Controversial!
Can I be first to start the controversy? I’ve loaded Linux Ubuntu 17.10 on to a spare hard drive and don’t like what I see! It’s the Unity desktop that separates Ubuntu from other distros. With Gnome in its place it looks and feels like many other distributions to those of us that just do simple things on computers.
In the absence of Unity my next preference would be Mint’s Cinnamon desktop. Please would you run an article on how to replace Gnome with Unity 7 on Ubuntu 17.10 and 18.04 LTS (when released). Without this, Ubuntu and myself will be parting company. John Bourne, via email
Jonni says
I daresay you won’t be alone in your dislike of Gnome. That’s why LXF231’s main feature revealed all the things you can do to make Ubuntu your own. Including get Unity back. Spoiler alert: sudo apt install unity .
As far as we can fathom, Unity 7 will be available in the repos for 18.04 LTS too, so if you really want you can keep using it until 2023, just don’t expect it to gain any new features, or new apps to integrate with it. Meanwhile, open source being what it is, Unity 8 has been picked up by the community and we look forward to seeing what they do with it.
Gnome is different, but it’s also pretty powerful if you’re prepared to overlook certain things. Such as massive titlebars and the lack of minimise/maximise buttons. It’s worth remembering that a lot of people didn’t like Unity when it first appeared. Although a lot of people were glad to see it go, too.