If memory recalls, last year during an Ubuntu Online Summit event, Mark Shuttleworth said that a small team of Ubuntu developers would develop and test the upcoming Unity 8 desktop environment for desktop, and if they find it as reliable as Unity 7 is these days, then, and only then, it will become the default for future Ubuntu Linux releases. During these last months, Unity 8 wasn’t received very well by the Ubuntu community, and its media coverage was almost non-existent. Personally, I could not even try the Unity 8 session that’s available as a preview on the Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) release on any of my computers. However, Unity 8 showed to be quite innovative on the Ubuntu Phone/Tablet devices.