Installing Unity on Debian

Question

I'm a former Ubuntu Unity user, and currently running Debian Squeeze. I love Debian's stability over Ubuntu, but I do miss being able to switch between applications use Super+1,2,3 etc.

Has anyone successfully gotten Unity running on Debian Squeeze?

Solution

Work is taking place to package Unity for Debian, but once that is complete, to run it on squeeze someone would need to back port it. That might not be possible, but if it is, it will certainly be very difficult, as there have been some major transitions in the library chains since squeeze was released (not least GTK3).

You will end up with so many libraries backported you will probably have been better off moving to Debian testing instead.

See also this Debian ITP bug, where one of the people who was working on this spells out how difficult it will be to get it into Debian at all at the moment.

Comments

[Admin]

@TheEvilOne Although Unity was designed with Ubuntu in mind, it was not intended to be Ubuntu-specific, as there have been attempts to get it packaged for other distros. Unfortunately, it seems progress has been slow at best.

[RolandiXor]

Are you using Unity on Debian, or just using Debian?

[enzotib]

Also, the question seems different from title

[rozcietrzewiacz]

I'd paraphrase this situation as follows: If you miss your paintings, hang them in your new flat - don't try to cut-paste the whole walls. ...Or better describe what is your main point.

[Sandburg]

Is it possible to know the package names of the main project and maybe fork project if one?

[Alexander Filёv]

Very miss and wrong - the question was about the Desktop Environment, not a 3d editor.