Ubuntu is to use GNOME instead of Unity for future releases, a decision that has left Ubuntu fans wondering what happens to Ubuntu GNOME.

Well, now we have our answer.

The Ubuntu GNOME devs have laid out the future of their community flavour in a statement on their blog. They say “as a result of this decision there will no longer be a separate GNOME flavour of Ubuntu.”

“Ubuntu GNOME and Ubuntu Desktop will be merging resources…”

“The development teams from both Ubuntu GNOME and Ubuntu Desktop will be merging resources and focusing on a single combined release, that provides the best of both GNOME and Ubuntu. We are currently liaising with the Canonical teams on how this will work out and more details will be announced in due course as we work out the specifics.”

Ubuntu will ship GNOME (including GNOME Shell) with ‘minimal Ubuntu customization’, rendering the community suggestions for refreshed designs, theming, and extension bundling potentially moot.

Mark Shuttleworth had already intimated this route was the one likely to be taken. Speaking last week on his personal Google+ profile he says that Canonical will “…invest in Ubuntu GNOME with the intent of delivering a fantastic all-GNOME desktop,” adding that it would be ‘helping the Ubuntu GNOME team, not creating something different or competitive’ with it.

“I think we should respect the GNOME design leadership by delivering GNOME the way GNOME wants it delivered.”

Ubuntu GNOME will be subsumed into Ubuntu, presumably meaning anyone currently running Ubuntu GNOME as a separate flavour will upgrade into an Ubuntu-branded desktop in successive releases,

If you’ve not tried GNOME for a while why not take Ubuntu GNOME 17.04 for a spin to see what the fuss is all about?