I thought i would give you my first impressions to:
I installed the preview yesterday at around 18:00. luckily my Latop is still running mint, so no problem there. Also the instructins are pretty straight forward, so everyone who has seen a terminal should be abe to flash this. Although this wouldn't be needed as this hole thing could be made flashable via recovery (me thinks that this is to give it a "developer" touch
).
The first thing i noted after booting, was that there is no setup process. I expected basic functionality and wome things broken. But having no possibility to create a own user is a bummer... (for anyone interested: the PW for the other users are their first names)
The next thing is the laggyness. But that was to be expected. So wait and see for this one.
The notification bar is ridiculus. Not the idea itself. I like the possibility to access different settings directly. But the icons are simply to small. I tried to get to the battery options and opend mail... and so on. But wait there is more: When in the Browser for eample, the Browser runs fullscreen. So you pretty much have to guess where your mail icon would be to swipe them down. This is a clear fail in the concept.
The apps... yeah cannonical said that they were html5. But even the own Ubuntu One app is only a webpage. You are even able to zoom. In a pretended "app". The Mediaplayer is nothing more than a black image? GMail as described with Ubuntu One. Facebook is only a mobile version of their site and so on. I think html5 is a great opportunity to open development to the masses. But in the current for my aosp browser is more usefull then these so called "apps"
The Homescreen. This reminds me a bit of the Kindle Fire. Much space wasted with things i don't want to see. Music recommendations Book recommendations... in the end its a big space for advertising.
The Gestures: the idea is nice. Although not as good implemented as Win8 (hate to say that) but on the right way. This needs some tweaking and rethinking in some concerns but the general concept works. At least for me.
Summary: Another OS that tries to be different just to be different. I like the overall look of Ubuntu and i am a big fan of their Desktop Experience. But this thing in the surrent state is not much more than a poerpoint presentation of what this might look like. Granted this is for dev use to see how their apps integrate into the new system. But some Basic functionality would have been nice.
I will follow the development closely and see what we get here.
I expected a more "productive" system. They are advertising this for "business use" and don't deliver any functionality that supports this. My Tablet is more Powerful than my Laptop and i finally want to use it for more than just browsing the web and consuming videos...
It hurts to say, but for me right now Windows 8 Pro is the best tablet alternative out there. I'm just waiting for full Ubuntu to arrive on the N10.
One last not here: The Powerdraw is ridiculuss. this thing draw 84% Battery over night (6 hours) idleing...
I hope someone finds this usefull. I just wanted to write this because of my slight frustration. So take it or leave it. Feal free to comment or correct me where i might be wrong.
domsch
(I'm not a native speaker, so forgive any mistakes i might have done...)