Getting rid of Unity and adding useful apps and interfaces

We've had more unbelievable computer issues. And lost 3 drives including the boot drive, so it was time to upgrade from the no-longer-supported Fedora 12 to something else. Meshed Gears thought that running Ubuntu might let me get back into Second Life so he installed 11.10 - a bunch of times due to hardware issues - but the Unity desktop offended me to my inner core. It was as if somebody had unloaded a steaming turd across both monitors and every time I touched anything I got it on my hands and smeared it on the screens.

So we wrestled with it a bit to get back the Gnomish environment I like.

First I found http://blog.sudobits.com/2011/09/08/10-things-to-do-after-installing-ubuntu-11-10/ which is full of smart ideas, and from that learned much of the following, although I am adding a few of my favourite apps to the mix as well:

Open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + t) and execute the following commands -

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
sudo apt-get install libdvdread4 sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser
sudo apt-get install chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra
sudo apt-get install vlc
sudo apt-get install audacity
sudo apt-get install soundconverter
sudo apt-get install transmageddon
sudo apt-get install gimp
sudo apt-get install gimp-data-extras sudo apt-get install gimp-plugin-registry
sudo apt-get install optipng
sudo apt-get install blender
sudo apt-get install inkscape
sudo apt-get install digikam
sudo apt-get install umbrello
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell
sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

Now log-out, reboot, click the gear wheel to select the classic gnome gui, and finally once you are back in, alt right-click/add to add your favourite widgets back to the panel.