I've got Natty (alpha release daily update 25th Jan) running, but I'm not quite
sure what I'm looking at so I'll be interested in the replies you get Timmy.

When I installed it I got messages saying that Unity was unable to run on my
hardware, then a load of messages saying clock had crashed, calendar had
crashed, and so on and so on. In fact I think these were generated by the LiveCD
rather than the install.

Still, I got a running OS installed at the end of all that (with a clock and a
calendar). It has some familiar icons but in unfamiliar places. Down the left
hand side is an autohiding dock (the autohiding works rather well) with a
Nautilus icon, a firefox icon, tomboy notes and one or two others. At the top
left the Ubuntu logo now opens a huge window with eight huge icons labelled
"find internet files", "find multimedia files", "find other files" etc. All of
them, at the moment (it's an alpha, remember), open the same Nautilus window
with file icons for all of the familiar apps from the Gnome top panel menus -
terminal, firefox, update manager, aislerot solitaire, Mplayer, Transmission, S
ynaptic, gedit, Libre Office (instead of open Office :-( ), screensaver,
appearance ... - everything. It hasn't taken me long to get the hang of it at
all.

When an app runs full screen, the control buttons (close, minimize, restore &co)
and the entire menu bar appear on the top panel, Mac-style. That's confusing at
first, and I'm not sure I like it, but it's nit-picking. I've embraced the
Mac-style left hand control buttons (unlike many here :-) so I daresay I'll get
used to it.

Now I don't know how far this is from the eventual product to be released. I
don't know how much it's affected by picking up my existing Maverick docs and
settings (it's a fresh install, not an upgrade, but I did select to migrate the
existing stuff during the install). Nor by the reported errors. I also don't
know whether it's Unity (Ubuntu 11.04's preferred replacement for Gnome) or
Gnome2, or what. Being Linux, it's infinitely configurable, and I know I can
choose to run Gnome classic, or KDE, or any other desktop manager I like, but so
far I've only explored what I've found when it starts up.

Oh, and the screen flickers once every few seconds, as if the screensaver's
about to kick off.

Don't suppose that helps much! It's early days yet, and that's what I've found -
promising, interesting, effective, attractive, but still buggy.

By the way, note for the unwary:Â Natty, as with any pre-release Ubuntu OS,
comes with strong warnings NOT to run it on production machines or to rely on it
in any way.