I like Unity. I didn't at first, about a year ago, but I re-installed it with 10.10, and it is much better. I think it just takes a while to adjust as it is so different from the gnome desktop. I prefer it to what I have seen of MeeGo, and ubuntu works on my old MSI-wind straight off the live-CD, while MeeGo doesn't (although it might if I do a lot of fiddling, but finding out how is a bit of a hassle with MeeGo, whereas Ubuntu has lots of forums you can use to figure stuff out). I keep trying to get away from ubuntu - I use debian 5 as well - and like PClinuxOS and Sabayon; however, things like MythTV & xbmc use ubuntu as their reference platform - so the support for these things is 'just there'.

I see unity as ideal for the netbook, but I'm still unconvinced for laptops and desktops. Since W7 SP1 upgrade crapped out on my laptop, and I installed ubuntu 10.10 on it instead, it has given me a chance to play with ubuntu on a recent piece of hardware. So, I tried out Compiz - and it is great. I have also been able to try a range of other distros, including some that default to KDE. I've never got on with KDE, but on recent hardware it is more aesthetically pleasing than any other OS apart from OSX.

Where I see Unity on the desktop as being of huge benefit is for people who are not particularly technical, and only need access to a few apps. I am thinking that I may replace XP on older PCs a couple of elder people I know use. The minimalism of Unity would be a huge benefit to them, especially as you can pin the apps they tend to use on the sidebar. My only gripe is that I always set the control buttons to min/max/close on the RHS of the window, for familiarity, and while this is still possible in the window manager - when the window is maximised and the control is passed to the unity panel, the default of close/max/min is fixed (on LHS) and cannot be reconfigured by the user. Mark Shuttleworth has had this listed as bug, but as yet it has not been fixed. I think it is important to maintain consistency, to avoid confusion and frustration, especially with basic user access. But, hopefully, it will be modified so the window control that sits on the panel picks up the window manager settings.

In terms of a mobile phone, yeah - I'd prefer a unity-style interface to maemo or what I have seen of meego, even though I do like maemo. One big issue I have with maemo is that it can be quite fiddly accessing things like the address book or recent phone calls - especially one handed in the dark (I had to pick somebody up at the airport last night, and needed to make a quick call en-route to make sure they knew when I would be there and where to wait).

It is a shame that Nokia went down the MeeGo route, rather than looking at working with Canonical to get something like Unity up and running on top of Maemo. I said this about nine months ago, and I still feel the same way. I do not know the technicalities of it all, but given how Ubuntu and Maemo are based on Debian, I don't see why this would not have been a possibility - and could have saved a lot of effort (as QT & GTK apps are implemented across KDE & Gnome I am sure apps could have been implemented on a Maemo/Unity UX quite straightforwardly). But, I may be talking out of my arse, of course.

Mish.