Ubuntu Unity 22.10

The Ubuntu Unity Remix Team is proposing that the Ubuntu Unity 22.10 release be supported for 9 months as an official Ubuntu flavor release.

Considerations

• Ubuntu Unity 22.10 will be our first release as an official flavor.
• Ubuntu Unity 22.10 will be our 6th release, including the 5 as an unofficial flavor including 2 LTS releases as a remix (not as a flavor - 20.04 LTS and 22.04 LTS)
• Ubuntu Unity will cover this release for 9 months along with other Ubuntu products.
• We have, and will continue to maintain and develop the Unity desktop along with its components (unity-control-center, unity-settings-daemon, etc.)
• We have contributed to taking over maintainership of Unity7 as a whole.
• We have a MOTU and core dev (mitya57) with us, along with our lead and the Unity7 Maintainers team, who regularly stays connected with Unity7 development.
• We are conversant with the Unity7 codebase and have been adding new features and fixing bugs in it.
• Lots of extra Unity7 applications people use that are shipped with Ubuntu Unity are GNOME or MATE packages (gnome-terminal, gnome-calendar, gnome-software) along with other basic GNOME-related packages (xorg) which are maintained by the Ubuntu Desktop Team and Ubuntu developers.
• We also use many other packages which are used by other flavors and remixes like nemo. We've been using the packages used by Ubuntu since the very beginning. For example, we were the first flavor/remix to include the Firefox snap in the ISO (21.10). We've replaced most of the libadwaita apps with replacements from desktop environments like MATE and Cinnamon for 22.10, and they fit in really well.
• We have been supplying our releases with Stable Release Updates frequently, especially on LTS releases.
• Flavor lead: ~rs2009
• Flavor QA Lead: ~maik-adamietz

Support Plan

Members of the ~ubuntu-unity-devs and ~unity7maintainers teams on Launchpad (probably to be merged to form the ~ubuntuunity-dev team after flavor status is reached) will continue to maintain the Ubuntu Unity packages.

• The primary areas of support will be within the Unity desktop environment
• SRU's will continue to be delivered
• Security updates and CVEs will be monitored and patched if it affects users
• Quality Assurance will continue as we have developers and community members who have devices and help in bug squashing
• The project has its own Telegram, Discord, Twitter and Subreddit, allowing for many options for community members to report bugs and get together.
• Future uploads: Rudra Saraswat and Khurshid Alam will continue seed development and bug squashing. Nemo updates can be done with David Mohammed (fossfreedom) as Ubuntu Budgie uses the Nemo file manager too, and other updates can be done with Ubuntu Developers and the Ubuntu Desktop Team. mitya57 will be uploading all the Unity and Unity-related packages to universe.
• In the future, we plan to have direct upload access to more of the Unity7 desktop in the future and work with the DMB to allow more people in the team to have upload access.

Meeting the criteria for becoming a flavor

• Image has track record of community interested in creating, supporting and promoting its use. - We've been developing and maintaining Ubuntu Unity for more than two years now, with a really active community.
• Leading members have signed Ubuntu Code of Conduct. - Khurshid, Maik and Rudra have all signed the CoC.
• One or more developers with upload rights. - mitya57 has upload rights
• Flavor lead identified and responsive though 6 month cycle. - Rudra has been active for over two years now.
• Flavor QA lead (may be different from flavor lead) identified to coordinate testing of image at milestones during release. - Maik is the QA lead.
• Follow the milestone and release processes. - We've been following the release schedule since 20.04.
• Best effort support from flavor community for security updates and high priority bug fixes for default 9 month support period. - We release updates frequently, and this has been detailed in the above section.

Release Schedule and Management

The Ubuntu Unity team will continue to follow the Ubuntu release schedule and release Point Releases when necessary. We will also get in touch with the QA team to add a tracker/testcases on iso.qa.ubuntu.com.

• https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/kinetic-kudu-release-schedule/27263

• Aug 25: Feature Freeze
• Sep 15: UI Freeze
• Sep 22: Kernel Freeze
• Sep 26-29: Beta Freeze
• Oct 06: Kernel Freeze
• Oct 13: Final Freeze/RC's
• Oct 20: Release

List of Proposed Packages/Applications

Unity7 desktop components

• unity-session (Deb/Ubuntu)
• unity-settings-daemon (Deb/Ubuntu)
• unity-greeter (Deb/Ubuntu)
• unity-tweak-tool (Deb/Ubuntu)
• gtk3-nocsd (Deb/Ubuntu)
• nemo (Deb/Ubuntu)
• nemo-fileroller (Deb/Ubuntu)
• nemo-python (Deb/Ubuntu)
• atril (Deb/Ubuntu)
• eom (Deb/Ubuntu)
• stacer (Deb/Ubuntu)
• pluma (Deb/Ubuntu)
• synaptic (Deb/Ubuntu)

Packages specific to Ubuntu Unity

• unity (while Unity 7.5 is available in universe, Ubuntu Unity uses Unity 7.6)
• unity-control-center (Ubuntu Unity uses the Unity 7.6 version of u-c-c)
• gtk3-nocsd (the universe version contains many bugs)
• ubuntu-unity-settings
• ubuntu-unity-meta
• plymouth-theme-ubuntu-unity
• ubuntu-unity-wallpapers