... time I've seen such a reaction praising Unity. Over all the majority of Linux users I know have tolerated it at best and jumped ship at worst.

And yes, Unity was a terribly low point for Linux this year, and it will continue to be well into 2012. The Unity interface isn't unified at all, its unintuitive and clunky. Many of the things that were easy to do became difficult, and there was a huge amount of problems overlooked and passed over by Cannonical. Heck, the application didn't even feel finished.

It was disappointing for me as an Ubuntu user, and has sent me looking for possible alternatives. I haven't jumped ship yet, as Ubuntu was the distribution that converted me over to Linux finally, and I don't think Cannonical is a zombie like the Linux Foundation. I'm just having to hedge my bets against further disappointment.