Question

7

Why do many GNOME application packages depend on `libunity9`?

rated 0 times [ 7] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 1227 / 3 Years ago, fri, june 18, 2021, 4:09:42

When investigating this question, I discovered that many GNOME applications' packages depend on the libunity9 package.

Dependencies

If I try to uninstall libunity9 on Precise, it tries to uninstall lots of GNOME applications:

Uninstall everything

MiJyn said in a comment,

how could the ubuntu developers possibly think that would be a good idea? Ubuntu is starting to be more and more like windows :(

The libunity9 package is described as:

binding to get places into the launcher - shared library

libunity is a shared library to be able to interact with the launcher and add places in Unity environment.

This package contains shared libraries to be used by applications

So obviously it's a component of Unity. It is odd that GNOME applications depend on Unity. Since Unity is an Ubuntu-specific addition, upstream GNOME apps shouldn't be depending on it.

Why these dependencies?

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answered 3 Years ago tionpromoti · Accepted Answer

In the case of Shotwell and Geary (and probably many other apps), libunity support is a compile-time option set when you run ./configure. That way it's enabled when Ubuntu builds it, but other distros can leave it off if they want to.

Unfortunately that means Ubuntu derivatives that don't use libunity either have to rebuild the .deb without Unity support, or use the official Ubuntu-compiled package and accept that it requires an unnecessary package.

Keep in mind that libunity is not Unity. For example, Elementary OS uses libunity for their own custom dock to display badges on top of the icons.

What any of this has to do with making Ubuntu "more and more like windows" is beyond me, particularly since Windows has no package management system.