I finally got Unity working - I installed Ubuntu 11.10 in VirtualBox. This must be the 2D mode that people have mentioned, and I guess my computer doesn't have 3D graphics acceleration. When I first looked at Ubuntu 11.10, I wondered what the big deal was. It looked like there was a menu bar on the left side of the screen instead of the bottom. Then I tried doing stuff. Of course, the pretty purple/pink background is about the only thing in common between the new Ubunu UI and the old one. The left menu bar has a now-you-see-it-now-you-don't quality that would make multitasking tricky. Then there are the applications (like Firefox) with the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't menu bar at the top of the window. The icon with the Ubuntu logo leads to the big menu for various functions. (I guess this is the mobile interface everyone talks about.) Gone is the full menu common to the Linux Mint, antiX Linux, Puppy Linux, Damn Small Linux, Windows XP, Windows 98, Windows 95, and even the old Ubuntu. You can't even right-click on the desktop to see the full menu showing most or all of the installed programs. To add insult to injury, Ubuntu 11.04 and 11.10 feel slow with 2 GB of RAM. This is the Hummer of Linux distros. The old Ubuntu flew with 2 GB of RAM and was roughly as heavy as Windows XP. In contrast, Linux Mint Debian Edition flies with only 512 MB of RAM. Ubuntu has finally done what would have been inconceivable just a few years ago - it caught up to Windows in the bloatware department. I don't have significant experience with Windows Vista or 7, but I'm sure the new Ubuntu has to be as heavy as Windows 7 and possibly as heavy as Windows Vista. Now that I've tried out Unity, I'm qualified to say that Ubuntu has jumped the shark. User unfriendly + extremely bloated = EPIC FAIL. While I'm sure the new Ubuntu can be tweaked, people who have the time and know-how to do this would be better off tweaking a bare-bones Debian installation or something like Arch Linux, Gentoo Linux, or Slackware. At least these alternatives would provide a fast and lightweight setup. Canonical needs to be wildly successful in the mobile market to compensate for the loss of desktop users. I think many more Ubuntu users will defect to Linux Mint and other distros when support for the current LTS version ends in 2013. I don't understand why the same OS needs to work for desktops and mobile devices. Canonical could have continued designing Ubuntu for the desktop and rolled out a separate mobile OS. It could have even borrowed elements of the desktop to make the mobile OS to be more expedient. I think the Ubuntu controversy is a sneak preview of what's ahead for Windows 8. The average Windows user is even more resistant to change than the average Linux user. I think Windows 8 will be a flop and possibly damage Microsoft even more than Vista did. -- Jason Hsu <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com>