Regarding window managers : I have always been a fan of windowmaker (wmaker) for my low spec machines and it is my choice on headless remote boxes that need an xserver running ; but with regards to Unity ...

Unity 2đ is being pulled after 12.04 - and I never really took to Unity on my dual monitor workstation. Installing gnome-panel provide a Gnome 2 style Ubuntu desktop on my workstation so it is *almost* as nice as my old 11.04 box that I so dearly miss.

Gnome tweaker is also a good tool - to scale alsorts of things and tweak usabilty on the fly.

Try:

Then logout and choose gnome classic from the session manager.