After Canonical announced that they will stop investing in the convergence process, the UBports community stepped forward to pick up the development of the Ubuntu Touch operating system.
Initially, the first priority has been to make sure that every Ubuntu Touch user could continue to use their device, and the response from the community has been overwhelmingly positive.
They are now at a point where we believe that we are ready to explore the possibilities of Unity8 on the desktop but a new step is landed on the project. A totally new name for it!
Why rename and what’s being renamed?
First, and most important, was the problem of name clashing. Most readers probably know “Unity” as a 2D/3D game and simulation platform. Many people who found “Unity8” made the same mistake. We were commonly fielding questions about how to import 3D models and meshes into our shell. Additionally, efforts have begun to package Lomiri into Debian (read more on Sunweaver’s blog) and Fedora. One sticking point for these efforts was the name “ubuntu” in many of Lomiri’s dependencies. For example, “ubuntu-ui-toolkit”, “ubuntu-download-manager”, “qtubuntu”, and so on. Packagers warned that packages containing the name “ubuntu” may not be accepted into their target distro.
Many of our projects and packages which include the “ubuntu” or “unity” name will be renamed, for example:
unity8
, containing the shell, will becomelomiri
.ubuntu-ui-toolkit
->lomiri-ui-toolkit
ubuntu-download-manager
->lomiri-download-manager
Additionally, the interface that developers use to call on these projects will change. For example, the
Ubuntu.Components
QML import will change toLomiri.Components
. For the foreseeable future, we will provide backwards compatibility in Ubuntu Touch images. Developers will only need to update to the new API when they’d like to package their apps for other distributions. QML’s lack of namespacing is a blessing here: the only change to most QML applications will likely be the import statement (fromimport Ubuntu.Components 1.3
toimport Lomiri.Components 1.3
).
Check the full article on the UBports blog: Lomiri: New Name, Same Great Unity8.