Among other things, my PC is not cutting edge, but even running Firefox was beginning to slow down to a crawl. I have not yet determined if this was due to some specific software or driver error, the Gnome 3/Unity interface, or other background tasks fault.
Getting desperate I have been looking around for lighter weight alternatives. I tried installing Xubuntu, which is supposed to be much more bare bones than the flashy Unity desktop.
I installed it
sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktopThat was all fine and good. I restarted and went into the Xubuntu desktop. First of all, what I didn't realize, and my mistake for being ignorant, it kind of adds a lot of other software into your system, changes the boot screen, and generally is a bit more invasive that I liked. In the end, it was performing better, but due to some persistent graphics issues I have been having with Ubuntu I couldn't see the whole desktop after logging in. From what I could see of the desktop it looks a lot like the Linux experience I had in the mid-2000's on Red Hat or SuSE distros, pretty bare-bones, almost Windows 95-ish. Not saying it's awful, but I almost have to say I like Windows 7 more now. At least it was fast!
So, how to uninstall?
Well it's more difficult than it might seem. I have followed these excellently well-documented steps
The one comment I had, (which I could not post, apparently my email or website flags me as a spammer) is that GEdit 3 which come with Ubuntu 12.04 does not have the Regular Expression find and replace capabilities shown in those steps. You must additionally go and install a Gedit regex replace plugin to do so.
For now, I am using the Unity 2d interface. It looks almost the same for me, feels pretty quick. I'll stick with it. Not saying I would rule out a switch to Xubuntu or another desktop in the future if unity continues to be trouble.
