Installing Gnome from U 10.10 to U 11.04

I find the new desktop supplied with Ubuntu 11.04 to be absolutely abysmal. It is very difficult to navigate and wastes way too much space on the monitor. The drop down menus that used to be shown in the application window are now one layer down in the menus. The launcher is worse. It takes way too much space for what should be only a single line with the application's name. And even worse, I can't find my applications with a single click for the selection of the type and one more click to launch the application.

I guess that the easiest way to get my opinion across is to say that between this and Windows, which I have not used since I bought my first copy of IBM's OS/2, I'll choose Windows.

Give us a way to replace this abysmal interface with something useful. An application to change the windowing interface would be very nice. It should allow for the replacement of what is on the computer and the option to keep what's there and just add another, or several desktop GUIs with a choice of which to use.

My personal choices would be the IBM Warp 4 workplace shell, the GUI used in Geoworks, which was the only fully intuitive GUI that I have ever used, but the WARP 4 shell was a very close second. The Gnome shell on Ubuntu 10.10, or the KDE shell from Linspire. The more recent KDE shells seem to have gone to more Windows complications rather than becoming easier. The current one supplied with Ubuntu 11.04 is the hands down winner as the worst, though. It seems to be a game of "See if you can find me?" rather than a GUI designed to make things easier. There must be a menu from which all applications are available. Function MUST win out over "Eye Candy" every time. "Eye Candy" is great as long as it does not interfere with function.

I did note that you mentioned selecting the new or classic desktop at login. This did not come through with my iso download and I must therefore believe that it is necessary to upgrade the system on line to get this option. The solution to this may be as easy as putting the iso. file on a DVD rather than restricting it to a CD. I was instead infirmed that some applications were incompatible and that they would have to be replaced. I do not know if this was because of inability to function with the new Ubuntu 11.04 or if they were simply in need of an upgrade to the application.

In any case, if I stay with Ubuntu, I will require the installation of the Gnome GUI.

Charles J. Lingo
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