After the usual 6 months of development, Ubuntu 11.04 has finally been released.

A message on the Ubuntu devel mailing list mentions that the current state of Unity will be brought up for discussion and if needed, the Classic GNOME Desktop may be default after all in Ubuntu 11.04:

Since a lot of people want to upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal already, I though you'd like to see a video (well actually 2) on how to upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04. Remember that starting with Ubuntu 11.04, you can upgrade using the Live CD too.

In the above Unity video you'll notice:

Remember the "2 sided Unity dock" mockups we've posted last week? Well, Andrea Azzarone (who's patch is also responsible for bringing configurable icon size for the Unity dock), has turned one of the 2 sided Unity docks mockups to reality and you can see it in action in the video below:

Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal will get overlay scrollbars but for now the packages that provide this are available in a PPA and further more, you must use "export LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=1" when launching an application to get overlay scrollbars.

Remember Borderless Elementary? It was quite a success and I'm not sure if that's where the Ubuntu devs got the idea from, but update today in Ubuntu 11.04 removes the borders for the Ubuntu "Light" themes:

Unity 3.6.4 was uploaded to the Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal repositories a few minutes ago, brining some features many of you were waiting for. Read on!

There's a long thread on the Ayatana mailing list about the upper-left Ubuntu button in the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04. Currently, this button will open Dash. But there are also two shortcuts in the launcher which trigger Dash (Applications / Files Places) which make the Ubuntu button redundant - this lead to some new ideas for the upper-left Ubuntu button behavior.

Do you use the Compiz Desktop Cube plugin? I don't use it so I didn't notice this but it seems you can't enable the Desktop Cube in Ubuntu 11.04 if you use Unity - a bug about this has been submitted but it was marked as "opinion" so it doesn't look like it's going to be fixed, at least not in Ubuntu 11.04:

Starting with Ubuntu 10.04, Skype is available to install in Ubuntu via the official Ubuntu partner repository. However, this repository is not available if you upgrade to a new Ubuntu version that's still in alpha/beta/rc.

Christian Giordano has announced that Unity will get overlay scrollbars. This means the scrollbars will not be visible until you move your mouse over the side where the scrollbar used to be.

With a slight delay (of almost one day), Unity was updated to version 3.6.0 in Ubuntu 11.04. This update doesn't bring major changes but it fixes a lot of bugs making Unity a lot more stable. You can check out the full Unity 3.6.0 changelog, HERE.

A new Compiz-based Unity version (3.4.6) was uploaded to the Ubuntu 11.04 repositories minutes ago, getting one of the features you've just seen in the Unity 2D video we've posted earlier: when pressing and holding the Super key, a number is displayed for each application in the Unity launcher and pressing that number will launch / raise that app.

Unity 2D (Qt) is finally getting closer in design to the regular Unity. Check out this video recorded by by om26er:

Andrea Azzarone, who's also behind the menu integrated in the window titlebar Unity mockup we've posted last week has created a patch that provides an option to change the Unity launcher ("dock") icon size.

Check out this video featuring his actual code (not a mockup!):

The Ubuntu devs really like to push updates at night but luckily I'm usually awake when that happens so I can tell you what's new in Unity as soon as the updates are released.