Unity 8 Alpha has been released with a nice interface which is very smooth and nice looking. It is not ready for use yet, but if you consider yourself a loyal Ubuntu user and true computer geek, you should give it a try. Exploring is nice, fun and you learn alot. Life is not only about being perfect, it is about lessons. Anyway, I was talking to you guys about Unity 8. It is still in Alpha release and even the wallpaper used by it says that it is early alpha and it is not ready for production use.
Olie Ries, which is head of Engineering for Canonical’s Product Strategy team says that Unity 8 will not be in Ubuntu 13.10 but it will be fully integrated for Ubuntu 14.10.
Some of the Features of Unity 8 that work well with Ubuntu 13.10 are:
- Keyboard input, including hotkeys similar to those in Unity7
- Mouse, touchscreen, scroll wheels, touchpads, and other existing input devices
- The HUD should be available
- Indicators should be available. Should include at a minimum the Networking indicator
- The Unity 8 Shell and its components adjusts to local screen size
- Content discovery should be working. At a minimum, the local content scopes should be available
- Minimal Window management, such as focus control and maybe window move and resize
- The following core applications should be installable and runnable from the Unity 8 Shell on the desktop: Browser App, Gallery App, Music Player App and the Video Player App
- Multi-monitor will not be supported
Do you want to know a very cool thing that can be very useful to you? I am glad you answered yes. Unity 8 runs as an app, so it will be very easy for you to try it and experience some cool stuff. No need to install it as a desktop-environment. Another nice thing is that you can switch from phone mode to tablet mode just by resizing the window of the app. So what are you waiting for?
If you want to try Unity 8 in Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander, just use the following command. A simple command guys. We use it often to install apps and I think you have guessed it:
$ sudo apt-get install unity8
What about launching the app? Just type ‘unity8’ in the terminal without quotation marks:
$ unity8
