I guess we all are some how familiar with “Unity” desktop and some of you may already be fond of it. Well, it’s true that even the sound of the word “Unity” is interwoven with Ubuntu, so Unity is some kind of Ubuntu’s property.
Don’t get me wrong here, may the source code and all the components be free and available for anyone who wants to fork and adapt this technology, yet Ι have to admit that it’s Ubuntu developers who have done all the dirty work up there. Ever since the project had started, many individual users, beta testers, bugsquad team, and MOTUs, are all of them working together to make Unity better and better everyday. In respect to these people, please allow me to say that Unity is Ubuntu’s gift to the open source community.
Hey, wait a moment sir… Did you say Open Source ?
That’s right. Recently, a team of passionate GNOME developers Ayatana, made Ubuntu’s Unity desktop available for Fedora. Their repository is currently available at OpenSUSE Build Service and it’s ready to be tested from developers. Take a look:
No mistake here, this is not stable at all, since a single update can cause problem into your system’s core packages. Moreover, there’s a problem using Dash lenses for video and the left bar’s autohide function is not working properly. Also, several icons are duplicated and some others haven’t even packaged yet.
In addition, if you want to install Unity in your Fedora 17 after reading this article, you should be very careful, since this Unity fork messes up seriously with Fedora updates (downgrading and replacing Fedora packages and stuff like that). Just don’t scream at me later…you have been warned!
Personally, I recommend you to wait until Fedora says it’s safe to use it. Patience its a virtue after all. But even so, this is a lovely surprise for the Linux community.
Good news are not just for Fedorians, but Mandriva and OpenSUSE Factory (unstable branch) have already joined the project. So, if you are not using Ubuntu but you like its Unity desktop – now you can have it 😉
