I've been running and using the latest release of Ubuntu, named Oneiric Ocelot, since the first beta version. There are many improvements, and I do really like to keep up with the newest features.
There is one problem though, both the new Gnome(3) shell and Unity, the other shell, or both nasty! I honestly don't like all the fancy graphics uselessly boring me to death, and the "clean" interface which means for me that all useful quick ways to do stuff, are gone.
But I've stopped worrying and learned to love the [bomb] Unity gui, with the following tweaks though:
* Install synaptic using the "software center", because the latter one is really slow, does not do what I want, has less software listed somehow and is just not ready for any serious use.
* Change the default Unity behavior using "compizconfig-settings-manager". For instance, I don't use the mouse that much, so I just want the windows button to pop up the menu bar thingy, otherwise just leave it alone. Also I want to cycle through ALL applications using ALT+Tab, not just some of them. This is possible, just tweak the right combination of compiz plugins.
* Check out this list of "indicators" which bring back all the nice applets for cpu freq settings, international characters, weather updates, cpu usage, etc. Some of these I just need, end of discussion.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/30334/list-of-application-indicators/3799...
* Customize the new login screen, put your own image there, by installing "simple lightdm manager":
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/simple-lightdm-manager.html
Given all these tweaks I'm kind of ready to also start using it at work. It is a shame that such a drop in usability is apparently needed to migrate from the deprecated system that gnome 2 really was. Hopefully, and I do expect that it will, the default gui experience will improve a lot in the next version.
2 comments
Same here, upgraded home and work pc/laptop from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10. Played a bit with Gnome 3 and with Unity. I feel more attracted to Gnome 3 than Unity, but because Unity it so much better integrated in Ubuntu I'll stick with Unity for now.
But I'll really keep a VM running Gnome 3 to keep up with that, as I really like the possible tweaking Gnome 3 supports, and.. it's Gnome, it's waaaay better tested than Unity can ever be (in my humble opinion :)). They both just miss the nice little tools that were already build for Gnome 2 in the last decade.
Yesterday I was once more frustrated about the all to well known usability problems with unity, and thought "why again am I using this?". So I finally gave up and just installed gnome-shell and I have now started using the classic! session.
With some tweaking here and there I now have the old way of working back again, including the good version of alt-tab, virtual desktops, sensible menus, awesome keyboard shortcuts, application status bar, a gnome bar having shortcuts always available, etc. Ahhhhh, so good to be back.