Natty 11.04 - nearly like 10.10!

[Stephen Kuhn]

On a test machine, eMachines M350, 1gb RAM, integrated Intel graphics
(shared RAM), 160gb HD.

Originally, Natty's performance (brown bag) was absolutely horrible;
without any changes, just straight out of the "box".

As I've said, I can't stand Unity, or Gnome Shell, for that matter, so
in order to make this system "usable" by my standards, I had to put it
back to the way that I like, and feel the most comfortable with.

What I'm happy with:

* Gnome2
* Compiz + Emerald
* Cairo-dock
* "Normal" scrollbars

Right, so first things first, I had to get rid of Unity as I did not
want to have to resort to "choose at the GDM". Ok, easy enough. Log out,
choose "Gnome Classic", login. In Synaptics Package Manager, locate
"Unity" and remove it. As well, I hate the scrollbars, so I located
"scrollbar-overlay" and the associated lib - for removal. Applied that,
then ran "sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get autoremove"
to make sure everything was hunky-dory. Again, prior to rebooting, I
also made sure I had all the bits and bobs of Gnome that I wanted -
especially all the Gnome2 stuff that I "require", along with all the
restricted "extras" (had to also edit the /etc/apt/sources.list" to make
sure everything was THERE). All good. Again, for giggles and grins, ran
"sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get autoremove" - fine.
Reboot time.

After getting to the desktop and making sure that fusion-icon was doing
it's bit, whoa - I noticed that Emerald wasn't doing it's job -
decorating the windows and hey, I didn't have proper control of the
windows! Right oh - search a tad, and hey, whaddya know? The version of
Emerald that's in the repo's AIN'T compatible with the version of compiz
(0.9.2) that we're using! Oh dang! However, by following the link at:
http://ubuntugenius.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/ubuntu-11-04-fix-enable-emerald-themes-for-compiz-fusion-window-borders-title-bars/
...and reading/installing/following the instructions, I was able to get
emerald via git, rebuild it to suit the "new" version of compiz, and
hey! Don't ya know! Works like a charm! (Just had to double check some
of my compiz settings and make sure everything was great). Yeehaw!

Now, regardless of what anyone thinks of compiz/fusion/emerald, and how
it impacts performance, I'll say that I'm more than happy having my old
"desktop" back - even on a cheesy little netbook that did NOT fly under
11.04+Unity, but now, under 11.04+Gnome2+Compiz, it's moving heaps
faster and heaps more responsive than I witnessed under the old regime.
Very happy with this.

Now after doing a few other little tweaks here and there (tweaking
the /etc/sysctl.conf, hdparm.conf, adding dnscache-run) I'm feeling that
the performance is a bit better than my old install of 10.10 on this
machine...so, from the past, I'm not knocking 11.04, just the "gift
wrap" it came in. Stripping out the "junk" or "cruft" made all the
difference in the world - down to doing simple things like playing vids,
scanning wireless networks, and producing invoices for clients (oh yeah,
and running MMC to convert vid formats) - lovely.

Possibly, when 11.10 or 12.04 comes out, "Jasper" will be the "Emerald"
of compiz, Unity will have grown up a bit and will work nicely with
Gnome3, Gnome Shell will have grown up a bit and gotten a bit more
ergonomic, however, that's for another date and time.

-- 
yankdownunder
reg'd linux user #267497
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Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire.
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I run linux, now go STFU.