I tried the upgrade to 11.10 Beta 1 yesterday. It worked quite well, once I remembered to start "update-manager -d" from the command line. I was ecstatic to see mono 2.10 installed and can hardly wait to try loading IronPython 2.7. It seemed like today would be my day! But... The Beta is _very_ not ready for prime time. In particular, the chooser (is that the correct name for the gui login screen?) leaves a lot to be desired. In the past, I was allowed to choose my keyboard map and my window manager from selections at the bottom of the screen, with defaults to the last choice I made. This is especially nice for me, since I usually type on an alternate keyboard (dvorak) and my password is on different keys on a querty keyboard. Of course, the password is not displayed -- so I can't tell why it is rejected. I just have to guess that perhaps I am using the wrong keyboard and try again. Fortunately, MS Windows has the same problem, so I am used to the workaround, and tried it right away. I have gdm installed, and was asked during the upgrade which window manager I wanted for default, and I specified gdm. I double-checked my installation using synaptic (Ubuntu Software Center is broken) and gdm is present. But I cannot use it. I want my Ubuntu Classic desktop back. Unity takes too damn long to do anything in -- if it can be found at all. (Thanks for making it possible to start a second instance of something via a right-click -- that helps.) But, I find it confusing having half of the top bar belong to a program and half to the system, and mostly, I _like_ my applets and don't want to live without them. I use this computer to get work done, not to admire how pretty the graphics look, and I want stuff where I can find it quickly, without the hover pause locate click hover pause locate click thing. How can I regain control? Please don't tell me I must switch to KDE! -- Vernon