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Clarification on the anouncement from
www.jonobacon.org/2010/10/31/unity-some-further-clarification-points/
(Site is suffering from the /. effect, i got this text from googles
webcache)
Unity: Some Further Clarification Points
Canonical Community Planet GNOME Ubuntu
After hectic few weeks on the road I am now back in sunny California,
and we had a wonderful Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando, Florida.
Thanks to everyone who made the event such a success. It was so great
to meet so many old friends and to meet the may new friends who
experienced UDS for the first time. Looking forward to working with
you in the Natty cycle!
At the start of UDS Mark made the announcement that on hardware that
supports it, Unity will be shipped as the default environment for
Ubuntu 11.04. Since the announcement there has been a lot of
commentary and articles about the decision, mostly of the view of “if
you folks can pull this off, this will be awesome“. Thanks to everyone
for the confidence and support in our community and in Canonical. I
know we can make this rock, but we are going to need to pull together
to make it happen. Throughout this cycle we are really uniting as a
community, and this feeling was electrifying at UDS; there was a real
shared sense of opportunity, and I for one am ready to dig my heels in
and make this happen. :-)
By and large the commentary since the announcement has reflected the
facts, but some articles have got things a little skewed. My view here
is simple: I think everyone should be welcome to have their own view
on Unity, either supportive or cynical, under the premise that the
basis of the discussion reflects the facts and not misinformation.
So, I just wanted to clarify some of the key points regarding the
transition to Unity by default in Ubuntu 11.04 to make sure these
facts are clearly communicated:
* Ubuntu is not ditching/forking GNOME – Unity is a shell for
GNOME, but not GNOME shell. Ubuntu is still a GNOME platform. 11.04
will ship all the components required for GNOME application authors to
have their software run out of the box in Ubuntu, and we will still
ship all the GNOME apps you know and love in Ubuntu 11.04. The only
change is that Unity will be the default shell. Likewise, this is not
a fork: we are not diverging away from GNOME, just producing a
different shell in much the same way others have (e.g. Meego). It is
just a different porthole looking at the awesome GNOME platform.
* Unity is the 3D experience, Classic GNOME is the 2D interface –
if your graphics hardware cannot sufficiently run Unity, Ubuntu will
present the 2D experience which is the two-panel GNOME desktop we
currently ship, complete with all the Ayatana improvements such as
application indicators, global menu, system indicators etc.
* Accessibility is a top priority – currently Unity has rather
poor accessibility support (read: basically non-existent) and
accessibility is a core ethos in Ubuntu. As such, Luke Yelavich has
been assigned to the DX team (the folks who code Unity) to work on
accessibility support in Unity, and he will be supported by Gary
Lasker. In addition to this, we had a great set of meetings at UDS
with the Ubuntu Accessibility community team and they are synced up
with Luke to help support this work with testing, bug triage, and
outreach. Great accessibility is a requirement for Unity if it is to
ship in 11.04: let’s pull together to make this happen.
* Performance is being resolved; porting to Compiz – some of you
have experienced poor Unity performance on certain netbooks due to
their graphics cards. This has been identified is a core issue to
resolve and it is largely due to performance issues in clutter and
mutter (the graphics backend for Unity). To resolve this Jason has
started work on a Compiz port, and early results (i.e. less than a
week of hacking!) have already seen significant performance
improvements. He demoed it to some folks on hardware that received the
most performance bug reports, and the performance was incredible
snappy and slick; it exhibited the kind of responsiveness and
animation that you should expect from a high quality experience.
* Quality is a top priority – Neil and the rest of the Unity team
worked off their socks to get Unity read for the 10.10 netbook
edition, and despite their best efforts, there were some quality
issues highlighted and bug reported. The team believes they have bug
reports for the majority of issues, and this cycle they are spending
most of their time focusing on resolving these quality issues so as to
deliver a top-notch Unity experience. In this cycle I am also going to
leading my team to help build community support and contributions
around quality too, particularly around highlighting areas in which
the community can help resolve and fix issues.
* GNOME Shell is supported in Ubuntu – although we are not
shipping GNOME Shell on the disc and as the default environment for
Ubuntu, we believe that users should be able to get a top-notch GNOME
Shell experience in Ubuntu. With Ubuntu Software Center providing
one-click access to software, getting a GNOME Shell experience up and
running should only be a click away. To be clear, Seb and co who work
on the Canonical desktop team have limited resources to assist with
this effort, but they are keen to ensure we have a great GNOME Shell
experience and are happy to work with the community to make this
happen. Want to make sure you get a rocking GNOME Shell in Ubuntu?
Mail me and let’s see what we can do to make this happen. :-)
* Unity is an Open Source project – Unity is Free Software and a
full Open Source project in which we are going to rely on the
community to help make this rock. We are looking for help with design,
documentation, translations, development, and more! Curious to see how
you can help? See this page for more!
I think those are the main points for clarification. Many thanks for
all those who have been helping to ensure the correct information and
facts have been clarified in the various commentary happening around
the tubes.
Thanks also to everyone who is ready to roll their sleeves up and make
this effort rock. I am hugely excited for the Ubuntu 11.04 release,
and this is going to be a fun cycle as we all circle around Unity and
bring our different skills and diversity of experience and make it the
most innovative Ubuntu release yet. Start your engines…
--
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