Testing unity session in Focal Fossa - 20.04

Hi all! Some of you (@chanath) might remember me as synOS dev, unfortunately I had to take a hiatus due to my exams. Anywho I have been compiling an ISO version of synOS with 20.04 as the base and unity-desktop, and noticed that ubuntu 20.04 with unity-desktop is far more unstable and glitchy than the others. unity-tweak-tool did NOT start because apparently Ubuntu has deprecated the packages for unity dash, such as the hud package. For now in synOS I have temporarily fixed this by pulling the packages through xenial’s repos but this is a very glitchy and temporary solution. Someone NEEDS to fork unity before it’s too late. Before all is lost on the greatest UI to ever touch Linux.

synwave EditPad MediaSonic SynWare%20Channel%2C%20Glossy
I have also worked on a new theme for synOS. Unity is a beautiful desktop environment because it is so skeuomorphic and has beautiful glass effects and animations. The theme should reflect that. These are a sneak peak of the icons I have thus far worked on. Extremely detailed and beautiful, and they will shine and look right at home with Unity.

@khurshid-alam is there a way we could fork the current state of Unity and then merge it with packages from older repos that work better (i.e. Nautilus 3.4 and the hud package)? I’m afraid unity is not being maintained as well by Canonical anymore - we need to act on this now. Perhaps synOS could be like what MATE is.

Just wanted to say thank you to the developers/maintainers keeping this alive. Unity was (and still is) my favorite desktop environment and I am so happy that I still have the ability to use it.

Thanks for your work, many of us really appreciate it!

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I’ve been away from my Linux laptop for 4 weeks. I just updated/upgraded Unity with Focal few minutes ago. There were 455 packages to upgrade. Unity Settings, Unity Tweak Tool and Compiz are working without a hitch. And, the Compiz eye-candy too. :slight_smile:

@khurshid-alam Is it possible to have Ubuntu 20.04 instead of Ubuntu 19.10 in System Settings > Details?
Also, is there a way to rid those three; music, photos and videos icons (lens) appearing in the dash?

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We don’t have netboot image for focal. How do to build iso now ?

Update:

  • Background drawing is now in the u-s-d and we don’t depend on libgnome-desktop for it anymore. I have added unity, unity-control-center and unity-settings daemon in the maintainer ppa. You can test by changing the wallpaper from u-c-c. Lock screen should also reflect that change. Control center version now has 20.04

  • An update for indicator-appmenu (fix glib related regressions)

  • WIP: Removal of rest of gnome-settings-daemon schemas & numlock key fix.

  • In-progress: Unity-greeter, Fix build for new vala and version number update

For me unity related settings did not get automatically applied even after reinstalling gsettings-ubuntu-schemas but manually setting those through dconf works.

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Thanks @khurshid-alam! The time is great because the new gnome-desktop has been uploaded to focal today … do you have something ready for upload/that needs sponsoring for those unity components?

Thanks @khurshid-alam!
Control Center version is 20.04, but the login screen still says it is 19.10 (bottom left corner). I can manually change it (/usr/share/unity-greeter/logo.png), but would be better, if it came from the unity/ppa. :slight_smile:

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That will be fixed with new unity greeter upload.

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Hello! I made some mock-ups concerning the Yaru support for Unity.

I stitched it from the available Yaru elements, but added those related to the Unity desktop, like the titlebar; close, minimise, maximise buttons; and different drop-down menus.

The icons here are Yaru’s folders and symbolics (both of which btw are fantastic!), mixed with the Gnome icons, for the rest of the set, without replacing any 3rd application icons. This is similar to how the icon set was in Unity, and I think it is better overall, than the current Yaru set, as the Gnome icons are quite nice and mix well with other shapes and colours. Additionally some Gnome icons may be combined with the Humanity or Yaru elements, like the sound file and the html link icons here.

The icons on the top bar are mostly from the unrealised Suru. Some, like the battery, network and keyboard layout icons, maybe mixed in from the old Ubuntu Mono Dark set, but modified to be of only plain colour, without any shadows.

And as Nemo is already being used to draw the desktop icons, it makes sense to make it the main FM.

I also added a bit of restyling for the very nice program called Gnome Sushi here, just in case.

Hope this may be of use to anybody and thank you for your efforts!

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The new unity packages install but after reboot no login possible, appears compiz is crashing.
(- It would appear some ‘support’ packages for unity to work are sitting in proposed…

Interesting!
Maybe, you’d like to upload your work somewhere? :sunny:

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I had the new packages installed few days ago. Today, I upgraded again, and rebooted twice to see, if something is wrong with Compiz. I could login both times normally. I don’t have proposed either. Compiz eye-candy is working too.

@khurshid-alam
Can I safely uninstall libgnome-desktop?

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@mc3man Unity requires a rebuild against newer unity-settings-daemon-dev which is still in the proposed. Unity got landed first. There will be few other merge for u-s-d, u-c-c, unity and greeter. Unity will rebuild again when that happen.

Meanwhile you can use the downgraded version from the ppa or wait till I update the ppa.

@chanath

No. Only background drawing has been ported. Thumbnailer still requires it.

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image1469-7
Thanks! So far I only uploaded this on r/Ubuntu : https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/faz3lw/i_want_to_share_my_fantasy_on_how_a_more_modern/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

And I can share more details, colour codes or vector files regarding things I added, if anyone needs them, as unfortunately, I cannot implement this myself into a working theme.

And here’s my attempt to make an icon for the file manager (not finished): fm-ic1

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Update:

  • I have now completed usd-schemas port and updated the ppa. This includes unity, unity-settings-daemon, unity-control-center & unity-greeter.

  • notify-osd now requires newer libwnck3 (someone needs to package it in debian experimental). Unitil that happens both of them will be included in the ppa.

  • Ubuntu-unity-desktop meta package will be updated soon.

Edit: Hud is also in the ppa.

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Thank you all so much for keeping Unity DE alive. Testing it in 20.04 now :slight_smile:

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If I want to test latest Unity 7 in Focal, what packages should I install? Unity-session? Ubuntu-unity-desktop? Add a Unity-ppa before or after I’ve installed Unity from the repos? Thanks!