--- title: Ubuntu rejoins the GNOME fold | daily.dev description: Ubuntu announced it would drop Unity 8 and return to a GNOME-based desktop for the 18.04 LTS, refocusing on cloud and IoT. A Collabora engineer analyzes the... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/ubuntu-rejoins-the-gnome-fold-nc5qbqgyp twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Ubuntu rejoins the GNOME fold | daily.dev og:description: Ubuntu announced it would drop Unity 8 and return to a GNOME-based desktop for the 18.04 LTS, refocusing on cloud and IoT. A Collabora engineer analyzes the... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/ubuntu-rejoins-the-gnome-fold-nc5qbqgyp og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/nC5QbQgYP.png og:image:alt: Ubuntu rejoins the GNOME fold og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Ubuntu rejoins the GNOME fold **[Collabora Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/collabora)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Ubuntu announced it would drop Unity 8 and return to a GNOME-based desktop for the 18.04 LTS, refocusing on cloud and IoT. A Collabora engineer analyzes the technical ramifications: the likely convergence on Wayland as the default display server (following Fedora 25's lead), improvements to XWayland for X11 compatibility, and the shared graphics infrastructure (KMS, EGL, Vulkan, GBM) that makes the transition less disruptive than it appears. The post also covers GTK+ 4's new GSK rendering architecture, which enables widget description-based rendering, batching, and a Vulkan backend — promising significant OpenGL performance gains by reducing state thrashing. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What rendering changes does GTK+ 4 introduce with GSK compared to GTK+ 3? GTK+ 4 with GSK shifts from a callback-based rendering model to a description-based one. Instead of each widget rendering directly into a buffer, widgets describe how they would render, and actual rendering happens in a single batched step. This allows shared assets to be cached, similar operations batched together, and state thrashing minimized — a major OpenGL performance win. A Vulkan backend for GSK is also in development. _GTK+ graphics developers tracking the GSK Vulkan backend follow these architectural shifts on daily.dev._ ### Which Fedora version first shipped GNOME Wayland session by default? Fedora 25 was the first release to ship the GNOME Wayland session by default, receiving broadly positive reception. Reviewers noted the transition was transparent and that GNOME 3.22 felt considerably smoother under Wayland than under X11. _Linux desktop developers watching Wayland adoption across distros keep up with developments like these on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Ubuntu 25.10 Scraps X11 for Wayland: A Solid Step Forward](https://daily.dev/posts/ubuntu-25-10-scraps-x11-for-wayland-a-solid-step-forward-6c2jvnb08) · The New Stack · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [GNOME 50 doesn't feel like Linux anymore, and that's exactly why I use it](https://daily.dev/posts/gnome-50-doesn-t-feel-like-linux-anymore-and-that-s-exactly-why-i-use-it-1zosf2wgz) · XDA Developers · 39 upvotes · 7 comments - [Ubuntu 26.04 Aims To Deliver Better NVIDIA Wayland Performance Atop GNOME](https://daily.dev/posts/ubuntu-26-04-aims-to-deliver-better-nvidia-wayland-performance-atop-gnome-zutoxknqn) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#ubuntu](https://daily.dev/tags/ubuntu) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/ubuntu-rejoins-the-gnome-fold-nc5qbqgyp) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Ubuntu rejoins the GNOME fold","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/ubuntu-rejoins-the-gnome-fold-nc5qbqgyp","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/ubuntu-rejoins-the-gnome-fold-nc5qbqgyp"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:57:06.670Z","dateModified":"2026-08-11T09:32:24.245Z","description":"Ubuntu announced it would drop Unity 8 and return to a GNOME-based desktop for the 18.04 LTS, refocusing on cloud and IoT. 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