This means Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail will ship with GNOME 3.6 for the most part, and not 3.8 (currently under development as 3.7.x), at least according to the current plans. But this might change.
- tracking unstable GNOME is taking lot of resources
- The Ubuntu desktop is quite less "stock GNOME" than it used to be
- GNOME unstable series and Ubuntu "working every day" are hard to conciliate goals
- GNOME is not communicating early enough on what is coming for us to discuss next cycle at UDS (see nautilus 3.6 in quantal)
- GNOME is shipping stables with transitions half done (see gstreamer 1.0 this cycle) which is not something we want in Ubuntu
- Our "feedback loop" with GNOME is not really working nowadays
[...] if the GNOME remix becomes an official flavor, I was hoping to then ask for permission to include the GNOME3 PPA due to our unique overlap with the flagship Ubuntu release.
- Jeremy Bicha, main Ubuntu GNOME Remix developer, on the Ubuntu desktop mailing list
We'll let you know if the plans change.