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ubuntu 11.10 - customising gnome desktop, how to use old classic interface insted of unity

Asked by Richard Wilmot

I've just 'upgraded' to 11.10 but I hate the unity desktop and want my gnome one back. I had the same trouble when 11.04 came but info from this site let me get a desktop I could use the way I wanted. I can get a classic desktop but can't change anything about it, like change the window colours to something I can see, move the top bar down to the bottom and so on. I could do all this before but now - nothing. When I click on window manager, nothing happens. What must I do?

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Richard Wilmot (richardglobal) said : 		#1

I set the system to log me in automatically so I don't see a login screen now but it always starts up in unity, not classic. I have to log out and restart to get a login screen and a chance to select classic. Also the initial screen to select the OS - Linux or windows - doesn't appear now so how do I get windows if I need it?

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#2

Try installing gnome-session-fallback

may help

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Richard Wilmot (richardglobal) said : 		#3

Thanks for your response. I did
sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback
and got

gnome-session-fallback is already the newest version.
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libgladeui-1-11 libapr1
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Restarted just in case but no change. When I log in it does now remember the 'classic' selection. Regarding the lack of the Linux/windows selection screen, when it is due to come on I get a message from the monitor saying that the horizontal scan frequency is too high - perhaps it can't display it but it displays everything else OK. But still can't change the desktop and window settings!

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delance (olivier-delance) said : 		#4

You have to close your session. You will get gdm screen which will ask you your password. Just above, you have a small icon which allow you to select Gnome Classic. I tried this, but was really deceived when I see whet Ubuntu call Gnome Classic. So I will either accustom myself to Unity or switch to another distro with more classical GUI. Unity is nice for multimedia but not for software development today.

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