As the release of Ubuntu 11.04 is approaching, I took a bold move to upgrade my Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10 last night. Maybe not that bold, since the Ubuntu 11.10 is supposed to be stable enough at this moment. I played around with Unity and Gnome3 each for a while and finally chose Unity as my default desktop manager.

At the very beginning, my wireless didn't work. It turned out that the wireless adapter drive was buggy with Linux kernel 3.x.x. After switching back to 2.8.x, wireless connection was alive. Both Unity and Gnome3 have impressive visual efftects at first glance. But after a while, especially in term of the usability, I would prefer Unity. Why?

I like the title bar/top panel in Unity very much. It combines the functionality of the conventional window title bar and the top panel. Sure, it mimics Mac OSX but this feature save a lot of laptop screen real estate. While in Gnome3, a time applet seemingly takes up the whole top panel and you can't place app shortcuts into it rendering itself less useful.

Both desktop managers have dropped 'Window List' at the bottom. I have to say I need that back badly. I feel very uncomfortable without it showing. I have no idea how to switch between windows quickly if you have opened 10+ windows. 'Alt+Tab' is not the right solution. I even think of switching to tiling window manager like wmii, xmonad. Luckily someone suggests tint2 as replacement. I will give it a try immediately when back home.