Compiz development comes to an end...

[K-Project]

Sad day, but an extremely difficult one for Ubuntu. Where can it go next? I don't imagine this will impact 13.04, but surely it will send development of 13.10 into shock? I agree with this poster.

We all knew the move away from Gnome would be incredibly difficult for Ubuntu to maintain, and I think this has proven to be the case. I'll never understand why they just don't move over to KDE. Surely it's more flexible, allowing them to create their Unity environment their way, and it has the most compelling Linux eco-system there is.

What think?

[dmeyer]

Agreed. Unity should have been developed with KDE and Plasma technologies. Heck, we even have quite a lot of their features already backed in e.g. Krunner as a HUD (even have appMenu now). If they had expanded on what KDE provided it would have been fantastic for both Ubuntu and the KDE ecosystems.

A good example of how you can have your own "KDE" just look at Rosa Desktop. Its absolutely gorgeous and looks absolutely nothing like Standard Plasma.

Cannonical has been making mistake after mistake with Unity. I'm not going to rant because I like Unity, I just don't like how its made. My personal rank: KDE >>> Cinnamon >= Unity >= XFCE > Gnome 3 . ">=" is slightly better in this case and the other symbols show degree of "superiority".

Strangely enough I actually find Unity good when you get past the paradigm shift and even Gnome 3 has its merits for laptops but KDE still blows everything else out of the water by a huge margin. Heck, all the major linux desktops are actually very good. The large differences means everybody can have their cup of tea and I find all of them better than "Metro or whatever else Microsft now wants to name that attrocity." I'm also firmly of the belief that KDE and Cinnamon are quite a lot better than OSX and Unity is maybe up for debate.

Ok so maybe I did rant like crazy but still. Cannonical should have spun their own Plasma interface like Plasma Netbook/Plasma Desktop/Plasma Active/Plasma Mobile (Now in plasma active.) They could ahve done what they want while benefiting from Kwin (Best WM by miles) and the incredible KDE community and software. Heck if they love GTK applictaions so much then use them. You can still get a great integrated appearance nowadays. This isn't 2007 anymore. GTK apps are easily made to look native on a QT system with fairly minimal effort.

[whatthefunk]

One of the major problems with Unity is that it relies too heavily on software not developed by the Ubuntu team. Besides the fact that its a Compiz plugin, you need 3rd party software to alter basic settings. No good in my opinion. You would think that they would have learned about all this when GNOME went its own way.

[dmeyer]

One of the major problems with Unity is that it relies too heavily on software not developed by the Ubuntu team. Besides the fact that its a Compiz plugin, you need 3rd party software to alter basic settings. No good in my opinion. You would think that they would have learned about all this when GNOME went its own way.

Without trying to sound offensive but your point can be applied to Kubuntu as "Kubuntu relies too heavily on software not developed by the Kubuntu team." See that logic doesn't apply here since all of the FOSS world sort of has the underlying dependency on software that they don't develop. Although you definitely have the right idea.

The problem should rather be stated as, "One of the major problems with Unity is that it tries to use software in a manner for which it was not designed and where the Ubuntu team's direction is not the same as that of the develops who create the software they so heavily rely on." When phrased like that - KDE and Plasma make sense. Plasma and KDE has always been about providing the necessary framework/sdk/tools/etc needed to design any interface you might ever imagine/want. This is why Plasma Active can be so quickly developed because it reuses the majority of the code base and really just changes things on the UI side. KDE and Plasma != Plasma Desktop; KDE and Plasma = Anything you could want.

I hope I did not offend you, I just wanted to sort of clarify your underlying idea which is very accurate. Compiz wasn't designed to be a desktop, it was designed to be WM. See using technology in a way for which it wasn't intended as you highlight, I just rephrased it more appropriately.

[K-Project]

...I'm not going to rant because I like Unity, I just don't like how its made...

I'm of the same mind. I don't have any issues with Unity at all. I think it's really pretty nice. We have Ubuntu 12.04 on a laptop at home and it's so sweet. Really fits the form, and the family love using the Dash.

But I don't understand the persistence with wrangling Gnome into something that fits how they want it to be. I'm no expert at all, but it looks to me like square pegs and round holes. Everything they are trying to do can surely be achieved much more easily with KDE? Hell, some Kubuntu users have already shaped their own desktops to look and behave like Unity. Please, if I've missed a reason why Canonical don't do this, post here let me know.

[dmeyer]

Please, if I've missed a reason why Canonical don't do this, post here let me know.

I think it was done for the same reason Cannonical decided on Gnome 2 @ a time when KDE3 was THE DESKTOP. It apparently had something to do with ideologies and QT's licensing. QT has subsequently been re-licensed as LGPLv2 which has sort of ended the "QT and therefore KDE is not FOSS bull****" that's been floating around for years. Cannonical have definitely done a double take when you look at how Ubuntu Phone is now based on QML extensively. Heck QT had already done the relicensing when Unity was released but I don't know if they had chosen the toolkit at a time when QT was not yet "free" by their definitions and redeveloping with QT was just too much of a mission. Also as has been stated Unity is also a Compiz plugin (weird to think about but it is.)

As a disclaimer on my point about idealogies: Cannonical might have originally picked Gnome 2 just because Mark Shuttleworth preferred Gnome 2 over KDE3 but I'm fairly sure it has to do with ideological reasons. Mark said that by 2014 they are going to have a unified image for phones, laptops, tablets and TV's. I wonder if QML is going to become their technology of choice since Compiz is slowly going to die? That would be great as long as Cannonical don't do crazy things like fork QT/QML/QTScript like they forked many Gnome libraries.