Unity Sucks, and I don’t like it. I prefer a combination of Avant Window Navigator, tilda, and Gnome-Do, to go from this
Unity, kinda, screen shots don't really work for launchers
to this
My Avant Setup
Now, I haven’t kept track of all of the changes I’ve made to my configuration files, so YMMV, but gnome-do and Avant have remarkably good GUI configuration tools, so customise to your hearts content!
Get rid of Unity
sudo apt-get remove unity unity-asset-pool unity-place-applications unity-place-applications
Install the fun-stuff
sudo apt-get install gnome-do gnome-do-plugins avant-window-navigator awn-settings tilda
(I personally prefer to get all the plugins aswell, but thats personal choice; just add in awn-applets-all to the above command)
At this point, it’ll look like nothing has changed; just log out or log back in (Or reboot), and then unity will be gone (Woohoo!). The Gnome-Do Launcher should have come up, and if you’ve clicked out of it, it will come back to the foreground with a [windows\command]+Space press.
If everything has gone well, you can type ‘Avant’ in this launcher, and boom, there should be a window at the bottom. This is the avant launcher.
Default Avant Window Navigator
Now for some fun stuff.
Use gnome-do to start tilda. This is a quake-style terminal that pops down from the top of the screen with a quick [F1] click. Much better than the standard [alt+F2] command launcher.
As for the preferences, hack away at the Avant settings until you’re happy. The screenshot above is how I like it (this time).
{ 4 } Comments
Thanks for the post. I was using gnome-do on a Xubuntu install and preferred it to unity, so this is exactly what I looking for to “fix” my Ubuntu install. I’ve only been using it for about half an hour so far, but I’m pretty sure it’ll stick.
I’m glad you found it useful. I just can’t stand Unity at the minute; its a really nice idea, but its fundamentally broken on so many levels, and the Ubuntu dev community is fracturing around the difference between ‘forced usability’ and allowing for the kind of deep customisation that we’re used to.
Thanks for pointing out Tilda to me. It seems like a great program, and one I hadn’t tried before.
It’s also good to see someone else who seems to understand the concept of minimalism, which I feel Unity is not. It’s neither unobtrusive or user-friendly in my opinion. AWN is great, and I’ve used it myself for a very long time. That is, until I finally understood the power of DO a few weeks ago. Who knew the Tab-key could be so useful? (That’s really what’s missing from EVERY guide on DO I’ve seen: Write something, use Tab if you don’t like the action presented).
After trying to get it for a very long time, I finally have my perfect setup: After login you see a stunning picture, nothing else. With DO I have removed AWN from startup, replaced a very few of the functionalities of a panel or Unity with Screenlets (InfoPanel is a great one!), otherwise I have assigned everything to keybindings. Still have AWN for when I have visitors over. Can hardly expect them to memorize 100+ keybindings to use a computer for a little while;-P
I don’t know if my ONLY problem with removing Unity is the packages I removed (EVERYTHING saying unity) or my nVidia graphics, but I had a problem of showing videos in fullscreen with VLC where the titlebar wouldn’t render, instead showing the window behind VLC. This has been solved by turning off Window Decorations in CompizConfig Settings Manager. I now love my Ubuntu so much! Earlier I had a problem with cramps in my back and neck, pain in my mouse-arm and other common problems to computer users. Now I have gotten rid of all of them, and I’ve got a BEAUTIFUL and QUICK system! Only way I now know of that can make my system quicker (apart from an expensive upgrade of EVERY hardware component) is telepathic control.
I’ve been experimenting. I installed Unity in Linux Mint 12. Then:
sudo apt-get remove unity unity-asset-pool unity-place-applications
(You have an extra “unity-place-applications” in your command line.)
I installed synapse instead of gnome-do.
However, as I suspected, doing so also removed the “Ubuntu” session. This obviously means I couldn’t log back into that session to enjoy AWN. Is there a dconf file that needs to be edited? Your suggestion?
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