Remove Unity And Replace With Something Different

Question

I need to "Safely" remove Unity 12.04 and replace it with something Different. I have looked and I have tried a couple of things (one which caused a complete re-install of Ubuntu). So maybe someone else can help.

I am a Tinkerer! I Love Customization! I get bored and have to constantly change things, and Unity just won't give me that FREEDOM!! Don't get me wrong, I love Unity for something else, and there are a lot of great things about it. But it is just NOT for me...

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated...

What I am looking for:

1. "SAFE REMOVAL", of Unity, and install of "Something New"...

2. As much customization as possible...

3. Bells and Whistles!

Please Help!...

Solution

1. Find and install an alternate desktop environment (DE) of your choice from here: What kinds of desktop environments and shells are available?

   A few are (from the above link):

   • GNOME 3
   • KDE
   • Cinnamon

2. If you really need to (low on disk space, etc.) , remove Unity with this command. You don't have to, using a different DE with Unity installed shouldn't hurt you.

   sudo apt-get autoremove --purge unity unity-common unity-services unity-lens-* unity-scope-* unity-webapps-* gnome-control-center-unity hud libunity-core-6* libunity-misc4 libunity-webapps* appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt* overlay-scrollbar* activity-log-manager-control-center firefox-globalmenu thunderbird-globalmenu libufe-xidgetter0 xul-ext-unity xul-ext-webaccounts webaccounts-extension-common xul-ext-websites-integration
   

Comments

[kiri]

Take a look here, there are lots of different alternatives which you might like: askubuntu.com/questions/65083/…

[SoCalDiegoRob]

@minerz029 Thank you so much for the link... I found what I was looking for there, and plenty more to keep me busy for a LONG, LONG, LOOOOOOONG time...

[SF.]

The tinkerer, alternatives etc is just crud, but if you look at the kilometer-long line of things that need to be removed to get rid of Unity. It digs its tentacles really deep into the system and is as hard to uproot as cancer!