Ubuntu Unity Remix 20.04

Just looked it up. I see what you mean.

Hi there, I am about to switch from Ubuntu 16.04 to 20.04 and I wonder what is the difference between installing stock Ubuntu 20.04 and adding Unity 7 as alternative desktop and Ubuntu Unity Remix 20.04. Why should I choose the latter? Thank you in advance for answering my newbie question.

"20.10 Alpha 1 Release Notes:

Version bump from 20.04 to 20.10
HUD and Global Menu now work with Firefox"

Seriously?
You used firefox packages from xenial. Very inappropriate method you are using …
Firefox updates at least once monthly, ex. just updated to 78.0.1… in 20.10 so users will lose the menu very quickly.

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Hi! Downoald from torrent is not work!

Hello, first of all congrats for reviving ubuntu unity. I like the distro very much, it looks very cool, i installed it to try it, what i dont like is that when doing a minimal install it isn’t that minimal, libreoffice is still there even if i did a minimal install, it has doubled apps, like settings, email app, and other, ram usage is high :neutral_face: … but i believe if these issues will be fixed i will use it as my primary distro, thank you, and keep up the good work :+1:

Agreed.

According to this blog post this is only a temporary work around but the advice that users need to update Firefox by downloading the latest release from a Launchpad or ‘Ubuntu archive’ URL is not a means of receiving updates that Ubuntu users will be used to.

@rs2009, what is your long term solution to this issue given that the Xenial release of Ubuntu will be ‘End of Life’ in April 2021, that the patch to Firefox to support Unity menus is 5200 lines long and hasn’t been part of Firefox in the most recent releases of Ubuntu as Canonical’s Desktop Team have come to the conclusion that it is now too much work to continue supporting?

The patch is currently supported in 18.04, may last the life of??
In any event the blog and comments are even worse than the using of 16.04’s package in the image.
Advising users to lock firefox is a terrible idea, this little project has had so many questionable things…

If you want to provide this menu then get a repo, patch and build firefox for whatever Ubuntu release your doing, keep it updated ( plus note Debian/Ubuntu do patch firefox for various other reasons…

(- a handful of users who know where to look get an updated, patched firefox for 20.04, will so while the patch is still viable

@rs2009 there is a reason alot of remixs need custom repos. This is one of them. The Firefox update is a security update. You need to include it

Probably no one must have been seeding the torrent at that time. Try using the alternate MEGA and MediaFire links.

Thanks for your feedback @kovacsciprian80. I’m aiming to remove the unnecessary apps in the next point release in August. :+1:

@paulw2u @mc3man @nullrequest
Thanks for your feedback. Using Xenial and Bionic repos is only a temporary workaround (that will work until 2023), as many people wanted the Global Menu for Firefox. You are right, I’ll edit the blog post so that users download the latest Firefox updates from the archive.

In the long term, I’ll have to consult some people if maintaining repos would affect our case when I apply for official flavor status in the near future. If not, I’ll consider maintaining it myself or would request the Unity7 Maintainers to help me in maintaining the patch.

@mc3man I hope you’ll understand that I’m working very hard to keep this project alive and running. Please do advise if you find anything questionable and I’ll be happy to answer and address it. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

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@popey here talked about the differences between derivatives, remixes and flavours. As I understand this, remixes like our Ubuntu Unity Remix are allowed to mantain a small number of packages in their own PPAs. I wonder in the future what we’re going to do with firefox. Ubuntu Budgie, Kubuntu and Ubuntu Mate all have Global Menu options in their DEs, so the patch for global menu in firefox (and Thunderbird) could actually be important for other flavours as well. Global menus are an important part of Unity. I hope Canonical will allow us to mantain a patched version of Firefox as the one in Xenial repositories.

With official status you need to use packages from the distro series. So I am afraid users will need to forgo this and global menu firefox support for 20.04 and later.

Also, all packages need to be from the standard repository. At this stage remix should be striving to having as close to zero packages in its ppa as possible. The idea is to get remix specific packages into the standard repository via the ubuntu sponsorship route.

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I wonder why if 4 flavours need global menus we couldn’t just mantain that patch in the standard repos. If @rs2009 can / wants to mantain that patch will he be allowed to do the work?

Remember it’s a huge amount of work.

With firefox main releases every 4-6 weeks and multiple security fixes between releases, and trying to maintain firefox versions across multiple distro series, that’s a huge number of releases to maintain one patch by one person week after week, month and years at a time.

@fossfreedom who’s doing this work now for Xenial?

Canonical. It’s their commitment to support for the 5 year support period.

@fossfreedom do you know who at Canonical is in charge for this task? I wonder how many people are currently involved in mantaining the package for Xenial. I think this is not the only patch they have to apply every week, months and years, because packages have to be compiled, tested and then published to repositories anyway. I wonder how really taxing is for them to add those static lines of codes in addition to what they are already doing…

No I dont know.

The patch is 5200 lines long and dont underestimate the complexity of trying to patch this over constantly changing sources.

This is an area people are going to have to accept … or to maintain themselves.

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@fossfreedom it is in fact what I’m trying to understand. I’m trying to estimate what exactly means patching a firefox release to assess if we actually can mantain a patched version ourselves or if we can maybe cooperate with Canonical for this goal.