The founder of Canonical has reminded users of the role Unity had back in 2011

Nov 11, 2013 15:42 GMT  ·  By

Mark Shuttleworth has praised Unity for the role it had on UI innovation and says that Microsoft is now doing the same thing.

The founder of Canonical had a few words to say about Microsoft's decision to revamp their operating system interface, and compared it with Unity.

“For many years, Linux lagged behind Windows in elements of innovation around UX. We managed to innovate tremendously well on the plumbing, but not in the GUI.”

“With Unity, that changed. For the first time, key innovations showed up first on Linux, and later in the proprietary platforms. One of those key ideas was consolidating search in a single full-screen experience. We still have a long way to go on this but I think it's telling that Windows 8.1 has adopted patterns similar to Unity in 2011,” said Mark Shuttleworth in a Google+ post.

Just like Windows' new Metro interface has sparked some anger in the community, so did Unity when it was originally launched, and people are still not too keen on adopting it.