Today, 5 May, 2016, is the last day of its sessions Ubuntu Online Summit 2016, and developers reported a lot of details about the future of Ubuntu Desktop with Snappy and Unity 8 with Mir.
Development work has already begun to add new and up-to-date technologies to Ubuntu Desktop. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS began supporting Snaps installing from Ubuntu Snappy Store.
Snappy seems to be slowly making its way to the Ubuntu Desktop, and starting with Ubuntu 16.10, we'll be able to purchase Snap apps from the Ubuntu Snappy Store via Ubuntu Software.
So various important applications like LibreOffice and the Mozilla Firefox they will be able to be installed by default as Snaps inside Live ISOs.
Canonical is reportedly also developing a method of upgrading various packages from the .deb file format to snap.
For example, if you have Ubuntu 16.04 LTS installed, LibreOffice in .deb format, and then you want to upgrade to Ubuntu 16.10 or Ubuntu 17.04, where LibreOffice is available in snap format, the transition will be as smooth as possible , without losing any adjustment. Finally, basic applications such as Chromium, LibreOffice, or Firefox will only be available as Snaps.
Canonical's Will Cooke said the Unity 7 desktop is closing its cycle, which means it will be upgraded with fewer features or only with security updates. This is because developers are on the Unity 8 desktop which will become the default Unity somewhere after Ubuntu 16.10 Yakkety Yak.
Looking at the slide attached below, going from Unity 7 desktop to Unity 8 will be sometime between Ubuntu 16.10 and Ubuntu 17.04.
Unity 8 is currently available in the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus repos as preview of technology, but a lot of work is still needed.
