Canonical has caused a lot of resentment among Ubuntu users by announcing that Ubuntu 11.10 will not have the classic start menu. In the wake of this decision, we are already seeing application which are trying to give Ubuntu users a way out of this compulsion.
ClassicMenu Indicator is an AppIndicator software which displays the classic start menu for Ubuntu users from the AppIndicator area and acts like a regular GNOME menu. You can easily use it with the Unity Launcher to benefit from both the classic menu and the Dash. For instance, the Dash is quite handy to quickly locate files, folders and applications, whereas, the classic menu has its own convenience, since Unity Launcher often causes hangs.
You can install ClassicMenu Indicator by entering the below commands in a Terminal window. Or from the download link given at the end of this post.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:diesch/testing sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install classicmenu-indicator
Once installed, launch ClassicMenu Indicator from the Unity Dash and use it from the system tray.
Although Ubuntu 11.04 allows separately logging in with Unity or the classic menu, but it does not provide the utility to use both. This however, can be achieved with the help of ClassicMenu Indicator.
You can try it with Oneric Ocelot (Ubuntu 11.10) to get the classic start menu, for now Ocelot is in its early developmental stage and therefore, its hard to determine if ClassicMenu Indicator will work with it or require an update to become compatible.
You can grab the Deb package from the download link below and install it via the Ubuntu Software Center.
Download ClassicMenu Indicator
[via Webupd8]
