Ubuntu Unity - a make over (dock-alert)

We all know our beloved Ubuntu and its Desktop Enviroment Unity. It is a very user friendly and smooth looking Design that is fully functional on its own. But as it is with the Linux User People: is there a way to a) improve it or b) to make it look more nicy-nice.

Because i startet my Linux Journey on my old 2013 MacBook Air i wanted Ubuntu to look Apple-ish with a dock and very slick Design with nice Icons without trying to copy macOS. And without much stuff to do because im a lazy person.

So what is the plan? In general we install all the tools and themes and repositories and such and then configure parts of it to get it set quite nice.

1: sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool

First of all we get the utility Unity Tweak Tool installed so we can change the theme and icons of unity and have some more control of the features.

2: sudo apt-get install paper-gtk-theme | sudo apt-get install paper-icon-theme

(Maybe sudo add-apt-repository ppa:snwh/pulp is needed if repository isnt already added. if you need to add dont forget to update after you add the rep.)

Now we install the icons and the theme we wanna use, in this particular case it is the paper theme and icons.

3: sudo apt-get install docky

We install docky, so we can have a little dock that does look very nice in my opinion.

4: Configure the Launcher and get Paper’d

Start the Unity Tweak Tool -> Launcher Autohide: On | Reveal locatin: Left Side | Reveal Sensitivity: 0

After that go to Theme and choose Paper, same with Icons

And there you go. Now you can configure your dock even further and add widgets and such to your taste.

My Blog with this post but with Pictures

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get some ads for your site bro

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See I would instantly do that right now if base ubuntu wasn't such a massive turd. Maybe I'll do that if I can't get manjaro to work on my laptop :P

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Nice guide and makeover but at this point you make Unity basically look like Pantheon. Any advantages to keep Unity over Pantheon?

i actually dont know Pantheon im just so used to Ubuntu that i wanna keep using it but its ugly af, so i made it look better. its just eye candy

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Pantheon is the Elementary OS environment. Which is also Ubuntu-based.

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@BookrV

how is the compatibility with apples mac book and Ubuntu?

i would say 8/10.

since i got this running i didnt get any errors or glitches.

only thing that is sorta "not perfect" if you press the super key and search for a programm the former launcher pops up for a splitsecond but thats it.

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im sure you can rebind the old launcher to "blank"

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oh yeah hadnt even thought about that. yeah. full invisibility and no icons on it.... good idea!

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well, that would be something if you cant disable it / stop it from starting. but if thats what you end up with im talking about binding the super key away from it so that your super key only toggles what ever it is that your using over the default

i wouldnt mess with that because i would want to use the launcher on this keybinding but without the launcher sometimes plopping up.

btw: im playing around the amd driver and it seems like this "plopping up" isnt there anymore because of my driver config. or to be rational because of the higher hz i dont see that 1 frame plopp.

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16.10 added a bunch more options for the Dock. Hoping they backport it to 16.04.

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Especially when you go Gnome you got a good chance with dockerony

Do you have knowledge in the matter of 16.04 and the amdgpu-pro driver? I want the perf. and free sync.

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If so please tell me if you like it and what went wrong and what needs to be fixed

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or ya know, just use the pantheon DE.

I for real didn't knew about pantheon so yeah. Wasted time in that sense.

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No not wasted, you found a legit way. So if theres anyone that wants a similar UI without using ElementaryOS, you got them covered.

The performance is definitely there my 390 can actually run Shadow of Mordor on Ultra while FGLRX I couldn't get more than 25 fps. Same for Tomb Raider.

I don't have a FreeSync monitor so I don't know.

on 16.04 i have with a rx480 in rocket league 20-30 fps. i have no idea how to tweak that. any idea?

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