Change Ubuntu 11 scrollbars back to the old style

Question

I've installed Ubuntu 11.04 and the new scrollbars in Nautilus, GEdit, etc. are driving me insane! How do I go back to the old (Ubuntu 10.10 and earlier) scrollbars?

In the Natty Nautilus you can't actually see a scrollbar normally. Instead you mouse over to where it should be (to the left of the border) and then it appears, but it doesn't appear under the mouse pointer! Instead it appears to the side (to the right of the border), so starting to scroll is now a fairly involved mouse manoeuvre. I don't know what UX genius came up with this, but I want none of it.

Answer 1

This site mentions a way to do this:

sudo apt-get remove overlay-scrollbar
sudo su
echo "export LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0" > /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80overlayscrollbars

A system restart required

---

It's also possible to run:

sudo -i
apt-get remove overlay-scrollbar
echo "export LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0" > /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80overlayscrollbars

Scrollbars instantly appeared! "sudo -i" puts the whole terminal window into an interactive root environment, so you only have to enter your password once. "sudo su" appears to do the same thing.

Answer 2

The easy way is to open Synaptic Package manager, scroll down to Liboverlay_scrollbar then mark it for complete removal and then Apply. Once Synaptic finishes, close it out and the old Gnome scrollbar will b be restored.

Edit: Command-line version:

sudo apt-get autoremove --purge 'liboverlay-scrollbar-*'
#single quotes avoid shell glob-expansion

Answer 3

Did anyone mention restarting your machine afterwards? Just restarting Nautilus won't do it.

From WebUpd8:

So, for everyone searching for this, here's how to disable the overlay scrollbars in Ubuntu 11.04. Simply open a terminal and copy/paste the following commands:

sudo su
echo "export LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0" > /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80overlayscrollbars

Then restart your computer.