Unity 8 & All Snaps-Based Ubuntu Still Expected For 18.04 LTS

Today during the Ubuntu Online Summit for Ubuntu 17.04 was a convergence Q/A talk where Unity 8 and delivering a all-Snaps image (no Debian packages) were talked about for nearly one hour.

Here are my notes from the Convergence Q&A from today's Ubuntu 17.04 UOS summit:

- Focused on getting a full desktop experience on Unity 8.

- The forming of "Ubuntu Personal" will become more apparent with each new release.

- Evolving Unity 8 still so it works across all form factors. "Great progress" is being made and the Unity 8 experience for Ubuntu 17.04 is expected to be much more evolved, fully support the software store to support Snaps, and more applications working.

- Full window management as in desktop is currently being worked on for Unity 8 in Ubuntu 17.04 along with behaving better in a pointer-based environment rather than touch. "Miral" as a Mir abstraction layer is being worked on to sit between the Mir display server and shell for helping to bring up desktops on Mir.

- Moving the apps scope and dash into an "app drawer" for consolidating where to access applications on Unity 8.

- Multi-monitor support on Unity 8 still needs to be improved.

- Still working towards an entire image that's entirely Snap-based without Debian packages.

- Default app discussions for Unity 8 on the desktop are still being discussed.

- Switching Ubuntu Touch to 16.04 LTS is coming "soon" as "a single big switch" due to the change from Clicks to Snaps, C++ ABI breakage, and many other changes. Trying to "minimize the pain" for users with this switch.

- No conversations with Valve over gaming improvements for Ubuntu Personal, but have talked of Mir improvements.

- The goal for moving over to Unity 8 and all-Snaps image will be all transitioned by Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. A usable, all-Snaps-based image for early adopters and testing might be ready for Ubuntu 17.04 for experiment but for everyone on the desktop by Ubuntu 18.04.

It will be interesting to see if they achieve this goal for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS given how long Mir / Unity 8 by-default on the desktop has been delayed. The video of this session is embedded below.