In the past, I've found that compositing desktops (as implemented wit Gnome over the years, and now Unity) would interfere with some applications. I would assume they also interfere with games that want to use the GPU heavily. So, I spent quite a while trying to use Unity2d. While I was able to badger it mostly into working, it always felt very second class. On 12.04, it feels even more second class, and of course it is going to be removed in 12.10 anyway.

I do like the idea of a side bar. When I use OSX, I put the dock on a side. When I use Windows 7, I put the start bar on the side. I also love the idea of the HUD. On OSX I use Quicksilver, and on Windows I navigate the start menu by searching it. In the past I've used Gnome Do. When it comes to Unity's implementation though, I've found making .desktop files for applications I want to use that don't already come with them to be cumbersome and error prone. If I don't make a .desktop file, I can't launch it from the HUD, nor can I lock it to the launcher.

When it comes to altering the menus to place the menu bar at the top, this is a decent idea, but again the implementation feels poor. I don't like that the menus disappear until you hover over the bar. That makes it hard to know where I will want to point the mouse until I get over the bar to make it show me the menus. I suspect that this is one of the changes that makes this such a large fork of Gnome 3 BTW. I would have prefered that they put out a proof of concept first, then try to work with Gnome and GTK to make it an option that is merged in.

Despite all that, I still use Unity since I like Gnome3 and KDE even less. I recently tried LXDE and XFCE, but I they seem like an unpleasant jump back to the 90s. For one thing, I don't want to go back to managing my Start/Application menus, I want to keep search. For another thing, I like largish icons on the left or right.

I am currently watching the Cinnamon project. I think they look promising. I haven't gotten around to trying it out in a VM though.