I've been running Unity for 24 hours now, and I can honestly say it's been the best desktop experience I've had in all my years. Notice I said best "desktop experience", and not "best Linux desktop experience". I have been running Windows since 3.1, Linux since Red Hat 5.2, and OS X since, well, Leopard. Unity is by far the best and most cohesive experience I've had so far. It tops OS X by a wide margin...it has many of the same sort of niceties with window management that actually makes sense (yes, I think OS X window management is horrid). Add to this the fact that it bakes some of my favorite compiz features (grid plugin anyone?) in and I couldn't be happier.
I know there will be some naysayers...many, in all likelihood, but in this daily Linux desktop user's eyes, Unity is a VERY big win for Ubuntu.
Can you please give a couple of examples of why is so? The usability test this thread refers to is really just oriented to new users (mainly: how easy it is to find this and that). I wonder what Unity does for everyday users.
I've been using Unity for about a month (or more?) now. It is indeed an awesome experience. Definitely much better than Windows 7. I can't compare it to OS X because I haven't used it, but your testimony makes me really excited :D
If you haven't tried it yet, give original Gnome 3 / Gnome shell a go. You might like it even more than Unity. I get a feeling that by jumping straight to Unity, they will cause many people to be excited about it, not knowing they've lost something at least as good.
Unity is not bad by any stretch, but it feels unfinished to me when I use it. I kept hitting the wrong thing and breaking the flow of whatever task I was doing. I'm sure with some more experience with it I'll quit doing that, but it kept violating my expectations and stealing my attention from more important things.
Gnome 3 was a big change, but felt much tighter and polished. I didn't seem to have to think too much about how to do stuff.
Based on that experience, I think I'd like to use Gnome 3 on Ubuntu long-term.
I've been running Unity for 24 hours now, and I can honestly say it's been the best desktop experience I've had in all my years. Notice I said best "desktop experience", and not "best Linux desktop experience". I have been running Windows since 3.1, Linux since Red Hat 5.2, and OS X since, well, Leopard. Unity is by far the best and most cohesive experience I've had so far. It tops OS X by a wide margin...it has many of the same sort of niceties with window management that actually makes sense (yes, I think OS X window management is horrid). Add to this the fact that it bakes some of my favorite compiz features (grid plugin anyone?) in and I couldn't be happier.
I know there will be some naysayers...many, in all likelihood, but in this daily Linux desktop user's eyes, Unity is a VERY big win for Ubuntu.