If your video card can handle it here is a way to enable the desktop effects on Unity. Before you can use the effects you need to have the CompizConfig Settings Manager (ccsm) and the extra compiz plugins installed. There are some effects installed but by adding the extra compiz plugins you will have a lot more effects to choose from.
To install ccsm and the plugins open a terminal window (press Alt+F2 and type: gnome-terminal) and copy+paste the followin line:
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-plugins-extra
When installed close the terminal window, press Alt+F2 and type: ccsm to open the CompizConfig Settings Manager.
Watch in HD on Youtube
Scroll down a bit until you see the Effects settings appear. First you need to mark the Animations Add-On to enable the extra plugins. To assign the effects to open/minimize/close windows click on the Animations button and use the ones you like. To enable Wobbly Windows just mark it and it will be enabled. When asked to disable Snapping Windows… disable it otherwise Wobbly won’t wobble.
Now restart your computer and enjoy the effects!!
It may happen that the panel(s) crashes while enabling the effects but when you log out and back in it should work fine again.
If you get into trouble after enabling any compiz options, try:
In your terminal window (press Ctrl+Alt+T) to rollback to default unity settings.. i faced problems while enabling the cube effects..
Thanks for adding the way to reset Unity (i forgot about it) as you can see i made some small changes to your comment 🙂
When having problems with the icons in your Unity launcher and the code above doesn’t fix it type:
In a terminal window (press Ctral+Alt+F2) and Unity will look normal again.