I am using new Ubuntu at home on my laptop for a while now and to be honest i still can not get used to it. There seems to be some friction wither i can not figure out there is the greatness or i am too old or it is just not that great. If you know answers to my questions please drop me a comment.

It is not really meant to be a flaming post I just can not figure unity out. I have been using different systems and I have to say that even Mac is less annoying than unity. Windows' 2000 user interface and configuration is ten times better the unity. I just cant figure out the ways of getting things done (without ridiculous amounts of work).

How to disable notifications?

I am a busy person and I do not appreciate things jumping all over my screen. I tried but can not find a way to disable Notifcations. Any time I change volume, aumix plays new song or other things happen I get an overlay and i cant click or see in the are of the screen in right top corner. Maybe it is not a big deal but i actually work most of the time ant i happen to have controls on my projects in this are of the screen so i often get 'popup-blocked'.

Nice and cool but i dont want to see it. Even on mac I managed to disable it easily (kill growl).

My solution - install classic menu indicator - works fine for me.

How to make launcher smaller and add custom launcher menus?

I know everyone wants to be as cool as Mac OS X (no matter how silly it may be) but seriously I don't care about shape and color of my icons on the dock. The launcher animation (or however you call it) is the last of my concerns as well. I just want the launcher to be smaller and be visible all the time. I want to be able to easily add programs to it and configure options of them. Unfortunately i did not find way to make launcher smaller and the way you are supposed to configure launcher icons is extremely complex. How could it get so complicated? it is really really really unnecessary. Either simplify it or create a builder for it as no one with a fully functioning brain wants to waste days to create a custom menu link this way.

My solution - don't have one and suffer.

Why dash? why there is no menu?

I know what I want to do and I know where is it. I do not want to search for it. I am organised and I do not need everything in the world to be indexed and searchable I just want to click mouse 2-3 times or have a key shortcut to move along the tree structure. Call me oldschool but I really can not get used to this search-to-do anything approach.

Especially now with everything being moved around in new versions, packages are different, tools are different, configuration options look worse than windows registry hacking. I don't know what to search for I don't even know how is it called any more I just want to change some settings. Just show me list of options, i am patient i can scroll. Please don't make me search for shit! I don't know what to search for! I don't need to search for my own shit either as I know where it is! Just please do not make me learn the same tools and systems all over again! I don't have time to waste for this nonsense! let me do my job!

Dash is just not for me. Icons have no descriptions, there are some magical intentions around how we are supposed to live and work but I just don't fit into it. I don't need a separate menu in dash for music what i need is a list of applications grouped in a hierarchy not a paginated searchable set. I don't search for music on my system, even if I did, dash would be the last tool I would ever use to do it.

My solution - open dash only if i run out of ideas, use classic menu indicator, pretend everything is fine.

Resizing windows is comparable with threading a needle

I think it is a bug but i am not sure. No one can be that crazy? The area draggable to resize a window is probably 2 pixels wide and i do not know how to make windows resize easily.

My solution - no solution - practice to achieve space shuttle landing precision while dragging.

How to make dash stay there quietly?

Some events trigger some strange "notifications" and dash suddenly comes to live, comes to front focus and changes the window order or something. My issue is that every time i fire off debugging session my netbeans intercepts it and makes launcher to jump right to foreground. In addition icon jumps around and i cant activate it with any shortcut. I actually have to ALT+TAB and ALT+TAB again to switch to netbeans. How do i stop this from happening?

My solution - no idea how to disable it as there are no utilities to customise behaviour of UI. At least nothing that I would call useful.

When launcher is on i cant click on menus

For some reason launcher messes everything up for me. If i is on i cant hover menus of maximised windows. If i have a menu open i cant activate launcher. There is something wrong with focus and hiding/showing of launcher.

My solution - trial and error till it works.

Conclusion

Do not fix it if it is not broken! it took me years to get good at using linux, please do not make me learn ABCs again just let me do my job.

Call for help

Please drop me a comment if you know how to solve my problems.