Default Desktop Experience for 11.04

[Rick Spencer]

Hello all,

Back at UDS for 11.04 in Orlando, Mark set the goal of using Unity by
default on the Ubutu desktop. Given the current course of development,
it appears that we are going to achieve this goal, and Unity will stay
the default for 11.04.

I'm following up on this list at the suggestion of the Tech Board to
give folks a chance to respond or escelate any concerns.

Note that there are some arguments for changing the default from Unity
to "classic' GNOME:
1. There are key feature regressions, for example, there is no systray
support for many important applications.
2. There are usability problems, for example, settings are hard to find,
the launcher icons behave differently when you click on the trash can
versus the home folder launcher, it's hard to find a categorized view of
applications, searches do not always turn up expected results.
3. We are coming in too hot, there are too many crashers on some
hardware and the final product will be buggy.

I won't rebut these points myself, as I am rather striving to represent
the viewpoints not argue against them.

Representing the desktop team, Jason Warner believes that Unity will
deliver the superior experience for most users in 11.04. I agree with
this position and support staying the course.

Cheers, Rick

PS - You can reference the recent and current bug fixing efforts of the
Unity team here:
https://launchpad.net/unity/+milestone/3.8.4
https://launchpad.net/unity/+milestone/3.8.6
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity