]

Wouldn't that be more the Luther of OSS desktops?

Re:

[dbialac]

FOSS is possible and has been done. It's called Android. Other Linux distributions continuously have a critical flaw: The designers being software engineers designing the system for other software engineers. Google didn't design Android for software developers.

might quietly fade away once more

[bsdetector101]

Not an expert but that doesn't sound good to start with. Why did Ubuntu ditch Unity? He had to close the Mir project, and focus Ubuntu on servers and IoT devices to stay afloat financially. So Ubuntu had to switch back to Gnome. As to why it was Gnome? The answer is- Ubuntu was built around Gnome for years, and Unity was actually a heavy criticized choice by many back when Ubuntu switched to it. Sep 27, 2022. Been dying for a while then.

Still using xfce

[Culture20]

I switched to xfce back when gnome borked with 3. Whenever I help someone who uses Unity, I feel like I'm using a mutant iMac.