"Some of these issues I hope to see ameliorated via tweaks and enhancements in Unity over time. "

All of these issues should not have existed, as issues, at release.

Take the Volkswagen and the Yugo...

Both worked!!

The Volkswagen worked well, was an icon of its time, then for many years later...

Many still want one from the 'Love Bug' era.

It consistently worked, and was consistently improved upon.

The Yugo worked, after a fashion.

You could find parts for the Yugo all over Eastern Europe.. along side the road, in ditches, junk yards and in heaps of derelicts.

The Yugo is an icon too...

Much the same is the likes of Unity. Or is that Yugo-nity

Other things were similar... The Edsel, kind of...

The Concord... Not fully thought out, by committees with a language barrier)

The Dymaxion House... (really not a 'bad' idea, but no one wanted one...)

The Japanese 'Hair Blocker...' (you would not believe it)

The Segway (Unions and its target audience organized to make sure it failed, although, the basis for it, is now getting to be a common item for many selling products)

Good ideas are a dime a dozen...

Practical, working and wanted ideas, put out correctly and functioning to a ready, faithful and waiting audience...

That is neither the Yugo or Yunity...

But, why be a laughing stock for idiocy or poor quality...?

Or worse... Unity?

My two cents. I have always favored KDE over Gnome, but I have used Gnome for the past five years because KDE was not polished enough to be smooth and useful. That was until KDE V 4.6. In my opinion as a heavy user (been there since C-64 and IBM XT days) KDE has surpassed Gnome. Now that being said, I spent a week with Ubuntu 11.04 and Fedora 15. There is not much difference between Unity and Gnome 3. Both are excellent for a tablet touch screen, but really a pain on the desktop. I could get used too the way Gnome 3 and Unity work but as far as being able to do deep customization of the interface forget it. They are a minimalist interface, and great for someone who has never used it to pick up and run with it. But what about us Geeks, they have taken the fun out of it by deciding it will be my way or the highway. Well it is the highway for me!! I don't care for the BIG icons in the menus on my desktop in Gnome 3 or Unity, having to do multiple clicks to get where I want. But it would have been helpful if you were able to map the middle mouse button to the Gnome activities button. I like to see everything that is going on, not one thing at a time, and boy I miss those panel apps.I can understand where both Gnome and Unity are going. Wait till Windows 8 comes out, it will be very similar because Microsoft is working hard to eliminate the mouse with touch screens and hand gestures. Gnome and Unity have a head start on this for now. But for those of us who still enjoy a traditional interface there is KDE, KDE is much more pleasing to look at and you can still tweak your heart out! Soon KDE version 4.7 will be released I hope they stay along the lines of a traditional interface.

I don't like Unity and I'm sure to hate GNOME3 if it lacks customization. Seriously, the one singular thing that keeps me loving and using GNOME2 is the sheer customizability of it. Every bar is dynamic and you can swap out a standard taskbar for a dock or eliminate it altogether. This is how it needs to be, Linux users are used to it and aren't going to give it up, if you want people using a new interface it must give them all of the old features in addition to new ones. With the new interfaces throwing out much of the customization, users are likely to throw out the new interface and stick with what they want. Plus, most attempts to "noob-ify" the Linux experience are futile, when people hear "Linux" they usually think of a complex computer-nerd system no matter how clean the interface is. I like eye candy as much as the next guy, but it has to be an option, if I can't run a distro on my 2-year-old netbook because the new GUI needs a fancy GPU to draw a task bar, it's worthless to me.

Also realize that many Linux users want a practical, if not always pretty, interface. Not having desktop icons is a massive failure from a practical standpoint - have 95% of your screen area wasted while 5% of it crams all your launchers, apps, and information. Unity "alleviates" the problem by making the taskbar itself larger, but this just wastes screen space rather than efficiently using it. Unity is great for touchscreens but I don't see it being useful on any other system (including netbooks, which have the smallest screens of all and thus are hurt more by the oversized icons).

If GNOME3 had the customization of GNOME2, a Compiz replacement with the same amount of effects, and the ability to disable eye-candy for older systems then I would likely switch immediately. I'm open to change, just not restrictions without good reason.

I agree totally--both Unity and Gnome3 are worthless. One of the main reasons I went to Linux was its ability to make the desktop work as I want it to. The only interface change i would welcome is to extend that power. An interface that almost totally destroys this and forces me to "use it our way or go away" leaves me no choice (pun intended) but to abandon Ubuntu and any distro running Gnome 3. Right now that means a "classic" Gnome interface. In the future I can only hope for sanity and a fork of Gnome 2.

Personally, I can't stand either one. They both have thrown out the one reason I loved using Gnome to begin with: customization. With Gnome 2, I could configure the entire desktop around my personal workflow. With Unity and Gnome 3, I have to adjust my workflow to accomodate the desktop. That is an unacceptable and backward move. Both are also better suited to touch screens, although Gnome 3 also intends for you to type to navigate, making touchpad/mouse/trackpad use as difficult as possible. It defeats the whole point of a snazzy GUI. I would rather have seen the nice new notification features added to what already worked beautifully in Gnome 2 instead of a complete rewrite.