Metacity, the default GNOME window manager used for the GNOME 2.x branch, has seen its last days in Ubuntu as Canonical is preparing to remove it from the repositories.

The Ubiquity package used by Canonical for its Ubuntu distribution has just received compiz support and now it's the only window manager used during installation, via the Install Now option.

“This means if on the CD no other ubiquity supported windows managers are present compiz will be used as the last fallback.”

“In practice this means that metacity will fall off Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Nexus images as of next build with this ubiquity version included. No other images/flavours should be affected,” stated Dmitrijs Ledkovs, a software developer at Canonical, in a mailing list post entitled Farewell Metacity.

The only thing that stops Canonical from removing Metacity altogether is the fact that openjdk still depends on this package. In any case, Metacity is done for.

All we can say now is farewell Metacity, it was a beautiful journey.