Developer M A Muqtadir, involved in the development of the Ubuntu Yaru theme and the Vanilla OS distribution, recently showcased the initial outcomes of an experiment aimed at recreating a custom Unity shell using modern components from the GNOME stack and the Wayland protocol. The prototype presented is based on the composite manager Wayfire, which utilizes Wayland and enables the creation of resource-efficient user interfaces with 3D effects similar to 3D plugins for Compiz. The side and top bars, pop-up dialogs, and Dash interface for navigating installed applications are implemented using the gtk4-layer-shell add-on and widgets provided by the libadwaita.
Recall that the developers of the UBports project are working on a custom shell called Lomiri (last update in 2025), which is a fork from Unity 8. Meanwhile, the Ubuntu Unity distribution has taken over the development of the Unity 7 codebase (last update in 2022). The Unity 7 branch is constructed using GTK and GNOME technologies. In Ubuntu 16.10, Unity 8 shell was included alongside Unity 7, which was translated to the Qt5 library and the Mir display server. Originally, Canonical intended to replace the Unity 7 shell with Unity 8, but plans shifted, leading Ubuntu 17.10 to revert to the standard GNOME with the Ubuntu Dock panel, resulting in the discontinuation of Unity 8 development.
