14 DAY TRIAL // Unity 8 for the desktop is still pretty far away from a working version that you can use on a daily basis, but progress is being made. It might now feel like it's happening fast enough, but it's happening nonetheless.
Canonical announced a while ago that it was planning to replace the current Unity 7 version with the next generation of the famous desktop environment named Unity 8. They might just change more than the version number because the differences between the two technologies are pretty big, and just a number jump doesn't feel relevant.
In any case, the original plan was to have Unity 8 ready in time for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS as a default, but things are not moving that fast. For now, the plan is to have both Unity 8 and Unity 7 in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, but it's not clear whether that will happen either. The Ubuntu developers are working to make the Unity 8 desktop environment, which is now only present on the mobile version, behave on the desktop as well. Progress has been made, but it will take a lot more than what's been done so far.
Unity 8 is getting a fancy task switcher
Unity 8 doesn't stand on its own two feet; it also needs the new Mir display server to work in tandem. Many of the Unity 8 features need support from Mir, so it's easy to understand why the pace is so slow. New features do land all the time, like a new task switcher that was introduced a couple of weeks ago.
What's interesting about this is the new close button that has been added in the top left corner of the apps. In the mobile version of Unity 8, you need to swipe up, but that's not possible on the desktop. It's nice to see that the desktop is shaping up quite nicely and to witness how some of the features are transformed for another platform.
