If you haven’t installed Ubuntu on something in a little while, you may be in for a bit of a surprise when you see the Unity interface. Canonical has done quite a bit to make things user friendly, but some adventurous Linux fans may be interested in exploring new options.

The Ubuntu Tech Board approved last week that Ubuntu GNOME is now an official flavor/derivative of Ubuntu Linux.

For users who want GNOME 3 rather than Unity, a group of developers has now made the first GNOME 3 desktop remix of the Ubuntu Linux distribution available. Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10 is based on the recent release of Ubuntu 12.10 and even uses a GNOME package management tool.

Ubuntu GNOME Remix, a Linux distribution which aims to become an official Ubuntu flavour, uses GNOME Shell as the default “shell” and tries to provide a “mostly pure GNOME desktop experience built from the Ubuntu repositories”.

The best Gnome release ever made, into the best distro (no comments please!) and the results are explosives! I am using Ubuntu Gnome since the day one (Alpha), and other than GDM issues, I had none other major bug.

Those results from the Ubuntu 12.10 development snapshot are now available with the default Unity desktop being compared to KDE, GNOME, Xfce, and LXDE. In no test did the Unity desktop yield the fastest performance with nearly every time the default Ubuntu desktop being left in last place for performance.

It’s been a few years since Canonical stopped using the GNOME desktop environment for Ubuntu Linux and instead switched to its own Unity user interface. While Unity has come a long way in the last few years, some people still hate it.

Since Ubuntu Precise Pangolin (12.04) these privacy setting have been integrated out of the box as a feature in the System Settings menu. It’s called Activity Log Manager (previously Zeitgeist Global Privacy), a GUI frontend to partially control Zeitgeist. It’s what powers Ubuntu’s Dash in the Unity desktop. Here’s how to use it to control [...]

As a bonus I found out that Gnome 3 runs much snappier than Unity on an old IBM T43 laptop (which has 6 years old Centrino technology).

Ubuntu’s Unity is far from the only desktop environment available for the distribution. For users who want to stay with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS but prefer another desktop environment, there are plenty of alternatives to try.

Whenever there has been new transition, people have resisted to adapt to changes. Same has happened for gnome 3 based desktops. Specially from people who used to use gnome 2 as their primary desktop environment. Change for just the shake of change is not the best solution in most cases. However changes with desktops is [...]

These removal commands were created based on what Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc. packages were added to a default Ubuntu installation. It’s possible that the commands might remove some other packages you have since added to the default and want to keep. If that’s the case, keep track of which packages those are and reinstall them.

Tired of Ubuntu’s Unity desktop environment? Try Cinnamon, the latest desktop environment from Linux Mint. Cinnamon offers a more traditional, GNOME 2-like layout, but it’s based on the modern GNOME Shell — and you can install it on Ubuntu.

The Unity desktop environment that was recently made default in Ubuntu Linux has been nothing if not controversial, as has the alternative GNOME 3. Fortunately, thanks to the customizability that has long been a hallmark of open source software in general and Linux in particular, you can modify both of these desktops so that they [...]

Back in the old GNOME 2.0 days, Ricotz testing PPA was one of the first bastions of those who wanted to try out very early versions of GNOME Shell. Now that GNOME 3.0 is what Ubuntu 11.10 is based on makes Ricotz testing PPA even more useful.

Ubuntu users who dislike the Unity desktop environment have other alternatives besides sticking with “Maverick Meerkat” or jumping ship to another distro. An illustrated DeviceGuru tutorial shows how to load the GNOME Fallback mode on Ubuntu 11.10 and configure it to provide a GNOME 2.x-like experience.

Dmitry Shachnev has written a small guide to get a fully working classic GNOME session in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, similar to Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal.

This tutorial shows you how you can install the GNOME 3 desktop on Ubuntu 11.10 with the shell extensions that are used in the Linux Mint 12 release (Lisa) (these shell extensions are called Mint GNOME Shell Extensions – mgse).

The Gnome project has dropped a bomb today by announcing a site for Gnome 3 Shell extensions. The site is in alpha stage and brings the much needed extensions for Gnome 3 Shell under one site

Linux Mint 12 RC comes with two option of desktop environment: One built with GNOME 3.2 and MGSE and other with GNOME 2.3 and MATE. In this post we will show how to Gnome shell extenstion Mate for LinuxMint in Ubuntu11.10.

Let’s have a look at Ubuntu 11.10 with GNOME3 interface and check whether it is better than Unity. It actually does not take long to install GNOME3 on Ubuntu 11.10

Are you less than pleased with Unity but want to keep using Ubuntu without switching to KDE, XFCE, or LXDE? Then you may want to take a closer look at the GNOME Shell Remix of Ubuntu 11.10.

Both interfaces are remarkably different than the Linux environments you’re used to, but remarkably similar to one another. So which one is better for you? We delve down and uncover the differences between each.

But no, getting both Unity and GNOME Shell on the same desktop was as easy as sudo apt get install gnome-shell from a vanilla upgrade of Ubuntu. Toying around with each was as simple as choosing from the drop-down list in the login manager. Everything just worked.

Although I still love how I can customize my Gnome 2.x desktop on Ubuntu 11.04 to do exactly what I want, I can see eventually using Unity on a day-to-day basis, if it evolves and becomes more customizable.

Fans of Ubuntu can soon enjoy Gnome 3, the new radical overhaul of the look and feel of the Linux desktop, at a single click. The new interface can now be easily installed on the upcoming edition of Ubuntu, the Oneiric Ocelot, thanks to the migration of Ubuntu’s own user-interface ‘Unity’ from GTK-2 code to [...]

I never touch anything Apple, and the only time I did the software crashed and all this dumbing down for the sake of usability! However in my opinion, they are wrong. They confuse ‘usability’ with ‘approachability’. Which leads to software which many times is not user friendly.

I’m referring to the fact that drivers with 3-D hardware acceleration are required by both GNOME 3 and Unity. Whether each development team decided on this requirement separately, or whether one decided that it must match the other in sophistication, will probably never be known.

Jack Wallen was jonsing for GNOME 3 and discovered the best route to this new desktop was Fedora 15 beta. Can you image how surprised Jack was to find out that GNOME 3 blows away Ubuntu Unity? Read on to find out more.

Do not try to install GNOME Shell in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal from GNOME3-Team PPA, at least for now. I was trying to do just and ended up with a completely unusable Ubuntu now.