Unity 3D Gets New Experimental Options [Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal]

Yet another version of Unity (3D) was released yesterday in Ubuntu 11.04 which brings quite a few changes:

• the Launcher now defaults to intellihide; to bring the launcher when an application is in full-screen you can press the Super key.
• new experimental Unity options: Backlight always on, launch animation (pulse until running and blink) and urgent animation (wiggle and pulse)
• some applications start maximized (for example if an application's window approaches the screen size)
• pinned applications will be imported from popular docks like Avant Window Navigator, Cairo Dock or Docky
• an option to start Unity from the command line: "unity --replace"
• the workspace switcher shows a grid of 4 desktops like it was initially designed instead of one big wall like it was in the last few Unity versions

A complete changelog can be found @ Launchpad.

Further more, I see the changelog mentioning something about the ALT key triggering the menu - this doesn't work for me but it's nice to know such an option will be available at some point (or maybe it already is but it just doesn't work for me).

Unity 2D is now available in Natty!

Unity 2D (this time the package is actually called "unity-2d", not "unity-qt" like in the PPA) has landed in Ubuntu 11.04 official repositories. Unfortunately, just like it is with the PPA, Unity 2D cannot be installed in Ubuntu 11.04 currently, due to some dependency issues.

Unity (3D) video

As usual, here is a video with the latest Unity (build as of January 15th, 2011), showing these latest changes:





If you want to try out Unity 3D in VirtualBox, see the following post: How To Test Ubuntu 11.04 With Unity In VirtualBox 4.0.x