14 DAY TRIAL // Unity 8 is coming to the Ubuntu desktop flavor, but there is still a lot of uncertainty in the community about when it will actually happen, not to mention that there are quite a few users who don't really understand what it is all about. We hope that this article will help clear some misunderstandings.
We have written a lot about Unity 8 and that makes us prime targets for being biased. We tend to think that, by now, anyone knows about Unity 8, but we have been receiving emails and messages asking us to better explain this upgrade for the desktop environment and how it all ties up with the Ubuntu for phones.
Canonical is not the best communicator, and that is something painfully obvious, although they made some serious improvements in this regard. Still, there are quite a few users out there who think that the Ubuntu desktop will come with a phone-like desktop or things like that. It's true that it is impossible to reach everyone with the proper information, but at least we can try.
Everything you need to know
The most common misconception is that, when it eventually arrives for desktop users, Unity 8 will look like the one that's already on the phone. We've seen comments time and time again from people who were saying that they don't want an overblown phone experience.
The truth is that the Unity 8 desktop version already looks quite different from the one on the phone, and there is a lot left to be implemented. When a stable and shippable state is reached for the desktop flavor, Unity 8 will look a lot like the current Unity 7.
A second thing that some users don't seem to understand is the convergence concept. People are asking if they need to have Ubuntu preinstalled on the computer so that they can connect their Ubuntu phones.
The Convergence idea is more than just about connecting the phone to an external display. Canonical wants to have a single operating system for all the platforms or, better yet, a single code base from which to build. Obviously, there will be some different builds for phone and desktop, but the core will be the same.
Last on the list is the adoption of Unity 8 for the desktop. It's not done yet, and it will take a while. The first distro version that will adopt it properly, with full functionality and stability, is expected to be Ubuntu 16.10, and that means October 2016. Even then, Canonical will continue to build two versions, one based on Unity 7 and the other on Unity 8. The switch from one Unity version to the next won't happen overnight.
I hope that this answers most of the important questions out there. If you want to know more, leave a message below.