Having used linux for over 20 years now - the 'fragmenting the Linux desktop' idea boggles my mind.
The entire Linux eco-system exists of competing things. Nginx vs Apache, sendmail vs qmail vs postfix, ... the list goes on. There is no singular 'desktop' when it comes to Linux, and there will never be one. Thinking and hoping there will be is simply not understanding what drives the whole Linux world: options and competition.
"I’m writing to let you know that we will end our investment in Unity8, the phone and convergence shell. We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS."
I checked the date of the post really carefully as well. That is certainly a change of direction.
I guess unity was the only thing driving Mir then? Is dropping one the same as dropping both?
Seems like good news to me, having a significant player like canonical contributing to the community instead of fragmenting without much benefit can't be bad can it?
I don't use it on the desktop anyway, but I hope that moves in this direction are rewarded by the community.
My (limited) understanding is that Gnome includes Wayland as an integral component, and so reverting to Gnome as default desktop for 18.04 will preclude use of the Mir graphical server.
Huh. Maybe I'll move back upstream to Ubuntu. Although at this point LinuxMint works fine for me, so it's hard to see a compelling reason. But Ubuntu's desktop games are what finally drove me out, as a desktop.
The entire Linux eco-system exists of competing things. Nginx vs Apache, sendmail vs qmail vs postfix, ... the list goes on. There is no singular 'desktop' when it comes to Linux, and there will never be one. Thinking and hoping there will be is simply not understanding what drives the whole Linux world: options and competition.