San Gabriel Valley Linux Users Group Monthly Meeting

Unity is the new desktop environment for Ubuntu, having first premiered in version 11.04, significantly enhanced with version 11.10, and very much the cornerstone of the upcoming 12.04 release.

A striking departure from Gnome 2, Unity has been seen as a source of controversy in the Linux world.

This talk will outline some of the design goals that Unity addresses, noting strengths, weaknesses, and improvements across the three versions of Ubuntu in which it's been included.

While Unity offers many usability affordances, some Ubuntu users prefer to customize it for their specific workflows. Linux is famous for its customizability, and Unity is no exception if you know which tools to look for.

This presentation will outline some of the tools available through the Ubuntu Software Center to show you how to customize the Unity interface.

Speaker Bio: Richard Gaskin is President of Fourth World, a software design and development consultancy in Los Angeles. Since founding the company in 1994, he's developed dozens of commercial and open source applications used by a wide range of organizations, including FedEx, AOL, the US Library of Congress, and hundreds of universities around the world.

Although he started his career with Mac OS, Richard has since delivered applications for Irix, every version of Windows, and has been developing for Linux for the last two years.

Richard has spoken at more than a dozen tech conferences, including UbuCon, LiveCode Developer Conference, and MacTech where he had the distinction of being the only presenter using Linux.