Comment Re:give it a try first (Score 1) 235
/usability-wise, according to my view, it's Windows 7, OS X, KDE on top, GNOME 2 and others at the middle and GNOME 3, UNITY and Windows 8 at the bottom.
I've been using Unity in 12.04 and I switch between Gnome 2 in Debian and Explorer.exe in Windows 7 multiple times a day and I have to say that the more I use Unity the more I like it. I'd even go so far as to proclaim it the best desktop UI I've ever used. Oddly enough the things I like best are what most other people seem to hate. I'll mention a few and add the disclaimer that Ubuntu works perfectly on my hardware so I'm just going to focus on features.
Dual monitor support is perfect for me in Unity. I plug in the second monitor and immediately it just works. The second monitor gets its own dock and indicator bar at the top just like I would want. When I open an application from the respective docks it opens on the correct monitor. If you move the mouse below a certain speed threshold, it sticks just a little on the dock on the second screen making it easy to aim for despite essentially floating in space.
The dock is practically custom made for wide screen laptops that most people use these days. I naturally want it on the side so it doesn't take up precious vertical pixels. It can be set to stay visible or auto-hide. It's trivially easy to add Windows style "jumplists" to icons for added functionality, i.e., when I click the Show Desktop button I get the desktop but when I right click it I can select Invert Colors which does just what it says. It took a couple of minutes to add that. One thing about the dock some people might not like is if a window cannot be minimized by clicking it's icon only focused. I didn't like it at first but after a while I got to where I appreciated the consistency of clicking a button only doing one thing instead of it acting as some kind of ad-hoc toggle. For me it that's a part of the UI just getting out of my way. I don't have to map my brain away from what I'm concentrating on to worry about whether I want to click on another icon to focus or should I click on the current application's icon to reveal the application underneath. It's a small thing but it actually helps.
The top panel plugin system is a vast improvement over Gnome 2 IMHO. It is consistent, easy to develop for, and just looks nice. Being able to write a quick mail checker in Python and just running it automatically putting it in the panel is golden and much improved over the bonobo framework of old.
Obviously I like Unity and I think it's a step forward for Linux. It does require a bit of an adaptation and it's non-traditional in ways that will ruffle feathers but if you remember Gnome 2 ruffled feathers of the original Gnome diehards but now people sing its praises.
I too love Unity with a few good customisations and a few add ons, I get some thing I love and can use. Where as I could never get any where useful customising Gnome 3 aka Gnome shell I hate that thing, as for people who want something that's usable/perfect out of the box well I've never found that animal, I always want to considerably customise any environment, that's what I hate most about Gnome 3 they will not listen to their users, and arrogantly insist on a we know best philosophy well they can just see how they like having fewer users then.