Restarting Unity development in 2021 - Progress Report

Yes, we’ll be adding the launcher as well.

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Is It Going to have a global menu ?

Yes, we’ll be working on it. We have already implemented the HUD.

Will UnityX be available for Arch Linux ?

We’ll be taking a look at writing a PKGBUILD for UnityX (similar to the DEBBUILD at https://gitlab.com/ubuntu-unity/unity-x/unityx/-/blob/master/DEBBUILD).

When is next release of UnityX going to be released ?

We’ll be working on it soon (the next step is to add the Ayatana indicators, which will take a bit of time). Currently busy with lol, an open-source alternative to the Snap Server/Store.

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Bravo Rudra! Are you working on the launcher yet? I really don’t like the current implementation (has nothing to do with what we are used to in Unity7).

Thank you :) Yup, I’m working on the launcher (was busy with a few other releases).

2021-08-02: dev6

  • A completely redesigned panel and a new dock that are both identical to those of Unity7.
  • A redesigned launcher, similar to that of Unity7 (I’ll be working on adding support for scopes and lenses).
  • Support for changing the icon theme (through unity-control-center).

Release

You can follow the instructions at https://docs.unityx.org/installation to add the testing repo and install UnityX.

Screenshot

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Seems like the fix for gtk3-nocsd introduced some breaking dependencies:

code --version
/snap/code/85/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders: /snap/core/current/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.34' not found (required by /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtk3-nocsd.so.0)
/snap/code/85/usr/share/code/bin/../code: /snap/core/current/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.34' not found (required by /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtk3-nocsd.so.0)

Does anyone experience this issue?

P.S. The official deb works it’s snap that seems messed up.

ah, snaps seem to be using an older version of glibc. Guess it should be fixed once core22 is released (the core snap based on 22.04) with a newer version of glibc and snaps upgrade to it.

no, that is not how snaps work, only once code would be re-built against the new base it would be fixed … since code works as is, i wouldn’t hold my breath for microsoft to switch over fast …

are you ld-pre-loading libgtk2-noscd or some such (this error should normally not happen unless there are any hacks (like LD_PRELOAD) applied) ?

sure @ogra, that’s why I mentioned after ‘snaps upgrade to it’.

yup, gtk3-nocsd is loaded using LD_PRELOAD

that will break every desktop snap out there …

well, the CSD does cause a lot of issues in Unity7 (such as window borders being cut midway) and gtk3-nocsd is required for this reason. It can’t be loaded as a GTK module since GTK4 apps don’t support loading modules.

I haven’t seen anything regarding a beta build of Jammy Jellyfish with the Unity desktop. Has development stopped? That’d be a damned shame if so… the more GNOME changes, the less enamored of it I become (and I wasn’t terribly fond of it to start with).

Nope, we’re actually fixing a major bug in Unity7 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-session/+bug/1969357).

@3v1n0 @seb128 You might want to take a look at the bug report above.

@vanvugt The bug report is in gnome-session, not Unity, so not sure why the package was changed.

I am patiently checking the UnityX repo from time to time and noticed the last commit is 9 months ago. Has development been halted?

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The UnityX repo no longer appears to be active. The UnityX website doesn’t appear to have been updated in a year. Has the project been abandoned?