Add to CERN and JPL every ASIC (chip) design shop in the world. My team is all on Ubuntu 10.04 and I dread the upgrade to the next LTS because Unity and Gnome 3 are not engineering workstation desktops.
How will Unity hinder your work, other tan having to get used to a new interface? I've had plenty of success using the latest Ubuntu as an engineering workstation desktop. It's better than everything else I've used.
I agree. While I'm not happy with the way the Unity switch was handled, this is definitely not a "KDE4" type disaster where entire apps were ported over with new bugs, and half the feature-set of the KDE3 versions.
I've been running Ubuntu 11.04 (first release with Unity) for a while as a workstation desktop, and while there are warts that I'm sure are dealt with in 11.10 and 12.04, it's mostly annoyances. Nothing that has seriously impacted my productivity.