Canonical Ubuntu splits from Gnome over design issues

[Basil Chupin]

Canonical is changing the default interface on the next release of 
Ubuntu from Gnome to Unity, a new open source project that focuses on 
simplified interface and three dimensional displays.

Canonical made the switch for the next release of its Ubuntu desktop 
Linux distribution, because of increasingly divergent views of how a 
desktop interface should look and operate, according to Canonical 
founder Mark Shuttleworth.

"We were part of the Gnome shell design discussion, we put forward our 
views and they were not embraced by designers," Shuttleworth said during 
a press briefing. "We took a divergent view from the Gnome shell folks 
on key design issues, for example how application menus should appear on 
the system, how one should search to find applications, [and] how one's 
favorite applications should be presented."

The next release of Natty Narwhal (11.04), due to be released in April 
2011, will install a Unity shell, for those systems that meet the 
hardware requirements to run the interface, in either two-dimensional or 
three-dimensional modes, Shuttleworth announced 
<http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/ubuntu-moves-away-gnome> on 
Monday, at the company's Ubuntu Developer Summit, being held this week 
in Orlando, Florida. For previous desktop versions of the software, 
Gnome was the default shell.

Canonical and the developers of Gnome, an open source project led by the 
Gnome Foundation, have had an increasingly disharmonious relationship 
<http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/517> over the past year due, 
in part, to these design issues 
<https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/packageselection-desktop-n-specialized-unity-form-factor>.

Because Canonical was already developing Unity for netbooks for OEM 
(original equipment manufacturer) customers, "We went ahead and did the 
engineering" for a general desktop interface for the next release, 
Shuttleworth said. "Essentially, it is a very different product from the 
Gnome shell, and has a very different way of organizing things," he said.


http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source/canonical-ubuntu-splits-gnome-over-design-issues-846

-- 
"My sister's expecting a baby, and I don't know if I am going to be an uncle or an aunt."
          Chuck Nevitt

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