How to choose Gnome instead of the new default desktop environment (Unity) in Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)
See here for more explanation.
- After installing Ubuntu 11.04, log in as usual.
- The desktop environment, by default, is called Unity.
- Click on the top-left corner, type in the word "login" to search for the "Login Screen" application, and click on it.
- Click the "Unlock" button.
- In the drop-down list at the very end, select "Ubuntu Classic
(No Effects)" as the default session. The reason for choosing "No
Effects" is that otherwise the Compiz window manager is used.
It's surprising that in pre-release versions of Ubuntu 11.04, the choice
of desktop environment could be made from the login screen, but after
release the choice must be made in this less-obvious manner. Let's try
to make it easier to choose among the alternative desktop environments,
not more obscure.
In Ubuntu 11.04 with Compiz enabled, the
System->Preferences->Windows, Titlebar Action "Maximize
Vertically" doesn't work any more, it behaves the same as "Maximize".
Being able to maximize vertically is very convenient, especially for
terminal users, it's surprising this hasn't been fixed sooner. You can
work around the problem using this idea, by assigning a keyboard shortcut using the gnome-keybinding-properties program (by navigating to its Window Management subsection to find the Maximize Window Vertically action and assigning a keyboard shortcut for it). You can also maximize vertically by middle-clicking on the little square "Maximize" icon in the window's title bar (found this by reading the Unity Cheat Sheet (mirrored here) and this page). Apparently the middle-click on the Maximize icon is a feature of the Compiz window manager, see here for explanation.