Last week I’ve received an email from Bruce Byfield asking a few questions about this project. I’ve replied honestly as I would to anyone, I’ve faced several issues, and it sounded wise to me to hold a bit this. Since the Beta release of Natty that I’m following a technology forum in Portugal (over 150.000 users) and making a few notes on what peoples perceptions are about Unity and Natty.
From what I see amongst this segment of the Linux users in my country, it’s interesting… While legacy users are moving away from Ubuntu to other alternatives seeking GNOME3 (no one seems to be moving from GNOME/Unity to KDE), others are satisfied with Unity. The biggest problem with Natty users so far comes regarding Networking issues and hardware compatibility… and once more Ubuntu’s kernels seem to be driving some people to desperation with the classical MCE’s.
A few days (4 days ago), Compiz 0.9.5 has been released. I’ve taken a look on the Ubuntu package and the patch level has dropped substantially, which points that upstream has absorbed most of them. Dominique already has 0.9.5 prepared on X11:Compiz (though the version needs a bump on the spec) and I’m going to test them out and start branching them over to GNOME:Ayatana during the next days and depending on the availability of reviews. This should be peaceful.
For this repository I’m going to enable a small pattern to provide a simple 1-Click Installer for Compiz alone, this means that people will be able to test the patched version of Compiz in which Unity will be build upon in the future.
After Compiz is established on GNOME:Ayatana, I’m going to get back to Unity and prepare Unity2D for deployment (being Unity a task for the future).
Now if some people wonder why all of this innactivity? The answer is simple… GNOME3 was being prepared and launched, and it deserved all the spotlights! Now that GNOME3 has proudly established itself on it’s segment and despite the press attacks, the communities I keep tracking, I see what seems to be a substantial increase of interest on GNOME3. I would personally consider GNOME3 launch a success.
