Unity 8 Desktop On Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Could Take A Year Before Being Usable

While Canonical no longer develops their Unity 8 stack for Ubuntu, the UBports crew continues advancing Ubuntu Touch mobile as a community project and as part of that they do work on Unity 8 for their devices and desktop support. But if you're hoping to see Unity 8 running nicely on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, that could be a while.

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is releasing in April but it could still be a year or so before Unity 8 is considered "usable" on the updated desktop.

The UBports developers responded to a question about Unity 8 for Ubuntu 20.04, "In the sense of having something available for download, then very likely yes. But usable definitely not. It still needs a lot of work on the desktop side. To expect something vaguely usable within the space of a year may be possible but we are making no promises on that. As with all work of this kind, more participation from experienced developers would help a lot. This is a highly advanced and specialized area though, so finding people will be difficult."

More details on the UBports' work around Ubuntu Touch in 2020 can be found via their latest Q&A discussion.