Today, May 5, 2016, is the last day of sessions at the Ubuntu Online Summit 2016, and developers revealed many details about the future of Ubuntu Desktop with Snappy and Unity 8 with Mir.
Development work has already begun to add new and modern technologies to the Ubuntu Desktop. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS began supporting the installation of Snaps from the Ubuntu Snappy Store.
Snappy seems to be slowly making its way into 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.
This way, several important applications such as LibreOffice and Mozilla Firefox will be able to be installed by default as Snaps within Live ISOs.
Canonical is also reportedly developing a method for upgrading various packages from the .deb file format to snap.
For example, if you have installed Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, with LibreOffice in .deb format, and then 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 settings. Finally, core applications like Chromium, LibreOffice, or Firefox will only be available as Snaps.
Canonical's Will Cooke has said that the Unity 7 desktop is starting to come to an end, meaning it will be upgraded with fewer features or only security updates. This is because developers are on the Unity 8 desktop, which will become the default Unity desktop sometime after Ubuntu 16.10 Yakkety Yak.
Looking at the slide attached below, the transition from the Unity 7 desktop to Unity 8 will happen sometime between Ubuntu 16.10 and Ubuntu 17.04.
Currently, Unity 8 is available in the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus repos as a technology preview, but it still needs a lot of work.
