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
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 136 Out of 200: Lawyers That Get Paid to Mess About
- They were already outnumbered and understaffed
-
- The Cyber Show on the Slop Bubble
- new article about the implosion of the slop bubble
- Links 01/08/2026: New York Times Trying to Inflate the Slop Pyramid Scheme (at Cost to Its Own Reputation) and "Iran Appears to Be Blasting Amazon Data Centers Off the Map"
- Links for the day
- Positive Political Momentum
- Daniel Pocock is taken seriously by many people who contact us privately
- Google "AI" is Plagiarism, the Case of Richard Stallman (RMS)
- Why would anyone choose LLM slop over the originals, curated and fact-checked by domain experts?
- Explaining That Software Patents Are Neither Legal Nor Desirable
- Many of our readers work in the legal sector
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 31, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, July 31, 2026
- Gemini Links 01/08/2026: Retirement, Bike Trips, Quake Stuff, Usenet Reborn
- Links for the day
- Links 31/07/2026: Microsoft Now Says Slop is Bad (LinkedIn Cracks Down on It), LinkedIn Narrows Down Size (No Expansion)
- Links for the day
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: From Alicante to Munich: Another Smooth Ride
- Campinos is intent on transforming what was originally envisaged as a temporary public office into his own permanent personal feather-bed
- Daniel Pocock and the Important Observation About Threats of Cult-Like Behaviours (No Rationality, No Reason, Just "Mob Rule")
- It's a threat to Europe's sovereignty
- The "PIP Parade" of IBM's Lousy Management, Which Said "Blockchain" Was the Future
- In a healthy company such a CEO would be punished for utterly wrong visions and predictions. Not at IBM...
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 135 Out of 200: Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) That Does Not Disclose Financial Activities Before August
- It certainly looks like they keep losing the remaining women that still exist in the firm
- Links 31/07/2026: "Climate Cover-Up Continues" and Pesticides "Cook the Planet"
- Links for the day
- Datacentre 'Boom' Sceptics Aren't Luddites, They Recognise a Threat to Human Survival (Not Limited to Climate Change)
- Archaeologists very well know that no species will survive forever
- Microsoft's Claims Are Based on a Big Lie
- the bubble is coming to its hard limits
- Don't Lose Sight of the Impact of "End of 10" (Vista 10)
- GNU/Linux has taken off fast
- Microsoft's Debt Continues to Steadily Increase, Not Counting Hundreds of Billions in Secret/Hidden Debt
- The mass layoffs will carry on, maybe labelled LITE
- IBM is Circling Down the Drain, the 'Growth' Comes From Beancounting Tricks and Salary Cuts
- IBM was down 2.17% yesterday
- Microsoft's "Headcount" Distracts From How Big a Cull It Had This Month
- It also speaks of numbers "[a]s of June 30" though the "buyouts" were effective July 1 and since then well over 10,000 workers have vanished
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 30, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, July 30, 2026
- Gemini Links 31/07/2026: Music, Journaling, and Longing
- Links for the day
- More Fake News From (and for) IBM, Nobody Ever Held Accountable for Fraud
- Companies that turn a blind eye to their own corruption end up recruiting more corrupt people and sacking those who object to the corruption
- Links 30/07/2026: Smol Document Server and More PalmOS-ing
- Links for the day
- Links 30/07/2026: Microsoft Refuting Its Own Slop Hype and "Amazon Is Gutting Its Hey Hi (AI) Division" (GAFAM Bubble)
- Links for the day
- Today The Register MS Published "AI" Spam and Fake Article by "Senior Technical Marketing Engineer"
- unethical practices
- Cult inquiry parliament leak fallout
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Techrights Will Always Protect Sources
- Our #1 priority is sources
- European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Legal Concerns and Suspicions of Irregularities
- complaints submitted to OLAF
- The Era of Silence
- So stay silent, remain hidden
- GAFAM and IBM Dying in Massive Debt, Hence the Mass Layoffs (Increasingly Silent Layoffs That the Media Fails to Mention)
- the integrity of this economy is only as good as its leaders or those who govern the market
- TheLayoff.com Deletes Comment That Called IBM's Previous CEO, Ginni Rometty, "Gin 'n Tonic"
- It is hard to believe the comment was deleted for being a duplicate (in another thread)
- The Mainstream Media Continues to Overlook or Intentionally Ignore Hundreds of Billions in Hidden/Secret Microsoft Debt
- the issue is that Microsoft's crisis is a lot greater and broader than this
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 134 Out of 200: What "Majority Rules" Tell Us About the Litigant
- we press on with this series
- Overshoot Day Sites That Contribute to the Problem
- Some of these are not even accessible (at all) without JavaScript
- Microsoft May Have Gotten Rid of 8% of Its Workforce This Month
- It's hard to know what's really going on because there's no transparency due to NDAs
- Links 30/07/2026: "Age of Irrationality", Google Losing Money, and "House of Ellison is on the Brink"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 30/07/2026: Homeworlds Notes and Manuscript Submitted
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 29, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, July 29, 2026
