Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after several years' hiatus
Unity 7.6 just appeared, although there is a more complete list of changes in the earlier announcement that it was in testing.
It has been quite a while since the Ubuntu's Unity desktop was updated. The last time it was bundled was Ubuntu 17.04, and the last release from Ubuntu itself was v7.5.
This new release doesn't come from Canonical: it's from Linux wunderkind Rudra Saraswat and his UnityX project. Users of the unofficial Ubuntu Unity remix, which we looked at a few month ago, will get the new version automatically.
The Reg FOSS desk has Ubuntu Unity 22.04 running on a couple of laptops and we can report that the new version does fix a few small glitches. The Unity remix is progressively replacing GNOME components, such as the text editor and file manager, with ones from other desktop projects, in order to get back features which GNOME has removed – notably, menu bars.
So Ubuntu Unity 22.04 uses the Nemo file manager from the Cinnamon desktop, rather than GNOME's Nautilus, and MATE's Pluma text editor instead of GEdit. As a small example, the update makes right-clicking the trashcan in the Launcher to empty it work again, without needing to open the trashcan's own window.
