How to Disable Unity in Ubuntu Linux 11.04 Natty Narwhal Because Unity Sucks

 

Well, after using Ubuntu 11.04 Fatty Whalehole with Unity for what 2-3 weeks, I already hate Unity. (Did you know it had a logo?)


Don't get me wrong, it is a nice idea, the organization of the applications vs. spread out menus (although they are still in menus per se), the 'unified titlebar' that changes depending on what app you are using, the launcher with it's quick access to apps you like... Heck the whole thing is built around making what you want to get to faster and easier to..get to. Too bad it sucks huge hairy donkey balls and ruined a bunch of other things on my system that I had set up nicely and working for a while.

 Like many things in life, it looked good at first, but appears to be more high maintenance that it lets on. Sure, it looks slick and clean. Sure, it has to learn which apps you like the best over time - but it just felt like it took more steps to get to what I wanted vs. dragging down a menu and clicking on it before. This is still after approaching a month of solid usage.

 Making a few small changes in Compiz resulted in my losing my titlebars. Ya, that's what I wanted to do...
Are your titlebars gone? Thank Unity.
Confused about the titlebar in the top panel and how it changes and moves around and is overall generally harder to use? Blame Unity.
Annoyed at having the launcher take up valuable horizontal space on your desktop? Way to go, Unity!
Although I figured that last one and others out (including the titlebars), forget it, I'm getting rid of Unity, or at least ignoring it altogether, until it is later, hopefully better working versions.

So how do you disable Unity? Apparently, like early Internet Explorer in past versions of MSWindows, it has it's hooks into a lot of things in Ubuntu, so the best way to avoid/ignore/not use Unity is to logout and at the bottom, choose what type of Desktop setting you want, in this case we want the Good Old Ubuntu Desktop GUI, so we will choose Ubuntu Classic (use the No Effects option if you don't want any 3D fancy pants effects or your computer can't handle the graphics). Much like New Coke, New Ubuntu with Unity tastes pitiful and we all want the Classic back. There's how to get to it.

You still won't have your System>Preferences>Appearance>DesktopEffects tab back, because Unity likes to torture you, but at least you'll have everything else looking and acting like it's former reliable self. Good-bye Unity, Usuck. (Note that Ubuntu Linux still kicks ass. Remember to pronounce it properly: it's ooh-BOON-two).

Songs that I have had stuck in my head recently

Scientists, with their obsessive compulsive need to name everything (sometimes being lazy and calling things Red Spotted Tailed Newt, and so on, with more recently, new fish species found in the deepest depths, having huge jaws and fangs being named things like Fangtooth, Dragonfish and so on, as I said LAZY), having a song 'stuck on your ear' is apparently named an Earworm. Better conduct a study.

Sounding gross and being truly annoying sometimes, it's a song or phrase from a song (that means a part of a song, Lifenoob™ (Yes, I coined that phrase, I made it up and never saw it before I unleashed it on a Forum in the 90s, now idiots have ripped it off saying it's this or that. What I meant was simply "a young person" and I sitll use it that way because I made it up) that repeats in your brain, showing just how much OCD/ADD/ADHD/Tourettes you have.  

If you are new to my web log (that's what a Blog is by the way) then get used to my run on sentences and my spelling. And small text.

• Pump Up The Volume (the song not the movie, dummy) but not even a good part, it's the part where it goes all floonky with an annoying sped-up voice that says "put the needle on the record" over and over really fast, with an annoying ebonic accent. All of that is followed by it going into floonkyville with jungle drums and some east indian type of singing. That part. Ya, that's what kids will dance to in 1987, the 80s are almost over anyway, morons. You can totally tell the song was basically a fight between reggae and punk, in an electronica octagon. 
• A phrase in a scene change in Returner, a japanese action movie, and it was so nicely done (I have to look up who did the score for that one) it still comes back off/on to this day. Lenny Kravitz does a song for that one, btw (By The Way)
• Mozart's String Quartet in B Flat (Kapp68, which was a numbering system for his works that someone did to keep track of them, look it up). This one is so nice and calming and listening to Mozart, with it's emotionally predictable and mathematical and statistical metering, is wonderful for the brain and people with ADD/Tourettes. It's like audio exercises for your grey matter. Listen to him often.

There are more but I forget.

Holy crap, I posted twice in one year. The world really is going to end soon.