By Brent W. Hopkins

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10/Oneiric Ocelot, which features the ironically-named Unity interface by default. In theory Unity has a lot of useful functionality, and you might be perfectly happy with it. Personally, though, I think Unity is cumbersome and ugly compared to other options like Cairo-dock. Furthermore, I absolutely detest the way that the top panel, or title bar clutters the desktop and refuses to auto-hide. And don’t even get me started on the default theme – what an eyesore!

The login screen now has a bewildering number of Session options ranging from the default Ubuntu to GNOME, GNOME-classic, and BARF (OK, I just made that last one up). At first, I tried them all to see if anything improved, but that was a waste of time. The default session is as good as any; you just need to tweak it to make it more beautiful.

If you want a more beautiful Ubuntu, I recommend Make Tech Easier’s Turn Your Ubuntu Lucid to Mac OS X tutorial, which still works for Oneiric. Once you have installed and configured Cairo-Dock, you can open the Compiz Settings Manager and deselect the Unity plugin. That deactivates the Unity dock but still leaves the fugly panel at the top of the Desktop. Unlike the old GNOME panel, this monstrosity can’t easily be moved or set to auto-hide. But there is an easy way to get rid of the panel while still retaining the option to reactivate it if you change your mind.

Open a Terminal and install the Gnome Tweak Tool:

 sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

You will find this tool in the Applications Menu under Preferences > Advanced Settings. In the Desktop section, there is an option that says “Have file manager handle the desktop.” By default, this is set to ON. Click it and change it to OFF. The panel will instantly vanish.

With that, the fugliness that is Unity has been vanquished. It only took me a couple of hours of poking around, to get the results I wanted. But the question is, should it take this much work? Or should I just resign myself to Unity and try to make it more bearable?

At this point, I don’t think I’m interested enough in Unity to bother with it. Perhaps that will change… or perhaps I will move on to another distro like Debian. Debian is really the heart of Ubuntu, anyway.

For now, I will probably stick with Ubuntu for the life of this computer. When I get a new computer, Ubuntu may not be my first choice anymore.