Ubuntu 11.04, Unity and the "Desktop haters" (like me)

[kitepilot at kitepilot.com]

For those of you ignorant of REAL life excitement: Ubuntu 11.04 Beta is 
OUT!!!
Oh, boy...   :) 

The part that I hate about this frequent releases, is that they are 
consistently so much better, that I *HAVE* to upgrade.
The part that I love about this frequent releases, is that they are 
consistently so much better, that I *WANT* to upgrade (or do I?). 

My first Ubuntu installation ever (I believe to recall) was 5.04 (Yes, I am 
*THAT* old!)
I remember that it blew my socks off, when all I had to compare it to was 
the Red Hat of the time.  It was orders of magnitude better than the best 
Red Hat, Suse, Slackware or (fill in your distro of choice) of the time.  
And it was, in short and above all: USABLE! 

 From then on, it became a love/hate relationship.  At the beginning I tried 
both, flat Ubuntu (Gnome) and Kubuntu (KDE).
At the end I settled for KDE mostly because I could not put up with the 
(unavoidable and depressible ugly!) brown Ubuntu motif.
KDE was not only blue and soothing, it also behaved more like the M$ stuff 
that I was used to play with at the time.
And so I tugged my happy KDE life for few years, testing and ditching the 
ugly Gnome every so often and finding specific uses for low power machines 
running XFCE and lately LXDE. 

Until one day...
One day I found that KDE was getting "so helpful", that it was constantly 
busy being "helpful" while constantly ignoring the attention I craved.  They 
(KDE) installed all this indexes and daemons and hidden processes that 
rendered the performance of the machine borderline unusable (sounds 
familiar?) unless you're were running your "Desktop" on a Craig's 
supercomputer.
Beyond my budget and beyond my patience... 

So one day some year-and-a-half ago I took another hard look at Ubuntu...
And I pleasantly found out that they had diluted the horrible brown and I 
could easily manage the interface (look at a recent Mac  ? ).
I am not sure if I got smarter (highly unlikely) or they dumbed down the 
interface (entirely possible), but I could actually work with it intuitively 
(or, as I do mostly everything: without needing to THINK!) 

And then I was fat, dumb and happy again (mostly dumb and fat)
And I installed Ubuntu to all my friends and family that I help with 
computers, and they too were fat, dumb and happy (mostly happy, some fat)
And life went on... 

For a geek that ignores many of the "creature comforts" of a GUI in favor of 
doing "things" on terminals (like REAL men do!  ;-), I regularly become 
inconvenienced when the GUI makes decisions for me.  For instance, just try 
to install an IP address on a network adapter without the GUI in Ubuntu! 

So the "new" Ubuntu is (almost) out.
And as always, I think of upgrading, but in this instance I am not that 
sure...
You see, now Ubuntu is using "Unity" as the "Desktop" environment.
It's GOT to be important, because even PCWorld and Znet *ARE* talking about 
it.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/223843/four_new_features_comin 
g_to_ubuntu_1104_natty_narwhal.html
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/the-new-ubuntu-desktop-unity/8584?pg=2 
&tag=mantle_skin;content
Remember the days when you found "Linux" in PCWorld only as a dirty joke?
Obviously times (and appreciations) are changing... 

But anyway, back to the question: Do I *WANT* to upgrade?
Has anybody used Unity before?
Is it an step forward in usability and "coolness", or will it become another 
intrusive and hyperactive KDE?
Have you use it?
Did you like it?
Is Ubuntu getting better or worse with this Unity thingy?
Stay tuned, I'll fire up a virtual this weekend and will take Unity for a 
spin.
ET