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.

Unity Tweak Tool is a relatively new application that allows you to configure Unity, providing access to settings buried deep in Dconf-Tools or CCSM. The tool developed by the freyja-dev team is now available in the Ubuntu Software Center for Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail

Linux (Ubuntu): If you want to tweak Ubuntu’s Unity interface more to your liking, the Unity Tweak Tool is for you. It gives you everything you need to make your desktop truly yours.

It was only a few weeks ago that the Linux blogosphere’s Punchy Penguin Saloon suffered its latest round of damage thanks to the recent skirmish over the GPL, but now the popular establishment of questionable repute is actually shut down for a week for repairs.

When you upgrade to the new Ubuntu 12.10, you will see something new right off the bat, Ubuntu now shows you advertisements for Amazon products when you search in unitys dash home, Is that just great or what!!

The Ubuntu Google Play Lens is an Unity Lens that allows all Android users to easily search Google Play software straight from the Unity Dash.

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.

In this article, I’ll discuss what Ubuntu is doing to make using the Unity desktop more difficult for older PCs, examine whether or not this matters and talk about options are for all of us going forward.

The improved Unity interface brings new lenses, such as a Shopping Lens for your online shopping needs and a Google Docs Scope for searching through your online stored documents. Also, price and user ratings ribbons were added on suggested apps – information taken from Ubuntu Software Center.

Jack Wallen has been proclaiming Ubuntu Unity the single most efficient desktop on the market. This time he decides to illustrate a simple task and how Ubuntu Unity’s approach is easy and efficient.

With Unity 2D being abandoned and only providing Unity + Compiz in Ubuntu 12.10 as the default desktop, the out-of-the-box experience for low-powered ARM hardware on the stock Ubuntu desktop is a mess.

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.

Besides the Unity desktop and Compiz window manager in Ubuntu impairing the Linux OpenGL performance, the 2D performance is also dramatically affected by this desktop configuration.

Updates were recently pushed into the Ubuntu 12.10 “Quantal Quetzal” repository for the Unity desktop and Compiz compositing window manager. Performance improvements were talked about, but still there are big problems at hand. The recent Unity/Compiz updates have caused more OpenGL slowdowns, at least for those using Intel’s popular open-source driver.

Ubuntu’s Unity desktop has similarities to both Windows and OS X, meaning that users considering the switch to Ubuntu should not have much difficultly becoming familiar with this alternative operating system (OS), which is based on Linux, a popular open-source OS.

Last week I delivered OpenGL/3D benchmarks of Ubuntu 12.10 when comparing the performance of the default Unity desktop to the now-defunct Unity 2D environment. Canonical’s decision to kill Unity 2D means that for those now forced to use the Compiz-based Unity may experience lower frame-rates, high power consumption with Unity-over-LLVMpipe, and other differences. Additional testing [...]

The 2D variant of Canonical’s Unity desktop user interface – introduced in Ubuntu 11.10 for systems without 3D/OpenGL hardware acceleration – will not be included in future versions of Ubuntu.

Following yesterday’s news that Ubuntu 12.10 will drop the Unity 2D desktop, I carried out some quick tests comparing the latest state of the Unity desktop with Compiz against the lightweight Unity 2D desktop that’s now being removed. To not much surprise, the composited Unity desktop still has some performance shortcomings for OpenGL workloads compared [...]

When Ubuntu’s new user interface was first released, it had much of its configurability hidden from the user. Not necessarily by design, but simply as a new interface there weren’t tools available to dig in and tailor the various settings that determine how Unity behaves. But that’s all changed now, and there are a number [...]

After introducing last week a very nice video that presented an amazing mockup of the Unity interface for Ubuntu OS, we’re now proud to announce today, August 2nd, another nice concept that looks simply marvelous.

For those not liking the GNOME Shell, KDE, Xfce, or one of the other desktop environments already available on Fedora 17, Ubuntu’s Unity is now available.

If you’ve used Ubuntu a while, you might remember GNOME applets – icons that sat on your panel and gave you access to controls and information. If you miss panel applets, try installing third-party indicator applets for Ubuntu’s Unity desktop.

The Unity Revamped PPA created by Isaac Joseph, which provides Unity with two patches: Dodge Windows and minimize/unmaximize on click for the Unity launcher, has been updated yesterday with some fixes which aren’t yet available for the Unity package from the official Ubuntu 12.04 repositories as well as a new patch that brings a much [...]

Not everyone hates Ubuntu’s Unity, but there are a few things you might miss from Ubuntu’s old interface — like it’s easy-to-navigate dropdown menu for applicatoins and settings. ClassicMenu Indicator puts that classic menu back in your menu bar.

I’ve noticed something lately. Since Ubuntu 12.04 was released, and I migrated over from Linux Mint, I’m working much more efficiently. This isn’t really so much a surprise to me, but to many of the detractors who assume Unity a very unproductive desktop… well, I can officially say they are wrong.

Easily configure Ubuntu‘s Unity, without causing crashes and instability. MyUnity is an application for customizing Ubuntu’s interface and is so stable and easy to use, it’s included in the default Ubuntu repositories.

Isaac Joseph created a customized version of the Unity interface for the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system, called Unity Revamped.

This tutorial shows how you can configure Compiz on an Ubuntu Linux 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) Unity desktop (the system must have a 3D-capable graphics card – I’m using an NVIDIA GeForce 8200 here). With Compiz you can use beautiful 3D effects like wobbly windows or a desktop cube on your desktop. Ubuntu (Unity 3D) must [...]

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.

Everyone I know who’s used Ubuntu of late can’t stick the Unity interface. Admittedly, a dozen people does not maketh a statistically coherent sample. But still, I feel it’s indicative of some real problems.