up vote 2 down vote favorite

Recently when doing an update, I noticed I was downloading a bunch of packages related to Unity. I use Gnome-Classic, and have no intention of ever using Unity.

So, I thought I might save myself some bandwidth and download times (which can be slow on my laptop) by removing Unity.

However, on next reboot, I could not get any form of GUI interface. Only by reinstalling Unity was I able to get the log in interface and get back into Gnome Classic.

Can I get rid of Unity, or is it somehow now integral to Ubuntu in a way that makes Ubuntu not run without it (even if I'm exlusively using Gnome-Classic)?

share|improve this question
    
How, specifically, did you remove Unity? – Eliah Kagan Nov 28 '11 at 6:58
    
@EliahKagan: I went into Synaptic and removed what seemed to be the main Unity packages. I'm sorry, but I can't remember what packages exactly. – Questioner Nov 28 '11 at 7:05
    
You can find out what you removed by examining the contents of /var/log/dpkg.log (then you can edit your post to include a description of what you did and a list of the specific packages removed). If you have trouble figuring it out from that (sometimes it's confusing, especially if a number of subsequent package management operations have been performed since), please post the entire contents of the file at Ubuntu Pastebin and edit your post to include a link to it. – Eliah Kagan Nov 28 '11 at 7:12
    
@EliahKagan: I checked /var/log/dpkg.log, but it seems to not go back far enough. This was actually a couple weeks ago that I did this. I opened it in gedit and searched for "unity", but the only mention was from a couple days ago, which wasn't the time I tried uninstalling it. :( – Questioner Nov 28 '11 at 7:47
    
Can I steer this in a different direction and ask: What should I uninstall if I want to uninstall Unity (and leave my system intact)? – Questioner Nov 28 '11 at 7:48
up vote 1 down vote accepted

The simple answer is Yes. Basically Unity is just a shell on top of gnome3 so you can use any desktop environment you like.

The login screen you are talking about is not unity but lightdm. Ubuntu uses lightdm and the default theme used is unity-greeter which is independent of unity. So make sure lightdm as well as unity-greeter is installed and choose your session. Basically what you can do is change default setting of lightdm with /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-set-defaults and lightdm also offers another gtk theme called lightdm-gtk-greeter if you dislike the default login screen.

you may set default session and greeter

/var/lib/lightdm/lighdm-set-defaults -s YourSessionName
/var/lib/lightdm/lighdm-set-defaults -g lightdm-gtk-greeter/unity-greeter

Or you may opt to choose a completely different display manager i.e. GDM, LXDM or Slim

gdm used to be display manager prior 11.10

share|improve this answer
    
Thank you for your answer, and I'm sure you're mostly right, but I'm not 100% we are talking about the same things. When I say I couldn't get a GUI of any kind, I didn't mean just the login screen. I meant I couldn't start any X sesssion even after logging in at the command prompt. Anyway, I think you're on the right track that it's a matter of the GDM... does Gnome/Gnome-Classic not run on lightdm? I'm a little confused with your answer if you're saying I need to have gdm or lightdm in order to use Gnome-Classic. – Questioner Nov 28 '11 at 6:14
    
As far as I know it should. what do you get when you run sudo restart/start lightdm ? or you may try to reconfigure lightdm sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm. I am just saying you do have other choices if lightdm is not working for you. – sagarchalise Nov 28 '11 at 6:17
    
I don't seem to have lighdm installed. I only have gdm. So... if I try and remove Unity, I should make sure it doesn't accidentally uninstall gdm, and I should be okay? – Questioner Nov 28 '11 at 7:06
    
yep, try reconfiguring gdm so that its the default display manager and you are good to go – sagarchalise Nov 28 '11 at 7:11

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.