Ubuntu 11.04
 

I am a new member and this is my first post. I am answering my own question: Should I switch from Ubuntu since I hate 11.04 and the new Unity desktop??

I have used Linux since the 90's, long before it was a good OS and desktop. I first used Slackware for few years, then used Redhat for a few years, but being unhappy with state of Linux at that time, moved back to Windows. Then I tried Mandrake (Mandriva then) and I was totally sold on switching from Windows. It took only a few months for me to realize that I did not need the dual boot system I set up as I just NEVER went to Windows anymore. So I removed Windows.

After using Mandriva for a few years I got a new printer. I was unhappy that Mandriva did not have the printer driver yet. I had heard about Ubuntu and that they supported everything, so I thought I would try it. I did and it worked and the printer worked just fine. Now there was nothing wrong with Mandriva and I liked it a lot, but Ubuntu was also good and I learned to like it too. I missed some of the features in Mandriva, but found others in Ubuntu.

Now I have used Ubuntu for three years and thought I would try out 11.04 Beta and the new Unity desktop I had heard about. So I fired up the 11.04 live CD. I hated the desktop. I mean I switched from Windows in the first place because I wanted more Unix like things and control, now Ubuntu was trying to take all that away and any control I thought I had. I found 11.04 Unity to be very user dumbing down. Now maybe United is good to get more people to switch from Windows, but it is snot for me.

So I started trying a number of live CD's like Mandriva (again), Fedore (Redhat again), Slackware, OpenSuse,, Knoppix, and a few others. I was not happy with Mandriva as it has changed a lot in ways I do not like, Fedora was fine and much like Ubuntu, but I spent days trying to get the "forbidden" software installed that Redhat does not give you. OpenSuse was pure fiasco and I do not know why anybody would use it, and so on for several other distros. Fedora was best but I needed the "forbidden" software like a driver for my video card from ATI, or play mp3's, etc. So, since I had liked Ubuntu until Unity and it was after all a Debian distro, I decided to try Debian.

I was first blown away by the distro size of several DVD's, but soon found the web install CD. I installed Debain in about an hour. Now I know they say the install in Ubuntu is better, but I selected the "expert" install and still had no problems. Debian installed quickly, and the finished product and Gnome desktop was exactly like my Ubuntu 10.10. It even still used Synaptic for software updates as GUI for Apt, just like Ubuntu. Everything worked. It even found the Flash drive on my printer that Ubuntu did not find.

Now I am asking myself why would anybody want Ubuntu 11? Why did they ever start Ubuntu as it is just Debian. I soon found out it is because Ubuntu has all the latest drivers, like ALSA 1.0.24 whereas Debian stays with the tested stable drivers (ALSA 1.0.23) etc. But the Debnian release just came out in March 2011 so everything is fine with me. And if I want more up to date releases I can use the less stable (test) versions of Debian. I am happy with Debian and my Gnome desktop, and I will not go back to Ubuntu.

If you don't like Unity, just pick your other favorite desktop when you login. Unity is not a requirement on 11.04. I happen to be running Gnome right now on 11.04. The various Linux distros are just different starting points for various configurations. Pick the one that starts you closest to where you want to be.

Hi ggpitz and welcome to LQ.

You will find a few disenchanted ex Ubuntu users here on LQ for much the same reason as you just posted. While Debian Stable is a little behind the times when it is first released it is equal to Ubuntu's LTS release, currently 10.04 and the Debian release is much more stable in comparison. I've been running Debian now since last October and unless something drastic happens I doubt I will switch again.

Cheers.

If you hate unity, its probably a good idea to get off the ubuntu horse IMO.

Sure, right now you can change to 'classic' gnome 2.X, but its only a question of time till gnome 2.X is dropped by canonical. They have already announced that 11.10 will be shipping with unity only, and my guess is that gnome 2.X will be dropped fairly soon.

I sort of feel sorry for gnome 2.X users in general, and ubuntu gnome users in particular. Oh well, thats the way that the tech world goes....

BTW, netinstal is good. I dont use it myself, I prefer to get the standard install CD (when you do a couple of installs, its less d/ling to just get the full install CD). The DVDs are VERY handy for offline use, you can d/l the whole repo if you want. I still recommend debian over any other distro for offline/very limtied internet connections for that reason.

Ubuntu is not 'just debian'. But anyway, it was to make money.

Hello, an Ubuntu fan here, in addition to general Linux fan. Glad to hear that you have found a distribution that you like. The more I read your post, the more I am thinking I may want to look at Debian, at least for my primary machine.

Ubuntu as an OS's mission is to provide a user friendly desktop version of Linux. So Ubuntu is Linux for Newbies. Plain and simple. Sounds like you have moved on from Ubuntu.

And Ubuntu 11.04 is in BETA right now, and will not be released until end of week. So please do not let quirks in Unity deter you. Unity introduces several new concepts in Desktop and window management that personally I have struggled with but am coming to enjoy as the software catches up to the vision. So I am still excited by Unity.

Agreed, with the caveat that Canonical is working to develop an exciting, undeveloped field -- the Linux Desktop / Netbook user. So their mission is to make money while bringing in new Linux users?


Agreed. The wonderful thing about Linux is also the various choice of distributions.

I have over 7 computers (pc's, laptops, powerpc mac mini, and netbooks) spread around the house, and I appreciate the ease of use that comes with Ubuntu and automatic updates (and update manager, and apt-get ). I have a Dell netbook and a power-pc mac mini that would not support Unity, so it automatically went to a Gnome install.

So guess I'll continue to give Ubuntu the nod, at least for now.

No, their mission is to make money and bringing in new Ubuntu users. They aren't making money with Linux users, but with Ubuntu users they do.

Newbie friendly: Yes. User friendly: No.
Being user friendly is a big misconception. I am a user. User friendly is when the distro acts and looks exactly the way I want it to act and look. But Ubuntu doesn't do that for me. So can I consider Ubuntu as user friendly? No, I can't. But that may be (and I think will be) different for you.

Interesting. So Ubuntu does have value in your opinion as a Linux gateway?

The Gnome 2.x desktops are more akin to traditional Windows desktops up to XP. I am glad I learned linux on it.

The new Unity Desktop feels like Windows 7 and some version of Mac OS had a baby. So maybe folks accustomed to that desktop style will like Unity / it will behave like they expect it to? I had a Windows 7 box at my previous job for a year, and it helps me understand wtf Ubuntu is trying to go with Unity.

I am just bs'ing here. I do not know anything and am sure I am stating the obvious.

Thanks for the reply.

What part of Ubuntu does not act the way you expect? The new Unity desktop? Gnome desktop?

When will people stop making these type topics? Noone forces noone to use specific distro or specific gui or whatever..so why bother crying about it? Just pick one you like and that works and be happy.

Partially. Have a look at the Newbie forum, most people recommend Ubuntu or Mint, sometimes PCLinuxOS to newbies that are asking for advice on choosing their first distro. I think this is because these distros try to deliver an experience were almost everything works out of the box. They also tend to be not so hard to learn for new users, because they have GUI tools for the most settings.

It is not that is not working the way I expect it, it is not working the way I want it to work. I also started my Linux experience with Ubuntu and used it from 8.04 to 9.10. After trying some other distros (because of Ubuntu's bugginess and the way Canonical went with 10.04) I changed to Debian. I realized that it is much easier to configure Debian the way I want than it is with Ubuntu. That was also the time I started to be somewhat active here and on the Debian forums, and I learned a lot. Then, not long ago, I changed to Slackware because it comes closest to the way I want it. I really like it.

All I wanted to say was simply that there is no such thing like a general "user friendly" distro, because every user has different needs and works different with his/her computer. And this may also change over time. For me personally, after some time of learning, Slackware is much more user friendly than Ubuntu. For others it is Arch, Gentoo, Fedora, Debian or (put any distro here).

I see nothing bad about this threat. It is just a discussion, not even flaming or fanboys here.

Good points
Yes, almost everything works. And the gui desktop experience is more familiar than the command line. In the most developed cases - Linux mint, Ubuntu - they feel like flavors of Windows or Mac OS x. If you are hoping to gain non-Linux users to Linux, these 2 aspects would seem to be very imporant.

Thanks for the mention of the Newbie forum. I'll look hard at that forum - I'm new to linuxquestions , but hope to be here more often in future.

Personally, I am still learning some basics for my home network -> like separate the server features from any edgy desktop features <- especially if you going to go into Beta + proposed updates + Debian testing upstream files. I borked my main machines' 11.04 installation trying to incorporate some Debian testing (forked-daap) software. Had about 7 different types of servers that were thrown off when I (just out of curiousity ) let synaptic remove about 100 ubuntu components and installed a failed debian squeeze . Ouch. I will try to look at the resulting restore as a learning experience. (No data loss, now running 10.10 on primary machine in a different partition.)

I look forward to getting a Debian installation going soon!

Yeah, I wonder what / how Desktop designers begin to think that one Desktop type, of whatever type, can appeal to every user. The more configurable the Desktop, the more successful? Guess there is a whole theory behind user experience and Desktop design.

Thanks for the conversation!

Ubuntu users, sometimes I wonder what goes on in your heads....

If you have struggled with unity, why use it? Surely you can drop back to gnome 2.X for now, or change over to Xfce/KDE/fluxbox/etc..

I wouldnt say that the field is "undeveloped" at all. Canonical is just the most vocal about it.

I wouldnt call ubuntu (or mint) 'more developed'. They are easier if you have dodgy hardware, but as long as you are running decent linux friendly hardware they are no easier than debian (apart from possible teh nvidia drivers, not that you 'need' them).

With linux friendly hardware, everything should work 'out of the box' these days. I rarely, if ever, have to do any sertting up for hardware post install with debian.

If thats true (which it may or may not be) unity is bound to have problems. There is way more things that you cant change with unity than any of the other main DEs.

I can only speak for myself, of course, but the reason that I tried Unity is because I was curious about it. Ubuntu is trying to simplify by offering one desktop for netbooks, workstations, living room, etc.

My struggles with Unity were more trying to understand the vision of the desktop developers as they worked out the kinks - since it was a Beta version, I had no upset when the launcher did not quite respond as I expected. Unity works great now by the way.

See, this is why I get confused.....

Since when has there been an KDE, XFCE, Gnome 2.X, etc. version for desktop use and a different version for netbooks/laptops? Since never.

Ubuntu made the original UNR (ubuntu netbook remix) with a changed desktop which is in many ways the basis for unity. That really didnt work out so well, most desktop ubuntu users avoided the new desktop, and a lot of netbook/laptop users tried it for a while, then just gave up and went back to 'classic' gnome.

Canonical wasnt overly happy with that result, so they decided to push unity onto all ubuntu users. For now you have the option of using classic gnome, with 11.10 there will be no fallback to classic gnome-

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...812/comments/5

Classic gnome might still be avaible to install from the repos for 11.10, but that is unknown now. Even if it is an option with 11.10, I doubt it will be in 12.04. Or unity might become a hard dependancy with 12.04. Or both.

I personally dont think that unity has anything to do with 'simplifing offerings', or having the same desktop for various uses (unless you want the same desktop on your computers and a mobile phone, which is something I couldnt care about). Its more about canonical wanting more control, with the option of selling unity as a proprietary desktop to 3rd parties.

11.04 is beta for now (given a few hours it will be a normal release) but unity isnt exactly beta. Well, it sort of is, there is no doubt that its still got at least some bugs. But the actual unity desktop has been out for ages now, it was the default desktop with 10.10 UNE (Ubuntu Netbook Edition, which replaced UNR).....

I think I could get used to Unity, but I was put off by a couple of other things in Ubuntu, like the inability to skip installing a boot loader during install or the assumption that your hardware clock is set to UTC.

Debian is a good alternative.

Or, since you liked Mandriva, maybe you'll like the new fork 'Mageia'
http://www.mageia.org/

Canonical/Ubuntu haters in the crowd will probably love this:

I subscribed to Canonical's http://www.canonical.com/support/ser...pport-features last year mainly to support Canonical/Ubuntu.

Part of this package is a great web interface for centrally managing your system's updates , much like Red Hat server's offerings. I liked this feature a lot.

The catch is that their web interface only was good for 1 instance of Ubuntu (for the Home support package); whereas I want to now manage 10 various installations around my home - old laptops and netbooks and such, a HTPC, workstation; nothing special.
.
Looks like their small business package is 60.00 pounds / year (~$100) , good for 10 installations.
Ubuntu Advantage | Ubuntu Advantage Standard Desktop - RENEWAL
http://shop.canonical.com/product_in...roducts_id=683

I only want to use their central web interface, not all of their support. I need/should contact Canonical about this, I suppose, but I am not paying $100/year just for using their central management service (Landscape I think it is called)...

(hope this not to far off topic.)

Any ideas at what time official new version of Ubuntu today will be released?

11.04 is up and released now.

Aw..my bad. I'm used to check DW page for new release info and when i checked some time ago it wasn't there in news section. Forgot check Ubuntu homepage. Thanks.

Hah, I'd hardly call that 'bad' ;)

No problem anyway :D

I appreciate all the great comments made by you folks, except Arcane who seems to think us users should not share our experiences, talk about a cry baby!!

Anyway I have had several more days with Debian and I am very happy with it. I saw where some people mentioned missing some Ubuntu apps, like ailerus, or tweak ubuntu. So I must tell you that they work just fine on Debian.

Also would like to mention that my Debian install seems to take much less memory than Ubuntu, don't know why.
I still have my Ubuntu machine (dual AMD 2.5GHZ's with 4GB RAM, 500GB HD) and my new machine with Debian (AMD 1090 6 processors 3.2GHZ with 16GB RAM, 2x2TB HD) so I can easily compare the two as both are running side by side. I have same services installed, and same startup apps, as much as I could. On boot Debian takes 373MG, Ubuntu over 600MB. But the biggest different is that after a while Ubuntu swells to over 1.2GB while the Debian only to over 600MB). One of the biggest reasons is Google Chrome on my Ubuntu machine which take SO MUCH MEMORY. If you add any plugins they just multiply for every page you have displayed. On Debian I just use Iceweasel 4.0 which seems faster than Chrome (of course machine is faster too). But I use preload which makes apps run faster the more you use them as it learns your habits.

Since i was first complaining about Unity forced on me by Ubuntu, of course on Linux you can choose your own WM, but this choice by Ubuntu made me re-evaluate my distro and WM. In going with Unity it shows you the direction that Ubuntu has chosen, which is to be more like Windows and attract Windows users, less like Unix. I like to be in control myself, thus my switch away from Ubuntu. And so far I am very happy with that choice.

Well sorry..i had bad day + you mentioned typical lines "why would anyone want use ubuntu..if its based on debian.." etc. Didn't meant to offend anyone just hate troll topics "My OS is superior! Ur sux! Because i said so!". Well for some people same question rises about same Debian and others. Experience topics don't consist of flame. They just share opinions about what they liked or didn't like or what worked what didn't. Some time ago i asked same question and guess what? Noone could explain with facts why ubuntu is unworthy linux. They just don't like it based on BIAS. Peace? :)
P.S.Please don't judge people by internet posts because it's wrong and you won't get far with it - thanks.

As somebody who has used virtually every version of windows (I missed either windows 1 or 2, cant recall which of them) I'd say that unity is not 'more like windows'.

IMO its far more like iOS, at least in appearance. Moving closer to apple is the way that canonical has been going for a while now, going back at least to moving the windows buttons to the left.

Hey Arcane, Thanks for response. You are right. I always like Ubuntu, and still do. What I do not like is their trying to force people to Unity. But yes Gnome and other WMs are in 11.04, so in the end it is we uses who decide which to use. I do not understand why they did not just have another distro like Kbuntu (KDE), or Ubuntu (GNOME). Maybe because Unity started with letter "U". Of course they could have called it Unbuntu, but the "Un" seems kind of negative, or maybe had a different name for Unity, line Winity (HAHA), then they would have had Winbuntu.

What I was wondering though is why did Ubuntu even come into existence. Not that it is bad, it is great, but so is Debian, and now I see no advantage in choosing Ubuntu over Debian. The Gnome desktops are identical, both use apt and Synaptic. I don't know maybe at the time Ubuntu first came out Debian looked different, or Ubuntu had more drivers (don't know). I am not complaining about Ubuntu, but just wondering what is so different. I think it is the updates. Debian stays farther behind and does not put latest versions in their stable version. But I must tell you that it is easy to upgrade to newer releases, like I updated to Iceweasel (Firefox) 4.0, not in Debian stable.

Good point cascade9. And if you adopt Mac4Lin theme all the windows in Ubuntu or Debian also look like Apple. But remember that Apple OS IS Unix and started out as copy of either BSD or Linux, don't remember which.

There was talk of making 'gubuntu' (gnome ubuntu) when unity becomes the defualt choice, and/or when canonical drops gnome 2.X.

Canonical wont make unity unbuntu, not because of the 'un' naming, but more because they have always pushed ubuntu as the 'core' version. Kubuntu, xubuntu etc. were always seen by canonical as derivatives, not just a different DE choice.

Like I've said above, IMO its about making money and control. Some people like to say that its about 'bringing linux to the masses', but thats...well...fanboism, and forgetting that Shuttleworth has never hidden that he wants to make money from canonical.

There is the classic old joke 'Ubuntu is an ancient african word, meaning "I can't install debian" (sometimes seen as "I cant configure debian"). When ubuntu was released, ubuntu was a bit easier to install, and had (sometimes) less configuration needed.

Joking about "cant install debian" aside, a lot of what made ubutnu more attractive is jockey-gtk. Its easier to install proprietary drivers fom jockey-gtk than it is to do it from a command line. I know of several people who used ubuntu because they couldnt figure out, or be bothered to figure out how to install the nvidia drivers.

Ubuntu did look a bit different to debian. The layout, like now, was pretty mcuh the same, but there was the brown (yuck!) and 'racy' wallpaper. (Though to be honest I'm not sure if that was there on initial release of ubuntu, but it was there in the early days. Probably more of a media stunt than anything else).

Debian stable is behind ubuntu. But that is mostly because of differing release times. Debian used to be 'when its ready', its now moving to timed freezes, ubuntu has always had 6 month timed releases.

Debian freezes can last longer than the ubuntu cycle, so when you have ubuntu basing a version of debian sid/unstable, adn debian doing a 6 month+ long freeze on testing, of course debian will be 'behind' ubuntu.

BTW, ubuntu LTS versions (10.04, 8.04, 6.06, etc) can be based on sid/unstable or 'testing'. The non-LTS versions are based on sid/unstable.

Apple OSX is NOT unix. Unix-like, yeah, bu not actually unix. OXS is based on nextstpe and the mach kernel, with a fair bit of BSD code included.

I've never heard of jockey-gtk. What is it?

What does "racy" mean?

Jockey-gtk is the real name of Ubuntu's driver install application. Nowadays there is also a text-based version, jockey-text.

Driver installation/management tool. Even ubuntu tends to not use the term "jokcey-gtk", even in the documentation, normally its just refered to by location in the menu (System->Administration->Hardware Drivers)

Er...sorry abotu that, I shouldnt use words that arent commonly used.

In this case I meant "sexually titillating, suggestive, slightly indecent, risqué". There was a few semi-nude and nude shots of people.Nothing really pornographic, but probably not safe for some workplaces.

You can see some of the sort of wallpapers I mean here-

http://hacktolive.org/wiki/Ubuntu_calendar

Forcing to use Unity? Wrong. Forcing is pointing gun to your face or threatening your family(and pets). They just set default to Unity they don't remove option install Gnome or other. And if they do..can always pick other distro or dual-boot something else alongside from plenty. Btw same can be said about other distros who come by default only with 1 environment.
This is another wrong attitude..Ubuntu is free, using it is free, getting updates is free - everything is free. And people have to understand - anything need resources. Who cares if nice distro is made by company who makes money? At least they have resources to make stuff work. Sorry you won't find any completely free long lasting project not depending on resources. Not possible - people need resources, technology needs aswell and resources need money..most of nice distributions ended life just because they lost resource support. Long story short - Windows would also be great IF it was available as free version without price tag because MS has money to get resources work for people.

Wrong attitude? In your opinion maybe, but to me its totally justified.

I dont mind a distro making money, I've got nothing against Red Hat. But have a look at some of the things canonical has done, like spreading disinformation-

http://blog.canonical.com/?p=294

Chrome is NOT open soruce, by any measure. Its closed source.

IMO that blog post is in part because canonical wants to help out ChromeOS, which canonical did some work on for googel. But its also there to make canonical user contribution agreement seem less like what it is- a way for canonical to resell all code allowed into projects governed by the agreement as closed source, proprietary software (explicitly alowed by point 6 in the agreement).

The banshee/canonical fight over what happens to the amazon revenve stream, the nasty fights over gnome 3.X, and half a dozen other things that I cant even be bothered to list....

I dont think that canonical is to be trusted as far as you can throw throw the isle of man. Which is a tax haven, with typically low tax levels, far lower levels of corporate accountability than most non-tax haven countries, also the registered canonical base. If that doesnt give away that canonical more intrested in money than anything else, I dont know what does.

Yeah, things need resources, but there are lots of completely free long lasting projects that exist on minimal resources. There is no need to be doing things the way canonical does.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Well I decided to try the Ubuntu Unity release to see what I thought of it. I find it not obvious how to navigate with and do not see how it is any better than a normal desktop with icons along the left side as one can do in Gnome etc. So i switched it over to Gnome on bootup they currently allow that). On boot, my Debian uses about 300 meg, on boot Ubuntu uses over 800 meg. Now it is true that you can stop many of these services and startup programs, they put in so much stuff that it is hard to know what to get rid of.

Ubuntu got rid of Services choice under System, so I got rid of all I could using traditional UNIX commands etc and Apps startup programs. After loading browser and few apps, my Debian goes up to 500 MB, Ubuntu goes up to 1.2 GB with same mix, AFTER I got rid of what services/startups that I could quickly.

Of course Ubuntu has the newest releases/versions and Debian does not, or does it??? I upgradeD my Debian Stable to Kernel 2.6.38 with no problem in Debian. Updated Iceweasel (Firefox) to release 4.01), updated Claws email to 3.7.9, loaded latest ATI drivers, etc, etc, etc. So my Debian is really up to date of the items I most care about.

Oh and I also tried Debian Testing release, which has the latest versions/releases etc. It worked just fine and has kernel 2.6.38-8 etc. But guess I will stick to Stable anyway.

Also seems to me that my Debian is much more responsive than Ubuntu. Maybe because I can figure out how to eliminate built in delays in menus etc in Debian, and not Ubuntu. Also with Ubuntu the choices given to me in the menus (without me changing any) on System Tools, Preferences, and Administration are far greater in Debian out of the box than with Ubuntu out of the box.

Clearly we see the main emphasis in Ubuntu is to do everything for the ("dumb?") user (start all services etc), whereas Debian lets you do whatever you want.

Hey I see a few comments on Google and Chrome. I mentioned in the first post that I stopped using Chrome because it eats up to much memory and resources. It also often starts taking 200 to 300% CPU ( I have 6 on my AMD 1090). So in going with Debian I switched back to Iceweasel 4.0 (Firefox) which is working great, takes far less memory, does not hog my cpu's, and is just as responsive as Chrome. Has the added advantage is that now I can again use the various plugins I came to like that Chrome does not have.

And talking about Google..... Does anyone out there like the left tab stuff that they now put on a Google search??? I find it a waste of space, as is already listed on top of page. There was a plugin which got rid of it (igoogle) but Google broke that with some changes they made.

Has anyone found a better search engine that does not waste space and have so many ads? Of course I long ago started using Adblock which strangely enough IS AVAILABLE on Google Chrome. If not, here is a suggestion that works for me. Use the MOBILE version of Google
(google.com/m) which has none of the junk and works just fine on a computer even though is designed for a phone.

In summary, I want to thank Ubuntu for their inefficient Distro and coming up with Unity. It has spurred me into looking for something better, not just in the distro, but in some of the apps that I had just accepted and gotten used to. My computer is much better and faster and leaner now.

Unity versus Gnome in Ubuntu
 

I am a part of the users who didn't like Unity in 11.04. So I started in "Classic" mode. I am a tester of the new release 11.10. I am testing the beta version the "Unity's way of doing it". I am still not very impress with Unity while the rest of Ubuntu is easy to use and perform very well. I am at ease with the terminal mode both I love a beautiful interface that simplify things, look great and easy for newbie's as well.

When the final release will be available late October (Oneiric Ocelot), I will have to make a decision about Unity. And I think that I will go Gnome-desktop-shell/Gnome 3 on 11.04 in dual-boot with Win 7 (for job purpose) on my laptop while on my PC, well, that's something else.

I have tried other OS for Linux (Fedora 15, openSUSE 11.04 and LinuxMint 10) and I will stick with my actual choice : Ubuntu

Agree more or less with lemelinm... I went back to Classic mode in 11.04 with my desktop but have been using Gnome 3 shell with 11.04 on my laptop (Dell 17-inch) and have grown to like it a lot. When 11.10 comes out I think I will probably go to Gnome 3 shell on the desktop, too. I like how fast and smooth it is and after a while on the laptop I got used to the way it works. A few things I'd change, sure, but then I expect it's going to get more and more customizable as time goes on, both from tweaks by the Gnome 3 developers and from tools others provide, like Gnome Tweak.

To those who are running Gnome-shell in 11.04 and intend to stay with Gnome-Shell may I suggest you give Debian a look when Gnome-Shell moves into Sid and Wheezy. It is currently in Experimental and is the desktop environment I use on my laptop.