Ubuntu 11.10

Last night, I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10, and I've been using it for a while so I thought I'd write a little review about it.
First off, it uses a new "Unity 3d" interface, which is based on the "Unity" interface which, I believe, was originally introduced for Ubuntu Netbook edition but was slightly changed when it was merged with Ubuntu 11.04 Desktop Edition.
One of the main features of Unity and Unity 3d is the side panel thing. It is very similar to the dock on OSX, and generally serves exactly the same purpose:

Basically the main center for doing general stuff is the Dash Home. The Dash home essentially serves as hybrid between a search engine and a control center. Rather than try to explain how it works, I'll show you a few images:

As with the previous version, you can switch between windowed and full screen mode, but unlike the previous version it stays that way, and you can change it as much as you like.

In addition to the new size changing things, rather than several different dash homes, they're all morphed into one thing with different menus. You've seen the Main Menu, Applications, now Documents:

And , Music. I think this is really useful, because right from the Dash Home, you search and browse your entire music collection:

There are many other cool features that I'm not going to go into in great detail, but among them, there is a new on/off menu symbol, which is a cross between the on/off symbol and the settings gear symbol, a little pop sound which plays when you change the volume (finally!), and a cool new lock screen and home screen.

Included in this version is a new workspace switcher, which is slightly different from the previous one, but still pretty neat:

(for some reason my screenshot program screwed up and got its dialog box in the picture)

As shown above, if you click on an application with more than one window open, it shows you all the windows that program has open.
Also, the Ubuntu software center has a new look and a new logo.

I'm not sure if these have anything new or not, but take a look at the music player and photo manager:

And lastly, if you're wondering how it manages the closing/minimizing/enlarging options, you just roll over the top bar and see what happens:

So, in conclusion:
This is a great Operating System with a great interface. The previous version was very good as well, but this version also fixes many speed issues and glitches. I give this five out of five.

EDIT: I have also noticed as of posting this that the icons in the sidebar have loading bars if stuff is loading. And since it's completely free as always, go ahead and
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