At the end of yesterday, the founder of Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth, announced through the Ubuntu blog, the abandonment of Unity as the main desktop of the Ubuntu distribution. So Ubuntu 18.04 will have Gnome as the main desktop.
In addition, along with this abandonment, Ubuntu and Canonical abandon the development of their famous Convergence, a process that has been widely discussed not only by Canonical or by development teams but also by companies such as Apple or Microsoft.
Unity 8 will no longer reach our mobiles or our computers
This means that Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu Touch will stop being developed or at least it seems that way, as one of the main missions of these projects was to bring Ubuntu Convergence to end users. What's more, Unity was the main desktop of Ubuntu PhoneTherefore, since it does not have this desktop, it is not possible that there are new versions or at least it seems that way according to the words written by the founder of Ubuntu.
This noticia It has been a real boom because it is something that nobody expected. Unity 8 and MIR development was slow but seemed to keep going. On the other hand, the Ubuntu Convergence was also on the right track and only the scarcity of devices limited its use.
However, Ubuntu IoT and Ubuntu Server are two areas that will move forward and that they will bring the best of this free software to projects such as robotics or IoT technologies. These areas will continue to be worked on by Canonical. This means that we will see more free software related to the cloud world and the IoT world since Ubuntu forces will focus on these areas and no longer on developing Unity 8 or managing Convergence.
Will have to see really the reaction of Ubuntu users to this news, but surely those mobile users with Ubuntu will not have been very happy and even less the developers Do not you think?