Ubuntu 16.10 Yakkety Yak has landed and brings with it the Unity 8 technical preview desktop session. Unity 8 has been the face of the Ubuntu phone and tablet for a few years and has quickly evolved its convergence feature set to allow it to work seamlessly between form factors such as phones, tablets and desktops.
You can now chose to log in to a Unity 8 session directly from the greeter.
Window Management
You can move and resize windows with controls which work well for a touchscreen.
Enable More Scopes
Unity 8 ships with only the Apps scope enabled by default. There are many others installed and you can enable them by:
- Click on the up arrow at the bottom of the Apps Scope (or if you are using a touch screen drag it up)
Enable Rich Multi-Media Scopes
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Open the Terminal App and install the required software:
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Open the Manage Scopes menu as in the previous step and enable the My Music, Music and My Videos scopes.
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The Media Scanner may take a few minutes to index your media. Try logging out and logging back in again if nothing appears in the Scopes.
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Scroll through to the Music scope and you should see your media complete with artwork where available.
Add More Apps
Snappy Apps!
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Gallery App
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Camera App
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Address Book App
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Calendar App
PPA Apps
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To add the PPA open the Terminal app and run:
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Then run:
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Music App
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Calculator
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Doc Viewer
Enable Xorg dependent Applications
Once installed you will see the Libertine manager icon in the Apps Scope.
- Open Libertine and click on Install
- Leave the input boxes blank and click OK
- Wait while Libertine creates the container and installs the necessary packages. This will take a few minutes.
- Once this is complete click on the “Ubuntu ‘Yakkety Yak’” text and then click on the plus symbol
- Click “Enter package name” and enter “gimp” and click OK
- Wait while The Gimp is installed.
- Once complete you should see a Gimp icon in the Apps Scope, click on this and you’re running Gimp under Unity 8 and Mir.