First look at Ubuntu "Natty" and the state of Unity

"Ubuntu's 11.04 release ("Natty Narwhal") is going to be an important inflection point for the project, and for Canonical. The company is banking on its users, and potential users, embracing a user interface (Unity) that differs significantly from the previous Ubuntu release as well as other familiar desktop UIs. Further, the target release date is less than three months away and significant chunks of the Unity interface are still unfinished. The second alpha release on February 3 shows promise, but there is significant work left to be done.

"The most interesting, or at least most visible, change is in the shift to Unity. Canonical began work on Unity during the 10.10 cycle for the Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Despite the less-than-exuberant reception for Unity on 10.10, where some vendors opted to remain on 10.04 for netbooks, Canonical decided to push ahead and make Unity the default shell in 11.04 rather than adopting GNOME Shell from GNOME 3.0."

Complete Story

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