The new Ubuntu desktop, Unity 8
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Conclusion
When it comes to everyday use, hardly anybody will want to go to the trouble and waste the resources caused by parallel installation of parts of the system and all of the applications. Unity 8 can actually only be considered as a technology preview – a preview that overall runs well, even given the limitations I have pointed out.
The new graphical environment does not work together with the proprietary graphics drivers from NVidia and AMD. In tests performed on a virtual machine, Unity 8 got bogged down one time shooting the CPU load up to 100% and crashing the system. Perhaps this problem was due to the virtual graphics card.
However, during operation there was no way to tell that the graphical environment is not based on the X Window System but rather on the Mir replacement, which has been rewritten from the ground up. In the near future, Unity 8 will probably mature enough to actually be useful. This however will probably happen "à la Debian," that is, it will be ready when it's ready.
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