Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Let’s take a jump into Ubuntu Unity 22.10 and see what this sixth release brings. Ubuntu Unity is now an official flavor of Ubuntu and that new status alone brings some new things. Ubuntu Unity 22.10, out on 20 October, 2022, is the first interim release of the new development cycle, which will take us through two more interim releases to the next long term support version, Ubuntu Unity 24.04 LTS, due in April 2024. As an interim release, Ubuntu Unity 22.10 has nine months of support, until July 2023.
Sautons dans Ubuntu Unity 22.10 et voyons ce qu’apporte cette sixième version. Ubuntu Unity est maintenant une saveur officielle d’Ubuntu et ce nouveau statut à lui seul apporte des nouveautés.
Ubuntu Unity 22.10, sortie le 20 octobre 2022 est la première version intérimaire du nouveau cycle de développement qui nous amènera au travers de deux publications intérimaires de plus pour arriver à la prochaine version à support à long terme, Ubuntu Unity 24.04 LTS, prévue en avril 2024.
En tant que publication intérimaire, Ubuntu Unity 221.10 bénéficie de neuf mois de support, jusqu’en juillet 2023.
Installation One of the advantages of being an official flavor of Ubuntu is that the distribution now gets hosting of its ISO files for download on the official cdimage.ubuntu.com website and that is where I picked it up via BitTorrent. In the past, Ubuntu Unity downloads were only provided with MD5 sums for file integrity verification which are no longer all that secure. As an official flavor, it now has an SHA256 sum provided which is a security improvement. I ran the SHA256 sum check from the command line and the file was verified as being correct. To test it, I dropped the ISO onto a USB stick equipped with Ventoy 1.10.81 and booted it from there. Ventoy does all the hard work of unpacking and booting to the desktop. Its ability to hold multiple distributions on one USB stick makes doing reviews easy but also makes it useful for any user who wants to try out several different distributions.
Installation
L’un des avantages d'une saveur officielle d’Ubuntu est que l’hébergement des fichiers ISO de la distribution est sur le site Web officiel cdimage.ubuntu.com et c’est là où je l’ai récupéré via BitTorrent.
Par le passé, seules les sommes MD5, qui ne sont plus très sûres, pour la vérification de l’intégrité du fichier étaient fournies lors des téléchargements d’Ubuntu Unity. En tant que saveur officielle, une somme SHA256 est fournie, ce qui est une amélioration de la sécurité. J’ai fait une vérification de somme SHA256 à partir de la ligne de commande et le fichier a été vérifié et jugé correct.
Pour le testé, j’ai mis l’ISO sur une clé USB équipée de Ventoy 1.10.81 et j’ai démarré dessus. Ventoy fait tout le travail du dépaquetage et du démarrage vers le bureau. Puisqu’il peut mettre de distributions multiples sur une seule clé, les critiques sont faciles, mais c’est utile pour tout utilisateur qui souhaitent essayer plusieurs distributions différentes.
System requirements
Ubuntu Unity does not specify any system requirements but it is probably reasonable to assume that it is the same as Ubuntu 22.10, a minimum of: 2 GHz dual core processor 4 GB of RAM
New
Becoming an official flavor means more than just download hosting, it means that the specific Ubuntu Unity packages are hosted in the Ubuntu repositories as “universe” packages, instead of as Personal Package Archives as they formerly were.
Being “universe” packages also means that Ubuntu Unity can now be installed on top of any other flavor of Ubuntu by means of the ubuntu-unity-desktop meta-package.
The release announcement says that this version “introduces a new toggle from the panel to switch between the dark and light theme, and between accent colors.” That statement is true, but doesn’t tell the whole story. This version of Ubuntu Unity does have a paintbrush icon on the panel and it does allow quick theme and accent color switches, in a limited fashion. Ubuntu Unity 22.10 actually comes with four window themes: Ambiance, Radiance, Yaru and Yaru-dark. The panel icon only allows switching between Yaru and Yaru-dark. It also offers only ten accent color choices. The settings menu has only two theme choices, but 20 color accents. The Unity Tweak Tool offers all four themes but no accent choices. So everything is there, just a bit confused and scattered about. To make matters even more confusing, the panel icon only displays when you have the Yaru or Yaru-dark theme in use. If you are using the classic Ubuntu Ambiance or Radiance theme then the panel icon is not there. Overall, this feels kind of “beta” level and not quite ready for prime time. Hopefully, it will be fully debugged in time for the next LTS release.
Of course the greater question is “what is the user case for this feature?” Is there really a need to be able to rapidly change themes and accent colors with such a speed from a panel icon, that it is too slow to go to the settings menu or the tweak tool? In other words, is this actually needed?
The release announcement also says, “the ISO's much smaller, at 2.8 GBs” but the ISO file I downloaded was actually 3.1 GB, so 11% bigger than claimed.
Lastly, the release announcement states, “the RAM usage has also gone down significantly (around 650MBs when idle).” After a fresh boot, I actually saw 1.4 GB at idle with nothing open.
The transition away from libadwaita applications is now complete and that means Ubuntu Unity 22.10 is now mostly using applications from the MATE desktop.
As with all Ubuntu Unity releases, there is a new wallpaper. This one has a kudu on it, as the release is codenamed “Kinetic Kudu”, after the species of African antelope. The default wallpaper artwork is actually nicely done. It looks quite elegant and is far better than some of the other Ubuntu flavors’ takes on a kudu-themed wallpaper. A total of 31 wallpapers are provided, eight more than the last release, with many of them from Ubuntu or from recent releases of Ubuntu Unity itself.
The project had announced in 2021 that it was planning on moving its snap package repository to a newly developed snap store at https://lolsnap.org/ and was planned as an alternative to the Canonical snap store. In the past, I had questioned how that was going to work, including who would test and check the hosted packages and ensure security, etc? The website is now coming up “dead”, so I presume that the project has been abandoned.
Settings
Other than the need to use both the settings menu and the Unity Tweak Tool (plus the panel icon if you have a theme in use that lets it appear), the new settings mentioned are all there and they do work, once you locate them.
In addition to the 20 color accents and four window themes, there are also 36 icon sets and six cursor styles to choose from.
As has been the case for the last few releases, Ubuntu Unity works hard to provide lots of user choices and thus differentiates itself from the mainline Ubuntu which has very limited user options.
Applications
Some of the applications included with Ubuntu Unity 22.10 are:
Archive Manager (File Roller) 43.0 file archiver Atril 1.26.0 PDF viewer* Cheese 43-alpha-1 webcam application CUPS 2.4.2 printing system Document Scanner (Simple Scan) 42.5 optical scanner Firefox 106.0 web browser GDebi 0.9.5.7 .deb package installer Gnome Disks 43.0 disk manager Gnome Screenshot 41.0 screenshot tool Gnome System Monitor 42.0 system resource monitor Gnome Terminal 3.46.2 terminal emulator Gparted 1.3.1 partition editor* Image Viewer (Eye of MATE) 1.26.0 image viewer* LibreOffice 7.4.2 office suite Nemo 5.4.3 file manager Pluma 1.2.6 text editor* PulseAudio 16.1 audio controller Remmina 1.4.27 remote desktop client Rhythmbox 3.4.6 music player Shotwell 0.30.16 photo manager Startup Disk Creator 0.3.15 USB ISO writer Synaptic 0.91.2 package management system Thunderbird 102.3.3 email client Transmission 3.00-2.2 bit torrent client Unity 7.6.0 interface Unity Tweak Tool 0.0.7 settings manager* VLC 3.0.17.4 media player * indicates same application version as used in Ubuntu Unity 22.04 LTS supplied as a snap, so version depends on the upstream package manager
Removed this release are:
Ubuntu Software (Gnome Software) package management system MATE System Monitor system monitor
Added this release are:
Cheese webcam application GDebi .deb package installer Gnome Screenshot screenshot tool Gnome System Monitor system resource monitor Synaptic package management system
None of these application changes were mentioned in the release announcement, so it is a bit unclear what is going on here, especially as all the applications added had been previously removed in recent releases and are now back.
Of the applications removed, the MATE System Monitor has been replaced by the Gnome System Monitor which had been previously swapped for each other in the last release.
The Ubuntu Software (Gnome Software) store has been removed and not replaced by a similar, user-friendly type of software store but by Synaptic, which is a bit more technical to use, although not entirely “user-hostile”. Synaptic had been previously supplied, but was removed in the last release.
I have to admit that all this undocumented switching out of applications in recent releases is a bit bewildering from a user point of view. Applications disappear only to reappear in the next release with no explanation why. It doesn't really feel like there is a plan here. The one saving grace is that when an application is removed from the default installation it remains in the repositories and can be quickly restored by the user using Synaptic or from the command line using APT.
One thing that is very welcome in this release is that the Gnome Screenshot tool that was deleted from the last release is back. That makes the reviewer's job much easier! All Linux distributions really should include a default screenshot tool.
This release continues with Nemo as the default file manager which is from the Cinnamon desktop. Nemo works well and is easy and intuitive to use, but still lacks bulk file renaming which really is a needed feature. This can be compensated for by installing a separate bulk file renamer, such as GPRename.
Ubuntu Unity moved to the snap version of the Firefox web browser in Ubuntu Unity 21.10 and it remains the default browser in 22.10.
This release brings a new version of the Unity interface, 7.6.0, replacing the previous 7.5.1 version. Visually not much has changed except for a transparent border but 7.6.0 does work well and at least shows that Unity development is not stuck in 2017.
LibreOffice 7.4.2 is once again supplied complete, lacking only the LibreOffice Base database application which can also be installed from the Ubuntu repositories if needed.
Conclusions
Ubuntu Unity continues to focus on giving users a wide range of customization options in look and feel that set it apart from Ubuntu.
Setting aside the questions about the rapid switching of the default applications and just looking at this release as a stand-alone, it is actually very functional, looks good and works well, with just a couple of settings quirks. Given the developmental nature of these interim releases, I think that there is a good chance that the settings will be a lot more polished by the time the next LTS comes out in April 2024.
External links
Official website: https://ubuntuunity.org/