Me too, I prefer unity + auto-hide taskbar. At first there were some reservations until it got familiar, now anything else doesn't cut it. I hope they don't abandon it or change it drastically as is so often the way these things go.

Re Ubuntu, it helps that it works exceptionally well on anything remotely modern (6 year old PC here with SSD, won't be upgrading until it dies), and it is getting incrementally better with each release.