Ubuntu News: Themes, Unity 8, Meizu Phone, Ubuntu Touch, and Elementary OS
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-12 08:35:56 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-12 08:35:56 UTC
Themes
Unity
A new video out of Canonical is showing off the Unity 7 desktop with an X11 session running side-by-side with a Unity 8 Mir-powered session.
Stephen Webb, the engineering manager of desktop Unity at Canonical, posted a video of "A demonstration of Unity 8 (Mir) and unity 7 (X11) running on the same machine at the same time." They're in different sessions and showing it's possible with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS without too many challenges.
Meizu
Canonical announced a while ago that it had chosen Meizu and BQ as the first hardware partners for the first Ubuntu-powered phones, and now an official video of Ubuntu running on a Meizu phone has been made public.
Later this year the Meizu MX3 will become one of the first smartphone to ship with Ubuntu Linux. An Android version of the 5.1 inch smartphone is already available, but the Chinese phone maker started showing of an Ubuntu version at Mobile World Congress in February.
Going back to January has been talk about Ubuntu on Chinese smart-phones and in February it was announced that Meizu is one of two Ubuntu Phone launch partners. Meizu dominates the Chinese market while the BQ Ubuntu Phone will target Europe.
More Phones
Hello Linux Geeksters. Canonical has released yet another three Ubuntu Touch images over the weekend, coming with important fixes for Unity 8, the time zone support has been added to the organizer library, a bunch of boot improvements have been added, an enhanced version of calendar has been implemented, and the latest scopes API changes have been added.
Ubuntu phone: Are you an Android for the past couple of years but recently you have been looking for a fresh take on your smartphone OS experience? If so, then you may want to check out Ubuntu's phone which would arrive some time this year.
Ubuntu for phones and tablets has confronted with a number of blockers in the development, but that hasn't stopped its makers from implementing new features and fixing some bugs.
Surveillance-Friendly Computing
Ubuntu One has been shut down and people are seeking alternatives.
The service is not shut down immediately–Canonical announced that the service will go offline as of June 1.
Canonical – the company behind operating system Ubuntu and founded by open source pioneer Mark Shuttleworth – has discontinued its cloud-based file storage service Ubuntu One.
Canonical has announced that the service in question will go offline in a couple of months. So you have until June 1 to migrate to a new cloud hosting service, while your data will be accessible until the end of July before it gets wiped clean. The reason behind the shutdown is basically due to high competition where other services are providing good amounts of storage for free and it would take huge investments for Canonical to do the same. To help you choose a new storage service, we’ve compiled a list of viable substitutes.
Ultimate Edition
The previous version of Ultimate Edition was a more down-to-earth variant that came up with some interesting features. It was one of the few distros out there that chose to keep Unity as a desktop environment, but the current version is a complete mess.
Elementary OS
elementary OS "Isis" is the next iteration of the famous operating system that swooped everyone off their feet with some amazing looks and a new desktop concept. The first details about the new version have been revealed and it is going to be one of the most beautiful Linux distributions in the world.
elementary OS developers are working to integrate a dedicated application for listening to podcasts and leave the Music app to do what it does best, namely play music.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- IBM Effect at Confluent: Mass Layoffs and IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines (BCGs) Said to be Violated
- For Confluent employees who survived the layoffs there will be "culture chock"
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- "AI" 15 Times in Short 'Article' From The Register MS. And The Register MS Got Paid to Publish It.
- gets paid to do this
- People Who Decided to Boycott Novell Over Its Microsoft Alliance Should Also Boycott Canonical
- As an associate put it, "selling out further, due to Microsoft moles inside Canonical"
- Links 19/03/2026: "AI Glasses" as Euphemism for Mass Surveillance and ABC (US) Has Begun Publishing Slop as 'News'
- Links for the day
- The European Patent Office, Europe's Second-Largest Institution, is on Strike Today
- Lots more to come
- What People Impacted by the Bluewashing Layoffs at IBM Confluent Say (While the Media Says Nothing at All, in Effect Burying the News)
- Worse yet, the mainstream media spreads lies about it right now
- IBM Has Turned Red Hat and Fedora Into Slop
- This is IBM policy
- IBM is Being Robbed, Companies and Jobs Are Destroyed
- Companies taken over by IBM will be exploited and destroyed to keep a bubble inflated for a little while longer
- In Confluent Layoffs, IBM Vapourises a Quarter of Its Workforce (IBM Buys Something That It Destroys Already)
- In the past, such things were typically referred to as "media blackout"; now it's just "the norm".
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 18, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, March 18, 2026
- Links 19/03/2026: LLM Fatigue (It Doesn't Work as Advertised), "Small Web Feeds"
- Links for the day
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 15 Out of 200: Background and Particulars of Truth Regarding Techrights and Tux Machines
- the basic facts (this has aged well, except the times/ages/numbers)
- A Slopfarms Survey for Today (linuxteck.com, linuxsecurity.com, linuxjournal.com)
- Not only did Google news link to a slopfarm; it linked to three run by the same team!
- Links 18/03/2026: "Venture Capitalist Warns That It’s All About to Come Crashing Down" Due to Slop Bubble, "Birdwatching for Fun and no Profit"
- Links for the day
- IBM Red Hat is Still Promoting Restricted Boot Which Restricts Users' Control Over Their Computers
- Red Hat under IBM is a total catastrophe
- Arvind Says... Something Something "Hey Hi" (the State of Today's Media)
- Look for news about IBM and most likely it'll boil down to some sound bites from an executive and nothing else
- New Post Has Just Explained How IBM Gets Robbed by the People Who Fail IBM
- Their plan for IBM is a personal plan
- Slop-Spewing GAFAM LLM That Knows Nothing and Understands Nothing, It's a Stochastic Parrot That Cannot Even Figure Out Tux Machines is a Community That Started in Tennessee 22 Years Ago
- RMS rightly calls those things "bullshit generators"
- Cusdeb Makes New Presentation About Where GNU Hurd (Still a Possible Linux Replacement) Stands in 2026
- coming from a generally RMS-friendly account
- Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Librarians, Phone Anxiety, Growing 'Small' Net, and Slop Versus Software Engineering
- Links for the day
- Estimates That IBM to Lay Off Close to 10,000 Workers in 2026 (Not Counting People Pushed Out)
- There's still chatter about Confluent mass layoffs
- Smug Threat by Garrett to Put My Family and I in Prison Doesn't Prove We Did Anything Wrong, It Only Proves He's Truly Desperate to Stop Further Publications That Embarrass Him
- his reputation is poor in the United States
- systemd Increasingly Microsoft Project, Controlled by Microsoft and Slopware
- Cannot allow choice
- What IBM Meant to Red Hat: "Proprietary Bundling, Restricted Source Access"
- Anyone or anything that joins IBM likely shortens its lifespan
- IBM Thrashing Confluent Upon Arrival, Based on Rumours
- We deem it a bigger issue that investigative journalism perished, not that one must rely on hearsay online or mere "rumours"
- Slop Is Plagiarism, Not (Vibe) Coding, and It's Not Automated, It Doesn't Save Money
- Reject misnomers, explain what's actually happening
- UPC is Still Illegal and Unconstitutional (Kangaroo Court for Patents, Manned by Corporate Staff), Federal Court of Justice of Germany Receives Belated Complaint About It
- What is happening to Europe???
- EPO Demonstration Happening Right Now, Later This Week Things Will Only Escalate Further
- The SUEPO The Hague Committee wrote to staff this morning
- Sophie Brun, Raphael Hertzog & Debian sexual conflicts of interest
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 18/03/2026: Commodore's Hedley Davis Dies, Apple Not Good Enough, Cheeto "Floats Treason Charges for Iran War Coverage"
- Links for the day
- A Step Close to Shutting Down the European Patent Office (EPO)
- Not going to work all month long
- EPO Staff Demonstration Today
- The demonstration will be live-streamed for those thousands of colleagues who don't live in Munich
- Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Brazilian SYN Attacks and BGP
- Links for the day
- LibreLocal Also Coming to Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain
- It helps raise awareness of Software Freedom
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 17, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, March 17, 2026
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 14 Out of 200: Men Who Strangle Women (and Worse) Trying to Force Us to Write Public Apologies to These Men
- For those who never before saw a SLAPP, they basically make many demands
- Instant Bluewashing at Confluent: Mass Layoffs Alleged at IBM
- So the main question is, did IBM just fire 800 people?
- "Vibe-forking" and Why It'll Ultimately Fail (Hype on Top of Hype)
- Code made with LLMs sucks; converting solid, human-tested code into slop only complicates matters and increases risk
- Updates About Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation
- After all those years (a decade) and in spite of phony scandals many people out there still respect him
- LLM Slop With "Linux" in the Domain Names
- This is becoming a pain and a problem also in the arts and in software engineering
- The EFF Has a Bug, Fixing This Bug is Likely Not Possible Anymore
- "the EFF's continued existence impairs the arrival of a replacement organization, one which will actually champion digital rights."
- Links 17/03/2026: Microsoft Windows Broken by Samsung, Afghanistan-Pakistan War Escalation
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 17/03/2026: Newcomers and False-Positive 'Slop'
- Links for the day
- Héctor Orón Martínez & Debian shadow candidate pressure on Sruthi Chandran
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 17/03/2026: American Fentanylware (TikTok) Investors Implicated in Kickbacks, "Big Oil Knew It Was Wrecking Louisiana’s Coast"
- Links for the day
- For Third Time in a Week The Register MS Runs Google SPAM That Paints Google as an Ally of Women (Which is False, They're Womanisers)
- What does that make The Register MS to women?
- British Justice Minister Sarah Sackman Blasts Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
- The "legal industry" is due for "some reckoning"
- GAFAM Deprecating Old Videos ("Content") by Removing the Support for Their Format for No Good Reason
- "Security" is not a valid excuse
- Credit/Debit Cards Have Long Been Called Plastics, Over Time They're Becoming More Like Pure Plastics
- They cost less than a dollar to manufacture
- The European Patent Office (EPO) Holds a Public Demonstration Tomorrow and It'll be Live-streamed
- The EPO's workforce was meant to be capable of speaking many languages and have extensive experience in the sciences
- People Who Attacked Techrights Also Attacked My Mother
- Picking on old ladies because you don't like Free software advocates is never OK
- Little Community Element Left in CentOS
- CentOS, unlike Fedora, was meant to be long supported and solid
- Social Control Media is Cancel Culture (Companies Like Facebook Also Punish/Ban Accounts for Mentioning "Linux" and Lobby for Anti-Linux Legislation)
- The masters of Social Control Media decide what ideas can and cannot be expressed
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 16, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, March 16, 2026
