[ARSTECHNICA] Six years after making Unity the default user interface on Ubuntu desktops, Canonical is giving up on the project and will switch the default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME next year. Canonical is also ending development of Ubuntu software for phones and tablets, spelling doom for the goal of creating a converged experience with phones acting as desktops when docked with the right equipment.After producing what was probably the most comfortable desktop interface ever to date in Ubuntu 10.04 with Gnome 2.x, Canonical invented Unity, which made the desktop more like using a phone in anticipation of edging into the phone business. This was about the same time Android was shoving Blackberry out of its preeminent position. Opinion was unanimous: Unity sucked. It'll be eight years -- during which other Ubuntu developed operating systems have grown specifically because Unity was so bad. I still use Ubuntu on all my personal machines, but with xfce desktop. Since Gnome 3.x slurps just about as bad as Unity, if Canonical was paying me large dollars I'd suggest they go with that as the default desktop.
Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth explained the move in a blog post today. "I’m writing to let you know that we will end our investment in Unity8, the phone and convergence shell," he wrote. "We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS," which will ship in April 2018.
This is a return to the early years of Ubuntu, when the desktop shipped with GNOME instead of a Canonical-developed user interface. Shuttleworth's blog post didn't specifically say that phone and tablet development is ending. But Canonical Community Manager Michael Hall confirmed to Ars that the Ubuntu phone and tablet project is over.