[mtgx]

I really believe Ubuntu needs a flat, modern UI going forward, because Unity is very heavy on resources even for x86 chips, and is completely in conflict with Canonical's aggressive support of ARM chips. Ubuntu would run so much better on ARM chips if it didn't have Unity, and considering Canonical wants to put Ubuntu even on tablets and phones eventually, I'd say this makes it a big deal, and should be their #1 priority right now.

They also need to do it before 14.04 LTS and before the rumored SDK for Ubuntu is ready, if they actually plan to create design resources for "Ubuntu apps". They need to decide right now what Ubuntu needs to look like in the future, and how efficient it should be, unless they want to rebuild everything 1-2 years later.

The new UI also needs to be inspired by Windows 7 not Mac OS X. The developers working at Canonical might be Mac OS X fans, and using Macs but that should be completely irrelevant. They need to follow their target market, and that is Windows users not Mac users. Ubuntu will never get much market share by being installed on Macs and replacing Mac OS. But it could get some potential significant market share from the fallout of Windows 8 and the Windows ecosystem. The market share of Windows is like 20x greater than that of Mac OS. They have a lot more opportunity for growth there.

Someone like me who is coming from Windows would much rather use something like Linux Mint or Zorin OS than Ubuntu. I tried Ubuntu and it took me a while to moderately get used to it, although I still found it frustrating by the time I gave up on it and tried Mint, which I found very "intuitive" to use, coming from Windows. That's what Ubuntu needs to go back to. One of the reasons I gave up on Ubuntu was also about feeling it's not faster than Windows 7, which again, is a major problem with Unity right now.