Unity-2D on Ubuntu 10.10
Posted by Adi | Filed under English, Free Software, Planet Ubuntu
I have tried and tested Ubuntu 11.04 during its development cycle and also after the final release and I really liked Unity 2D. It was the first shell that I did not felt the need for major customization. The fact that external monitor support is again broken, middle click emulation is no longer a default and that I can not adjust the brightness of my laptop screen, blocks me from using Ubuntu 11.04. I know that Ubuntu 11.04 and Ubuntu 11.10 are the future, but I just want to use my computer now 
So being stuck with Ubuntu 10.10 I started using the Unity 2D team PPA repository. It worked quite well, until the team decided to stop supporting Unity 2D on Maverick. With valuable help from Unity 2D team I was able to build the latest Unity 2D on Maverick.
The result is available in the following PPA: ppa:adiroiban/unity-2d-maverick .
The code is available at lp:~adiroiban/unity-2d/unity-2d-maverick
The global menu is not working it the current Maverick build. Thanks to Olivier I found the problem and I will update the PPA soon.
Please note that the Unity 2D on Maverick is not supported by the Unity 2D team.
In the same time, I am a junior Ubuntu packager so the package might have some bugs.
PS: To bad that for now, the version of Unity that works on everyone’s computers is a second class citizen in Ubuntu.
PPS: I have the default video card that comes with the core i3 CPU… nothing fancy, but it looks like I can not escape the curse of the external monitor… but is working Maverick.
Oliver with Arms Extended by Mr. T in DC
May 19th, 2011 at 18:38
[...] up where the Unity 2D team left off, packaging Unity 2D into a PPA for Ubuntu 10.10 users. He explains on his blog: [...]
May 19th, 2011 at 19:10
[...] >>Δείτε στο blog του δημιουργού του, για περισσότερα. Λογισμικό constantinos [...]
May 19th, 2011 at 21:58
Screen brightness: do you use an Nvidia card? If so, maybe this helps: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manager/+bug/726692
Dunno external monitors, but middle click emulation is easy to restore according to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-input-evdev/+bug/771716/comments/9
May 19th, 2011 at 22:41
[...] developer Adi Roban has picked up where the Unity 2D team left off, packaging Unity 2D into a PPA for Ubuntu 10.10 [...]
May 20th, 2011 at 02:51
[...] desarrollador Adi Roban ha recogido en el equipo de la Unidad 2D dejó, la Unidad de embalaje 2D en un PPA para Ubuntu [...]
May 20th, 2011 at 09:35
Hey Adi,
Nice work! I’m not on Maverick any longer but I’m sure people who are are glad you did all the hard work to backport the latest and the greatest of Unity-2d there.
Regarding the global menu, the issue sounds familiar to me, I’d say it’s because of the change of the DBus domain from “org.ayatana.*” to “com.canonical.*”. See revisions 360 and 361 in lp:unity-2d.
By the way, does drag’n’drop of desktop files to the launcher work in your port to Maverick?
Cheers,
May 20th, 2011 at 10:30
Thanks Olivier,
I have reverted the changes from 360 and 361 and looks like the global menu is back again.
I will test it a bit more and will update the package.
Thanks again!
May 20th, 2011 at 20:31
[...] developer Adi Roban has picked up where the Unity 2D team left off, packaging Unity 2D into a PPA for Ubuntu 10.10 [...]