A Look Back At The Desktop & X.Org/Wayland/Mir Milestones Of Ubuntu
With Unity 8 (and Mir) being years behind schedule, Mark Shuttleworth today made the surprise announcement of abandoning Unity 8 and shifting back to GNOME while also stopping their Ubuntu Phone efforts. This was the biggest Ubuntu shock in years and as such I've thrown together today a bit of a tribute or look back at the various desktop milestones of Ubuntu since its first release covered by Phoronix back in 2004. Check it out if you are a relatively new Linux user or just wish to relive the old screenshots of GNOME2, Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Ubuntu TV, the early Unity days, the ambitious Mir plans, and more.
October 2004: Ubuntu 4.10 "Warty Warthog" launched as the first release of this Debian-based distribution. Warty was riding with the GNOME 2.4 desktop environment.
More early Ubuntu screenshots from this 2007 Phoronix article looking at the early Ubuntu releases.
2006: The first Ubuntu LTS release, 16.04 turned 16.06 Dapper Drake, continued with the latest GNOME 2 of the time (v2.8).
2008: A precursor to Unity as we know it today was Ubuntu's Netbook Remix. The netbook fad at the time is what in part led to the creation of the Unity shell.
That year also brought Ubuntu MID Edition 8.04 for focusing on Mobile Internet Devices.
2009: By the time of Ubuntu 9.10, their netbook remix was looking wildly different compared to a year earlier:
And then the new decade of Ubuntu changes...