Making Ubuntu 12.04 useable

I personally opted to just skip over the whole Unity thing and move to Xubuntu... Personal preference, but I find Xfce has been the closest to a "traditional" desktop experience while still maintaining a full feature set.

Then again, to each his own :)

You can try using Xubuntu. I just switched from OS X to (Ubuntu) Linux and didn't like Unity either. A co-worker suggested Xubuntu and I haven't looked back.

Lubuntu (LXDE) is another good option. It's another minimalist approach. Runs well on my netbook, but I prefer Fedora's LXDE "spin."