Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
This fifth release of Ubuntu Unity is its second long term support version (LTS) and the good news is that it is better than the last release, correcting some issues.
Being an LTS, Ubuntu Unity 22.04 LTS is supported for three years, until April, 2025.
Installation
I downloaded Ubuntu Unity 22.04 LTS from the official BitTorrent repository on fosstorrents.com. There is now only one .ISO file for both BIOS and UEFI use so that makes it easy to figure out which one to get.
I did an MD5 sum check on the downloaded .ISO file from the command-line, as that is the only checksum provided, and it proved that the download was good.
I used a USB stick equipped with Ventoy 1.0.73 to test out this release. Ventoy allows dragging and dropping as many Linux or BSD distributions as will fit on the stick and gives a choice of which one to try out on boot-up. That makes testing all very easy!
System requirements
Ubuntu Unity does not state any minimum system requirements but it is probably reasonable to assume that it is the same as the mainstream Ubuntu: a dual core 2 GHz processor and 4 GB of RAM.
I tested it on a nine-year old desktop PC with a dual-core 3.3 GHz processor and 6 GB of RAM and it performed well.
New
As with all past releases, there is a new wallpaper included, with a “Jammy Jellyfish” in dark purple shades. There are 23 different wallpapers provided, or you can use your own favorite wallpaper instead.
Aside from some bug fixes, this release includes Flatpak support and has the Flathub repository enabled by default.
The project announced in October, 2021 that it was establishing its own snap store to be called the “lol snap store”, but there has been no further news on that and the related website https://lolsnap.org/ is not up and running yet.
Most of the rest of the changes relate to the choice of applications provided, described below.
Settings
Ubuntu Unity has, from the start, offered a great deal more user setting choices than Ubuntu itself does, both in wallpaper and themes. Ubuntu Unity 20.10 introduced the use of the Unity Tweak Tool to give better user control of the options, and it worked well until the last release, Ubuntu Unity 21.10. In that version, the tweak tool was absent, and when installed it just crashed. The release announcement did not mention the issue. This deficiency limited theme choices and also meant that once you selected a new theme, the default theme could not be restored. One of the main roles for “standard” releases like 21.10 is to get things working so that the LTS is flawless.
In this case, the LTS is not totally flawless, but it is pretty good. Ubuntu Unity 22.04 LTS brings the Unity Tweak Tool back, and it works! The only incongruity is that the regular theme menu at Settings→ Appearance offers two window themes, Adwaita and High Contrast, and the Tweak Tool offers two different ones, the light-color Yaru-unity and the dark theme Yaru-unity-dark. Once you figure out that you have a choice of four window themes, and that they are selected from two different places, it all works fine.
The Tweak Tool also offers 36 icon sets and six cursor styles, so Ubuntu Unity 22.04 LTS retains its focus on providing lots of user choices.
Applications
Some of the applications included with Ubuntu Unity 22.04 LTS are: Archive Manager (File Roller) 3.42.0 file archiver Atril 1.26.0 PDF viewer CUPS 2.4.1 printing system Document Scanner (Simple Scan) 40.5 optical scanner Firefox 99.0.1 web browser Gnome Disks 42.0 disk manager Gnome Terminal 3.44.0 terminal emulator* Gparted 1.3.1 partition editor Image Viewer (Eye of MATE) 1.26.0 image viewer LibreOffice 7.3.2 office suite MATE System Monitor 1.26.0 system monitor Nemo 5.2.4 file manager Pluma 1.2.6 text editor PulseAudio 15.99.1 audio controller Remmina 1.4.25 remote desktop client Rhythmbox 3.4.4 music player* Shotwell 0.30.14 photo manager Startup Disk Creator 0.3.13 USB ISO writer Thunderbird 91.8.0 email client Transmission 3.00-1 bittorrent client* Ubuntu Software (Gnome Software) 41.5 package management system Unity 7.5.1 interface Unity Tweak Tool 0.0.7 settings manager VLC 3.0.16 movie player * indicates same application version as used in Ubuntu Unity 21.10 supplied as a snap, so version depends on the upstream package manager
Removed this release are: Cheese webcam application Evince PDF viewer* GDebi .deb package installer Gnome Calendar desktop calendar Gnome Screenshot screenshot tool Gnome System Monitor system monitor* Image Viewer (Eye of Gnome) image viewer* Synaptic package management system Text Editor (gedit) text editor* Videos (Totem) movie player*
* mentioned as removed in the release announcement
Added this release are: Atril PDF viewer* Image Viewer (Eye of MATE) image viewer* MATE System Monitor system monitor* Pluma text editor* VLC movie player*
* mentioned as added in the release announcement
This release continues with the Unity 7.5.1 interface which, as noted, is not a new version this time around. Unity 7 continues to be a really solid desktop that still looks very modern and is very efficient to use with its keyboard shortcuts. There was an announcement last year that work is proceeding on a replacement for Unity 7, called Unity X, but there has been no news since August 2021 on how that is proceeding. At this point, Unity 7 works so well that there is really no need to quickly replace it.
LibreOffice 7.3.1 is, once again, supplied complete, lacking only the LibreOffice Base database application, which can also be installed from the Ubuntu repositories, if needed.
As can be seen from the lists above, five GNOME applications were removed and replaced with five equivalents from the MATE desktop. These changes were described in the release notes. MATE is, of course, a fork of the old GNOME 2 desktop, and these five added applications are all forks of their GNOME equivalents and all look and work similarly. The release notes say this was done because they “fit in with Unity’s UI better”.
A number of unannounced removals without replacements were also made, leaving Ubuntu Unity 22.04 LTS with no default webcam application or screenshot tool. It is not clear why these, and some of the other removals like Synaptic and Gdebi, were made, but they can be reinstalled from the repositories if needed.
The overall trend seems to be to replace GNOME applications with MATE ones but it will be interesting to see how the application mix changes over the next development cycle leading to Ubuntu Unity 24.04 LTS due out in April, 2024. As noted in the past, a bit more information in the release notes would be helpful to both users and reviewers.
Conclusions
Ubuntu Unity 22.04 LTS is a solid release with no obvious bad habits or issues identified. The return of the Unity Tweak Tool is a welcome addition to this release, as it works well, and this means Ubuntu Unity 22.04 LTS is better than its predecessor, 21.10.
Ubuntu Unity continues to offer its users a lot of customization choices, plus a unique mix of default applications from the GNOME and MATE desktops. It is going to be interesting to see how this distribution continues to evolve over time as the next development cycle ramps up.
External links
Official website: https://ubuntuunity.org/