Get Unity 2D on Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick”

Unity is “the completely new” user experience available in Ubuntu 11.04. It is available in two versions; Unity for the powerful machines with compatible graphics cards and Unity 2D, the less hardware resource hungry version. I prefer and use Unity 2D much more than Unity 3D on my Ubuntu 11.04 system.

If you’re still stuck with Ubuntu 10.10 for some reason or the other and you don’t want to miss out entirely on the “new” Unity user experience. You can now get it on your Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick” by using the PPA‘s listed in this article.

When Unity 2D was in its early development, Ubuntu 10.10 users were able to install it, for development purposes obviously, via the “Unity 2D PPA.” But as the launch of Natty came closer and closer, understandably the back porting for Maverick stopped.

But now Ubuntu 10.10 users can install and enjoy Unity 2D again, thanks to Ubuntu developer Adi Roban. He picked up the development where the Unity 2D team left off, and packaged Unity 2D into a PPA for Ubuntu 10.10 users. He explains on his blog:

“So 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.”

–Adi Roban

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

The code is available at lp:~adiroiban/unity-2d/unity-2d-maverick

He continues on his blog:

“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.”

–Adi Roban

[Thanks to OMG! Ubuntu]

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