Unity (user interface)

Unity is a graphical shell originally developed by Canonical Ltd. for its Ubuntu operating system. It debuted in 2010 in the netbook edition of Ubuntu 10.10 and was used until Ubuntu 17.10. Following its discontinuation by Canonical in 2017, development of forks of Unity7 and Unity8 has continued – the latter was renamed Lomiri in February 2020. Unity7 is the default desktop environment in Ubuntu Unity, an official flavor of Ubuntu since 2022. The maintainers of Ubuntu Unity and Unity7 have started working on the successor of Unity7, UnityX. It was part of the Ayatana project, an initiative with the stated intention of improving the user experience within Ubuntu. It was initially designed to make more efficient use of space given the limited screen size of netbooks, including, for example, a vertical application switcher called the launcher, and a space-saving horizontal multipurpose top menu bar. Unlike GNOME, KDE Plasma, Xfce, or LXDE, Unity is not a collection of applications. It is designed to use existing programs.