Slightly off topic, how has 12.04 worked out for you?
It's perfect.
It is the LTS edition, so it's very stable.
To be honest, Im a unity convert. I couldn't go on without compiz.
So I use unity and compiz, I can't tell you about Gnome...
But the OS is great, I like it, their doing some really nice stuff with Ubuntu.
Apparently, certain web pages can interact with the HUD which is pretty cool, however I havent tried it out yet.