14 DAY TRIAL // Ubuntu will soon work on phones and desktops, so people are asking whether the desktop will have the same restrictions. The answer is not as straightforward as you might think, and the Ubuntu developers are still analyzing how much access will be granted to users.
The community is focused on the Unity 8 adoption for the desktop, but there are some underlying problems that also need to be solved. For example, the file access on the Ubuntu phones is somewhat restricted, as it is to be expected, but that doesn't need to happen for the desktop users. Also, the way that background apps are handled also needs to change.
Running multiple apps on the desktop is normal and even required. Desktop users usually do a few things at once and they need those apps to keep working. As it stands right now, that's difficult to achieve on the phone and there are some restrictions in place. Whether those restrictions will also land for the Ubuntu desktop is still open for debate.
Don't expect a lot of freedom from the start
One of the things that the Ubuntu developers have said during the Convergence meeting they had at the previous UOS (Ubuntu Online Summit) was that the new version of the OS will most likely land on the desktop with all the restrictions in place, but they will relax them depending on what's needed.
For example, if users want more control over what's running in the background, they will get it. Canonical is not shipping a desktop OS that's very lax in security only to add more restrictions later. They are working on it from the other direction.
It's also quite possible that some users won't like this very much, but that's to be expected. We also need to keep in mind that Ubuntu with Unity 8 is still under development, and a lot can change until it is released in a more stable form.
