Unity 2D PPA for Ubuntu 10.10 users

So you’re still on Ubuntu 10.10 but you don’t want to miss out entirely on the “new” Unity experience. What’s the best way to experience Unity in Maverick?

During the early development of Unity 2D – the less hardware-hungry version of Unity that uses Qt – Ubuntu 10.10 users were able to install Unity 2D for development purposes via a PPA. Understandably, the back-porting stopped as Natty got nearer.



Ubuntu developer Adi Roban has picked up where the Unity 2D team left off, packaging Unity 2D into a PPA for Ubuntu 10.10 users. He explains on his blog: -

“…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 of his work is a Unity 2D PPA for Ubuntu 10.10 users, available at ‘ppa:adiroiban/unity-2d-maverick‘.

He goes on to note:

“The global menu is not working it the current Maverick build. I will try to fix this since I like global menu. Feel free to suggest any improvements to the current build.

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.”

Install

So you’re feeling brave and want to install it, huh? First thing is to be fully aware that the PPA is neither supported or provided by the Unity 2D team, so install this at your own risk.

The good news is that it does actually work well – at least for now. The lack of the Global Menu is a bit of a drawback in terms of getting feature parity with Natty 2D users but this doesn’t impede the experience too much.

It also flies compared to the ‘stock’ version of Unity provided in Ubuntu 10.10 – and even with bugs and missing features is well worth installing if the former stresses you out with its sluggishness.

To install in Ubuntu 10.10 only – add ‘ppa:adiroiban/unity-2d-maverick‘ to your Software Sources, located in the ‘Edit’ menu of the ‘Ubuntu Software Centre.’

Once installed you’ll need to logout and select the ‘Unity 2D’ session from the login window to ‘enable’ it.

Via adi.roiban.ro/

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