Upgrade issues

[Dale Amon]

Every time there is an update I steel myself for the
inevitable. This time I am seriously considering getting
a new disk and going to Mate. But I will give this one
shot to see if there is something simple I can do to
get my home login working properly again.

I note the following problems:

	* It lost all my settings.
	* I tried to set my backdrop as it was and could not.
	  The following issues made it impossible to do so:
		* No file names on the images
		* No way to specify a file by path name
		* No way to drag and drop a file to be the backdrop
		* It skips files in the Pictures directory
		  if there are a lot of them, so even though the
		  file I want is there, I cannot see it in the
		  backdrop manager window and so cannot select it.

	* I lost all my top tool bar launchers. I had several 
	  customized launchers here that would let me get set up
	  for varous work related tasks with a single click.

	* I tried dragging from menu or Nautilus to the tool bar
	  but that no longer works.

	* The menu lost most of my added tools, things like Eagle
	  xemacs, aterm, xterm, amarok and others.

	* I have not yet found out how to replace them.

	* After much reading I found the off the bottom of the bottom
	  most entry for the Tweaks and got my desktop icons to re-appear.
	  Seems disingenious to make it so unobvious.

	* When I close the top to travel between work and home, it
	  goes to sleep... and will not come out. I have to reboot,
	  thus losing all my work, which can be upwards of 10 terminals,
	  20 or more xemacs with multiple files open in each, and
	  much more. Prior to this update, I had only rebooted a few
	  times in the last 6 months.

	* The workspace manager is gone. I am used to simply clicking
	  on the particular desk top I want in order to switch there.
	  How do I get it back? My preference for moving a window 
	  between desktops is to go there and drag it from one to the
	  other.

I will probably find another dozen bugs before the day is out. What do
I do to fix it? Is there some simple change to make my gnome mate setup
work properly again? Or would my time best be used by dumping Ubuntu
entirely and going through a one-time misery of a full distribution
switch to Mate?

Is there a way to simply de-install every vestige of Unity? I
really loath it, always have. Now it seems to be even cutting off 
my work arounds.