HUD
One of the big new Unity features is the Head-Up-Display (HUD) which allows you to search application menus (File, Edit, etc.) simply by tapping Alt. This should be especially useful to users of apps like Inkscape and GIMP, where these menus are so vast that you could otherwise find yourself trawling through them for ages to find the tool you're looking for.
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| Using the HUD to search Inkscape's menus. |
The standard app menus in the panel will be sticking around as well though, so don't worry if this isn't for you - the HUD is more of a tool to be used when you can't find something than a replacement for application menus.
The Unity Greeter
The Unity Greeter (login screen) has been revamped, and now includes a pretty new login box showing a logo for the session you're logging into, which smoothly expands into a session chooser dialog. Also, the background of the greeter now automatically changes to match your wallpaper, provided the wallpaper is a sufficiently small file (around 700 kB or less) and its file path doesn't contain spaces. You could change this in Oneiric too, but you had to do it manually using Ubuntu Tweak, or by editing a config file.
New and Improved Dash Lenses
The dash features a new video lens, allowing you to search for videos from your hard drive, and also from online sources such as Youtube, Dailymotion and BBC iPlayer. The files lens has also seen improvements; it no longer relies solely on Zeitgeist, which only lists files you've opened, but you can now use it to search all of your files.
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| Using the video lens to search BBC iPlayer. |
Launchers on multiple monitors
If you have a multi-monitor setup, Precise comes with an option to have a launcher on every monitor (this feature will be disabled by default), instead of the single launcher seen in Natty and Oneiric. You can enable this in display settings. Something which I found a little difficult to get used to when using multiple launchers is the 'Sticky Edges' feature, which restricts cursor movement at the border between displays, designed to make it more difficult to overshoot one of your launchers. This can make it feel as though you have to forcefully ram your cursor from one monitor to the next, but don't worry - again, this can be turned off in display settings if you don't like it.
MyUnity
Settings app MyUnity is not shipped with Ubuntu, but is available in the official Precise repositories (sudo apt-get install myunity). MyUnity allows you to customise the more intricate details of Unity's appearance and behaviour, including the launcher's hiding behaviour and transparency, dash behavior, panel transparency, desktop icons, system fonts and icon and GTK themes. The size of the launcher can now be altered in Ubuntu's appearance settings.
Improved Unity2D
If your system is struggling to handle the more graphics intensive Unity interface it's likely you'll end up using the less demanding Unity2D. Well, in that case you'll be glad to know that Unity 2D has been greatly improved and now looks very similar to its 3D counterpart.
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| Click to view full-size. Ubuntu 2D above, standard Ubuntu below. |
It's the little things...
It's always nice to see developers paying attention to the tiniest little details - the system icons in the launcher (dash, workspace switcher and trash), as well as NotifyOSD bubbles, will match the colour of your desktop background. OK, so it's not going to revolutionise the way you use your computer but it all adds to the polished feel you get from this release.
New Apps
Rhythmbox will make a return in Precise, replacing Banshee as Ubuntu's media player of choice. Stability and loading time, amongst other things, were given as reasons for this change. Of course, Banshee will still be available in the Ubuntu repositories. Also available in the repos, the freshly released GNOME 3.4, featuring a video calling upgrade for chat client Empathy, 'dynamic wallpaper' and Unity-style quicklists.
What More Could You Ask For?
When even the beta release feels stable and well-finished, it's a good sign for the final version. What I'd really like to see is a more customisable launcher - maybe the ability to move it to the right, or even the bottom to save a bit of space (horizontal space isn't something you can spare much of on a netbook screen, for example). But all-in-all, I'm finding very little to moan about and Precise looks like a release to be excited about. If you can't wait until the 26th, you can download the beta, or upgrade from Lucid or Oneiric by running 'update-manager -d' and choosing to upgrade to 12.04 in the Update Manager. Have fun!
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