I honestly don't know how people can stand Gnome/Unity. I've been running Xubuntu LTS with the Plank dock and have had nothing but smooth sailing save Nvidia drivers.
I recently got my new upgreded notebook at work, which I asked to have GNU/Linux installed instead of Windows. First thing I did was get rid of Gnome/Unity as I did with my last work notebook, what an abomination of a software.