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.”

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