Ubuntu apps are made for their next generation desktop (Unity 8) that promises to bring the convergence between different Ubuntu devices (Notebooks, Tablets, Smartphones).

To be honest I don’t think that Ubuntu has any serious chance to go into mobile, and hardly they will do quality tablets (they have more luck to succeed in tablets though). The competition has changed the last year (Firefox OS, Touchy Chrome, Tizen) and Canonical is way left behind.

Anyway, I’m probably wrong on this!

Ubuntu has written a set of core applications for their next desktop (even a Terminal!), but the one I liked the most was their file manager. Their applications as far as I know (correct me if not!) are using the Qt Quick framework, so all the interfaces are custom made, and they don’t use the standard widgets of Qt5.

Maybe the whole Unity 8 concept doesn’t feel so right for the desktop (pretty nice for tablets thought!), but never the less Canonical guys have some great ideas there!

Last time I checked (3-4 months ago) Ubuntu Apps were hard to be installed in Fedora due to dependencies on Unity and other Ubuntu-specific libs, so it is better to get an Ubuntu installation if you want to try them.

UBUNTU.Next Images

“Next” seems to be the new trend in open source (Fedora.Next, Ubuntu.Next, Plasma.Next, etc) and Ubuntu has made available daily images of their Next.Desktop. That is Unity8 running on Mir.

The images are available from:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-desktop-next/daily-live/

I couldn’t really try it as I couldn’t bypass the login screen, but alternatively you can run Unity8/Mir & Ubuntu Apps from 14.10 repos, or from PPAs for the very latest (daily builds).

The images are available from: