I usually jump on the latest Ubuntu release before it hits the final release stage, but this time it was with a bit more trepidation than usual. You see they’ve replaced the shell with a completely new one – Unity. And to say that not everyone likes it would be a minor understatement.

The good news is that Unity is undoubtedly a step forward in practical user interface terms. The classic Gnome panel is really showing its age, and doesn’t lend itself to wide screen formats due to having panels on both the top and bottom of the screen. SUSE addressed this by created a start menu like launcher, but it was always a bit clunky and barely an improvement over Windows XP.

So how is Unity different? It is perhaps more informative to talk about how it is similar…
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