Are you a cutting edge Ubuntu user that’s been using Precise Pangolin since it was made available December 1? If you are, you’ll want to try out the just-released Unity 5.0. It’s an absolute test version, and you won’t want to install it on your production machine, but if you’re running 12.04 we’ll assume you’re already running a test box, so let’s dig into the process and changes.

Some of the best improvements to Unity as far as we’re concerned is to the Launcher and its options. The Launcher will now allow you to move your icons around to any order you like, and right-clicking on the shortcut icons gives you options previously not working with Unity. The menu itself (via the “super” button) has been sectioned out neatly into Home, Apps, Files & Folders and Music, and you can do searches within that criteria and even add filters to your results. You can now also change the color of the Unity Dash and Launcher with the CompizConfig Settings Manager.

In our testing, the Unity experience seems much more snappy now, both on the older and less robust hardware and a newer workhorse laptop. Beware some Ubuntu 12.04 issues with the install, though the workarounds seem to work fine. If you run into errors installing that involve LibreOffice, make sure to check that bug report. (And thank you to the folks on Google Plus that led to the fix!)

Next page: CompizConfig’s Experimental tab