My mother is the type that would start panicking if her computer looked like Mission Control in Houston, so I think it's great that Ubuntu is freeing up some space and paying real attention to layout, and this includes proper use of whitespace.

She is 66 years of age and doesn't know know much about computers. She started learning to use it a few years back to keep in touch with me over email. Her use case is primarily email, google, bank accounts and sometimes facebook.

I think Ubuntu UI is nice and clean. It doesn't confuses someone like her. Updates also work very well. It also work quite well for a command line user like me :-)

She is quite comfortable with it. What was interesting is that this is the first computer she has really used. Most people I know started on Mac or Windows then saw Linux. She is the only person I know that started on Ubuntu.

For emergencies I keep extra boot-able OS partitions including the original Windows XP that came with the machine. When I show it to her she thinks Windows is not very easy to use and looks clunky. That always make me laugh.

I sometimes wonder about all the Geeks and hackers out there running Linux/BSD whatever and their kids/wives. Is there a waiting boom of non-windows educated kids about to break on the scene?

The first thing she said upon logging in to the guest acct was, "Linux is FUGLY!", but I think she's started liking the fact that it boots quickly and can do everything she needs with OpenOffice, evince, Skype, &c. While she is not particularly committed to FOSS, after this trip away from home without Win she has come to see the light. To ease the transition I installed Chrome, added all her contacts to Pidgin/Jabber (all her old friends from the Philippines use Yahoo! products) and I don't think she misses WinXPProSP3 at all.

For a lot of people (and businesses), that is a blocker. I managed to get a UVC webcam, but still had to get a PPA v4l repository and build some drivers.

I think it is good that ipods will be supported out-of-the-box in Lucid (Rhythmbox). The same should happen for Skype.

On that front, one should get rid of all the useless games and instead have : 1. a nice Twitter app 2.Scrivener-like app

These are killer apps for a lot of people who use a Mac - especially the young student demographic.

Regarding spacing, the space in the toolbar and status bar is being used a bit more efficiently than before, but cutting off the status bar skews the balance, and overall, the layout looks a little haphazard.

Here's a good argument as to why it shouldn't:

http://troy-sobotka.blogspot.com/2008/07/why-droid-isnt-answ...

You could probably tempt me with Lucida Sans, if B&H ever released outline versions to go with the X11 bitmap fonts, but until another giant corporation shells out for a new custom typeface or FontForge becomes usable by designers, Droid is where it's at.