I have to admit the recent changes Ubuntu has been going through have been difficult too. I truly disliked the Unity bar as it is, I find annoying to have to click on the icons and wait for it to show me which application I want to see to finally choose it. It feels like a waste of valuable time to me. I managed to turn back to the old Gnome interface, forgot how though, I believe it was through a Dock I downloaded and severe tweaking. My computer crashed several times until I got the desired result.
I prefer it, simple, easy and shows exactly as much information as needed, no more, no less.