Review of Ubuntu 11.04

So I've installed Ubuntu 11.04 and played with a bit so far. While its generally the same deal as the previous version. (a user friendly yet full scale operating system) I have to say I am disappointed in the new unity desktop environment.

I personally find the unity desktop to be less user friendly then Gnome (my choice) or XFCE. It reminds of Mac OS-X with all the rolly, moving icons and strange menu set-up's. Now maybe as a linux and BSD guy, I have a bias against mac, but I've always found Mac overly complex to use. Further, all this fancy animated desktop requires something...things like RAM and processor power and a decent GPU. That to me is taking away from the essential things about linux. The fact it can generally be run on computers with very low system resources. I guess it still can, one could boot into gnome or Xterm, if gnome is heavy, Xterm and install XFCE. But I see no reason for the new desktop, Gnome was very functional, easy to use and is still my, and many of my fellow's, choice of a desktop.

Aside from that, its good, solid OS, as ubuntu always tends to be. It has a few bugs, but that's expected with any new release. Indeed, most of them have already been fixed with updates.

So overall, I think its a good solid release. I dislike unity, but hey, others might love it as a desktop, and you still get gnome installed incase you hate it. So it's hard to loose.