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Ubuntu Unity maintainer Rudra Saraswat writes today about the new features and improvements coming to the Unity 7.7 desktop environment, which will be available next year as part of the Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar Lobster) release.
In an attempt to bring back the “old-school UI concepts” from when Canonical was still developing the Unity desktop for Ubuntu, Unity 7.7 promises a redesigned Unity Dash that’s more in line with what Lomiri (the Unity8 fork used in the Ubuntu Touch mobile OS from UBports) currently offers, as well as a redesigned Unity Panel to be slightly bigger and more visually appealing than what you get in Unity 7.6.
Another exciting feature to expect in Unity 7.7 is support for desktop widgets thanks to the implementation of a new UWidgets plugin/widget system for Unity that lets you display widgets on top of your Unity7 desktop. The widgets supported by UWidgets must be written in Python.
In addition to supporting desktop widgets, the UWidgets plugin system appears to also let you change the desktop wallpaper or the position and settings of the Unity Launcher, as well as to integrate some of its functionality with various apps.
Moreover, Unity 7.7 promises a new Welcome app written in Flutter, the SDK that Canonical decided to use for the new Ubuntu Desktop Installer starting with the Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar Lobster) release next year.
On top of all those goodies, the upcoming Unity 7.7 release also promises to improve notifications support, replace the launcher BFB with a half-transparent icon, reduce the default icon size in the Unity Launcher to 44px, reduce the default Unity Panel opacity to 0.75, and improve the overall stability of the Unity7 desktop environment.
Until Unity 7.7 hits the streets, as part of the Ubuntu Unity 23.04 daily builds or most likely as part of the beta release on March 30th, 2023, Rudra Saraswat is waiting for your comments and feedback on the new features coming to this major Unity7 release.
Image credits: Rudra Saraswat
Last updated 1 year ago
