Ubuntu 11.04 and Unity

[tmetro-blu-5a1Jt6qxUNc at public.gmane.org (Tom Metro)]

A Linux Journal (free) article on Ubuntu 11.04 and Unity:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/ubuntu-1104-unity-released-mixed-reactions

It quotes mixed reviews of Unity from around the net, such as:

Rob Williams said, "Unity impressed me a lot more than I expected it to.
After some use, that all becomes easier to get used to, but I don't
think it'll ever feel like it's the "best" way to do things. The simple
fact is that it'll require more steps than what we're used to."

This makes me wonder if Unity fares any better than GNOME 3 in terms of
being able to gracefully revert features to the "old way." Apparently
you can do a wholesale switch back to GNOME 2 (a login screen
selection), which may make the most sense if you want the traditional UI
wile still using the latest apps in the 11.04 repositories, but in the
article comments I see, "I tried to switch back to Ubuntu classic but
that also is buggy and I have more program crashes."

Many comments mentioning defecting to Mint.

LJ also has a video review of Unity:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/video/unity-3-rants-and-tip

It starts by showing a GNOME 2 desktop for comparison (configured almost
identically to my own).

Unity has approximately the same UI as GNOME 3, so I'm not sure why they
diverged from that project. The comments on the above article say
they'll be using GNOME 3 in 11.10.

I think I could live with the side-bar dock. Most of us use wide screen
displays with horizontal pixels to spare. But the application menu
(perhaps good for a small screen or touch screen navigation) and the
Mac-style window menus in the top bar seem more problematic.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/