Actually I'd be surprised if they did a last-minute switch back to Gnome Classic for 11.04 given Shuttleworth's penchant for decision by fiat and history of using non-LTS releases as nothing more than extended betas/UI playgrounds. (See Pulseaudio, Empathy over Pidgin, Indicators, window buttons--and that one was actually for an LTS!)
No, Shuttleworth has decided that Unity is the new hotness, so we'll almost certainly be getting it in 11.04, which will make us all glorified beta testers again. This'll be the first release since I started using Ubuntu that I won't be upgrading to immediately. My business productivity--which is what I use Ubuntu for--is more important than that.
If you like to keep up with the latest version, I wouldn't hesitate to upgrade because of unity. I have one laptop running the 11-04beta, and it's business as usual as long as I login with the classic desktop.
Logical conclusion of what you say is that this is exactly the right time to make changes, otherwise they would be too dangerous for LTS releases!
Unity going into 11.04 means that by the 12.04 LTS it's had a whole year of real-world use on thousands/millions of desktops and all of the bug fixing that will result from that. Yay!
What I'm saying is that "non-LTS" shouldn't be code for "bug-ridden and feature-incomplete," just because it isn't supported for as long. They deserve the same attention to stability that LTS releases get. I'm not against all change, only change that is foisted upon me with more concern given to haste and deadlines than to polish and stability. If Unity is as buggy and feature-incomplete as they say, I would much rather wait another 6 months for it to mature in development than have it released early and having to deal with 6 months of crashes and missing features while I wait.
Unfortunately that seems to be the direction Ubuntu has been leaning in for the past few releases. It's too bad that the PPA system, for all its benefits, almost forces one to do distro upgrades--it's a choice between having new versions of critical software like Firefox and accepting immature stuff like Unity, or using out-of-date software for another 6 months.
Can you imagine being stuck with FF3.6 till October if you choose not to upgrade to 11.04? (And yes you could add a PPA, but they're often hard to find, and many popular programs don't have PPAs for out-of-release updates.) But that's more of a complaint about the milestone-release system than it is a complaint about Unity.
Though I am glad they're providing the option for Classic, at least in 11.04. Too bad most people who don't like Unity and don't read Linux forums won't figure out how to enable it!
It would be lovely if every feature could land and be 100% complete and bug-free, but FOSS has never worked like that and never will work like that. Release early release often - that's always been the mantra.
What you are asking for is conservatism, which isn't a bad thing, but it's not something you're going to get from an OS with a 6 month release cycle and far reaching ambitions :)
No, Shuttleworth has decided that Unity is the new hotness, so we'll almost certainly be getting it in 11.04, which will make us all glorified beta testers again. This'll be the first release since I started using Ubuntu that I won't be upgrading to immediately. My business productivity--which is what I use Ubuntu for--is more important than that.