Use awn or cairo dock applets

Unity is nice if you know what you are looking for. It is kind of nice when you kind of know what you are looking for. It really sucks if you don't know what you are looking for or sort of don't know what you should be looking for. I describe it that way on purpose. I like a classic menu because I can use the menu to investigate the computer to see what I have that I don't even know about. Hmm what is this... it is under internet. It must be something to do with the internet. Let me try it. Oh what is that, it is under system settings. Well I don't want to mess with my system settings right now so I won't look now, maybe later. This is how I learned what was available in linux! Unity totally kills that and the loss is huge. I wish Ubuntu would figure this out and make sure they include a menu option; it is not like a hybrid would kill them. Just include a menu button with hierarchical results like we have always had! This is a no-brainer. So sad. Here is what I did to fix my life: I added a dock applet. You can try something called "cairo-dock" or "awn" which is "avant window navigator". Both add something (most place on the bottom) like the MacOS doc and it is a combination of a task bar and a menu. It works great and resolves my usability problems. I use unity now when it helps me and I use the dock when it helps me more than unity would. With both I have maximum productivity. I only wish the Ubuntu devs would wise up and add a few minor functions and tweaks to unity so it would make people happy again. Creating friction is so useless when it would be so easy to make it better. Sigh... But really, I am happy with my solution so I guess for me it doesn't matter as much anymore. I just wish it was out-of -box ready that is all. At least Ubuntu is doing better than some well known major OS vendors at making software that makes sense. It could be worse!! Good luck.