Unity 2d support dropped in 12.10, what now?

Solution 1:

According to this article on Phoronix systems without OpenGL acceleration will still be supported using the LLVMpipe driver.

"Those without OpenGL acceleration on the GPU for running the Unity desktop with Compiz will have to deal with the LLVMpipe driver for Gallium3D running on your CPU. LLVMpipe is bad for gaming, but good enough for a composited desktop experience. LLVMpipe already handles the GNOME Shell and with Fedora 17 the GNOME-Shell-On-LLVMpipe is the software fall-back method."

Sounds cool. We'll see how well it works in practice.

References:

• http://www.mesa3d.org/llvmpipe.html

Solution 2:

In 12.10 Unity will run on systems without decent OpenGL support by using LLVMPipe (see also this bug documenting the change). This will come at the cost of higher CPU usage so on older systems you may want to switch to another desktop.