unity-2d

Deprecation of Unity 2D (UDS-Q)

Asked by Christoph Trassl

After UDS-Q various sources announced that Unity 2D will eventually be dropped in favor of a software accelerated Unity 3D via Gallium3D.

I am one of those Xmonad users that have the best desktop experience ever since introduction of Unity 2D:

* the indicators are better than older systrays
* the global menu saves a lot of space
* the panel is visually much more appealing than xmobar (or anything similar)

Currently I am running a 'normal' Xmonad session with unity-2d-panel as panel-requirement. My graphics cards are all capable of running full spec Unity w/ Compiz, I even tried to use Unity-3D/Compiz instead of Unity-2D/Xmonad. I went back every time. The experience with Xmonad/unity-2d-panel is much faster than what I get out of Unity-3D.

In order to evaluate all my options, I would like to know:

* If or/and when will unity-2d(-panel) will be dropped from Quantal/later repositories? Do you have a Unity 2D deprecation roadmap?

* Is it possible to run a single instance of Unity-3D panel w/o Compiz and w/o Unity-3D-Launcher (just like running /usr/bin/unity-2d-panel)?

* If unity-2d-panel will be dropped, I consider building a standalone unity-2d-panel. Do you expect missing dependencies after dropping Unity 2D?

Thanks for your help and time,
Christoph.

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Tim Penhey (thumper) said : 		#1

On 20/05/12 01:50, Christoph Trassl wrote:
> New question #197799 on unity-2d:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/unity-2d/+question/197799
>
> After UDS-Q various sources announced that Unity 2D will eventually be dropped in favor of a software accelerated Unity 3D via Gallium3D.
>
> I am one of those Xmonad users that have the best desktop experience ever since introduction of Unity 2D:
>
> * the indicators are better than older systrays
> * the global menu saves a lot of space
> * the panel is visually much more appealing than xmobar (or anything similar)
>
> Currently I am running a 'normal' Xmonad session with unity-2d-panel as panel-requirement. My graphics cards are all capable of running full spec Unity w/ Compiz, I even tried to use Unity-3D/Compiz instead of Unity-2D/Xmonad. I went back every time. The experience with Xmonad/unity-2d-panel is much faster than what I get out of Unity-3D.
>
> In order to evaluate all my options, I would like to know:
>
> * If or/and when will unity-2d(-panel) will be dropped from Quantal/later repositories? Do you have a Unity 2D deprecation roadmap?

I'm guessing that at least at this stage, unity-2d will not be removed
from quantal, but it will not see active development of new features.

> * Is it possible to run a single instance of Unity-3D panel w/o Compiz and w/o Unity-3D-Launcher (just like running /usr/bin/unity-2d-panel)?

Not at this stage. Due to upcoming work, something like this may
appear, but probably not in a useful manner in the short term.

> * If unity-2d-panel will be dropped, I consider building a standalone unity-2d-panel. Do you expect missing dependencies after dropping Unity 2D?

No. Not at this stage. A possible change however may be in the future
direction of the 3d codebase and the shared library that they are
currently using. No decisions have been made at this stage, but no
promises are made that future changes won't have impacts on the 2d
codebase. In order to keep API/ABI compatibility, you should stick with
the 12.04 codebase.

Tim

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