enjoying unity

Well, almost three months since I installed Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty), with Unity, on my notebook.

I don't know if Unity will work on my main pc. It doesn't work when I run the live CD on it, and I haven't looked into it because I won't be installing the next LTS until next year sometime.

That release will also come with GNOME Shell. So I figure I'll try to get both Unity and GNOME Shell working, and go from there. In the end, I'll probably add Openbox anyway, though.

Anyway, I'm completely comfortable using Unity in Ubuntu 11.04. I don't feel like it hinders my workflow at all. It looks great, it feels great. I think it's a wonderful environment, and I don't quite understand all the "Unity is crap!" stuff.

Okay, so here's what I'd like to see: More configurability.

Having the Unity launcher over on the left side is fine; it seems like the best place for it. But you should still be able to move it somewhere else, if you want.

And I feel like I can't make enough changes to the panel along the top. I feel like if I really wanted to do more things, I'd have to add gnome-panel, or maybe something like AWN (Avant Window Navigator).

But Unity in 11.04 is a fairly early version. By the time 12.04 comes out, I'm sure that Unity will look a little better. Regardless, if it works with my hardware, I don't see myself having any problem using Unity, or even GNOME Shell. To me, neither of those are more trouble than using E17 or AwesomeWM or whatever. Once I see how things are done, it's all just Linux.

But whether I'm using Unity or GNOME Shell or anything, I'll still add Dolphin from KDE! :) It's still my favorite file manager, by far.