Ubuntu Unity, a community project dedicated to reviving the Unity7 desktop, is currently in crisis. The project team has publicly asked for help from the outside world, admitting that the current version has serious problems that urgently need to be repaired.
According to official news posted on the Ubuntu discussion forum, project community manager Maik Adamietz said that project leader Rudra B. Rudra has been affected by studies in recent years and has significantly reduced the time invested in development, resulting in the team failing to release a stable version 25.10 in October this year as scheduled. In fact, as early as this year during the release of version 25.04, Rudra had reduced his participation due to college exams, and Maik himself had to temporarily leave his job due to personal reasons. These changes resulted in a lack of effective daily maintenance. Although the system could still automatically generate daily image ISOs, the lack of manual testing resulted in the accumulation of critical issues. Users were unable to smoothly upgrade from version 25.04, and it was even difficult to install the Unity desktop environment on other Ubuntu branches without encountering serious failures.
At present, Maik and another community moderator Tobiyo Kuujikai (@fuseteam) decided to try their best to keep the project running after discussing it, but neither of them has the technical capabilities required to solve the underlying code difficulties and maintain a complete operating system distribution. Maik has called on developers and project leaders in the Linux field to lend a helping hand to help Ubuntu Unity return to a stable state during the 24.04 LTS period, and hopes that experienced people can guide the existing team to take over more complex maintenance tasks. The short-term goal is to find supporters who can fix key issues and ensure the continuation of the project before the next LTS version, Ubuntu 26.04, is released.
Ubuntu Unity was originally a community voluntary project, stemming from Canonical's decision to terminate official Unity desktop development in 2017 and return to GNOME. At that time, the official path left to Unity users was interrupted, but the community with Rudra as the core resumed development, and finally received official recognition from Canonical in 2022 and became one of the official Ubuntu branches.
The future of Ubuntu Unity currently hangs in the balance, and the project team urges the entire industry to participate to help the project tide over the difficulties and continue the vitality of the Unity desktop.
learn more:
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/regarding-ubuntu-unity-and-a-call-for-help/71095/3