With Ubuntu 10.10 out, I thought it was a time to give Unity another try.  Since it was supposed to be much more polished and refined, I expected great things.  How did it all turn out?  Did I ditch KDE 4?
I really tried to give Ubuntu's Unity a fair shot.  I figured out how to use it quickly.  Hover the mouse of the left to get the dock.  It was easy to add applications the launcher.  I could switch easily between them using Alt+Tab.  Desktop switching was beautiful.  The improved Settings menu was great.  I liked the updated PowerMenu with information of system updates.


I had issues though.  I don't like hovering my mouse over anything.  If the launcher would stay up, I'd be fine.  That would also make it easier to look at everything I have running so I can switch between tasks quicker.  I normally Alt+Tab to switch but if I have several open windows or I'm not sure which I want, I need to see specifically.  Unity just doesn't support that.

While I tried Unity, I also gave Gnome 3 a go.  Gnome had issues with my video card.  While applications looked fine, system menus and bars would be blurry in spots or have lines through them.  A change in drivers might fix it since I have a known bug involving ATI cards.  However, my video card driver works fine with KDE.  

My general impression of Unity and Gnome 3 is the same:  they're sacrificing old school functionality to make their product look less cluttered and more streamlined.  They both look fantastic and definitely cleaner than my KDE setup.  However, I can switch between tasks and desktops in KDE faster.  I can still pin applications to the panel.  
 


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