Is it possible to get a Unity-esque universal menu in gnome

[ninjaaron]

I love the way the application controls, menu, and sys-tray are combined in Unity. I'm a screen economy nut.

Any way to get that in Gnome?

[Frogs Hair]

You would have to install the unity net book edition. The version of Unity that you could install does not include Compiz ,so that may be a consideration also.Compiz is included the Natty build of Unity. Another possibility is to add a dock and remove the panels , docks are movable to side , top or bottom and some include indicator applets.

[ninjaaron]

I've already played with the unity environment quite a bit, installed as an optional session. Of course, Unity is not gnome (thank God they are going for something different), and it's not really up to the task of full-time desktop management yet, in my opinion.

I was running a dock for a while and had my panel hidden (you can't turn off the gnome panel all the way, at least not from the GUI). It was kinda nice, but it took more system resources, and I didn't find it to be quite as functionally effective as the panel.

Another option along this line, of course, is to auto-hide the panel, but I always find myself wanting a clock and sys-tray. I was using the cairo-clock for a while, keeping it pinned on top of all desktops in the bottom right corner, but it always had this weird glitch when it was drawn on boot, and I'd have to restart manually. Plus, it would get in the way and have to be moved with the mouse too often. When I had a sys-tray widget with it, it was even worse (though they looked great just floating there).

Of course, none of these options are as good as the Unity universal menu. With optimized applications, even the window title and the application menu are on the same line, along with the clock, sys-tray and menu. It's great. Hopefully this feature is implemented on the 11.04 desktop (it wasn't on the first alpha, but I doubt that's much of an indicator).

Jolicloud also has nearly the same thing, and it does it with a gnome panel widget called "window picker," but when I installed it in Ubuntu, it didn't work the same way.

I guess I'll just have to wait until April. :(