De-Crappify Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) and remove Unity / Lenses / Amazon / Etc… 

I have not used Ubuntu in a couple of versions and just installed Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) i386 as a fresh install.

I was mortified by the amount of junk bundled with this new version including Amazon shopping ad integration. Check out http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/09/24/1446220/shuttleworth-trust-us-were-trying-to-make-shopping-better for more info on Ubuntu’s take on this.

Long story short, it had to be purged!

Here is the script (to be run as root) I came up with to remove all the new junk and install back GNOME.


#!/bin/bash
apt-get --yes purge gnome-control-center-signon
apt-get --yes purge unity unity-2d unity-2d-places unity-2d-panel unity-2d-spread
apt-get --yes purge unity-asset-pool unity-services unity-lens-* unity-scope-*
apt-get --yes purge liboverlay-scrollbar*
apt-get --yes purge appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt
apt-get --yes purge firefox-globalmenu thunderbird-globalmenu
apt-get --yes purge unity-2d-common unity-common
apt-get --yes purge libunity-misc4 libunity-core-5*
apt-get --yes purge ubuntuone-client python-ubuntuone-storage*
add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3 && apt-get -f update
apt-get --yes -f install gnome-shell gnome-tweak-tool gnome-session-fallback
rm -rf /usr/share/applications/ubuntu-amazon-default.desktop
rm -rf /usr/share/applications/UbuntuOneMusiconeubuntucom.desktop

Secondly to remove the Guest login and Remote login options from the login screen (a security issue in my opinion) run this:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-set-defaults --allow-guest false --show-remote-login false

And now you have a pretty decent new version of Ubuntu that is not sending your personal data back to Amazon.