Tom's Hardware Dissects Ubuntu 11.4's Interface and Performance

An anonymous reader links to an exhaustive look at the latest Ubuntu, running at Tom's Hardware. "The new Unity interface is broken down into its individual elements and explained ad nauseam. Overall the article is objectively balanced, the author does a good job of pointing out specific design flaws and shortcomings instead of complaining about how Unity doesn't work for him specifically. The walkthrough of the uTouch gesture language is exciting (wish I had multi-touch), though a full listing of keyboard and mouse shortcuts come in handy, too. Towards the end of the article there are benchmarks between Lucid, Natty with Unity, and Natty with the Classic interface. The performance of the Unity interface isn't bad at all, but that kernel power issue does rear its ugly head."

Comments

Re:Polish

[UBfusion]

When you have a pre-defined 6-month release cycle, exact deadlines and dozens of bugs pending, any new release is "released too soon".

With every new release new bugs are introduced, the old ones are given less priority and the user experience remains about the same. I hate to tell this, but the situation is the same with every piece of software and hardware (laptops and mobile phone models, anyone?) and reminds me of the saying "technology is something that does not work yet".

Re:Polish

[Mr. Mikey]

Can you give one real reason as to why you feel that it is the most usable, as compared to the gnome interface in 10.10? Old time users are not really immune to the "Ooh shiny!" effect.

• I can hit the "Windows" key, type a few letters, and instantly be able to launch the application I want, or open the file I'm looking for
• At a glance, I can see which applications are open regardless of which desktop I happen to be in
• I can quickly see an image of, then jump to any of the open instances of a running application
• I can quickly create custom launchers that "bundle" different applications as needed

You asked for one. There's four off the top of my head. I like the "Ooh shiny!" effect as much as the next geek, but I'm finding Unity to be very usable, and to help me be more productive.

Satisfied?