Comment 29 for bug 986208

I think I've found the way to have the scale preferences set with CCSM sticky across sessions with a freshly 12.10 installation. Basically, this is the same workaround than the one suggested in comment #3, except that we have to use Gsettings, with dconf-editor, instead of Gconf with gconf-editor (it seems that in 12.10, Unity and Compiz have migrated from Gconf to Gsettings). So here's how it works:

First, install dconf-editor: sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

Than, start dconf-editor and find this key: org/compiz/profiles/unity

Finally, just put the "scale" value completely at the end of the list of the plugins (be careful to put the coma and spaces exactly at the right place).

Of course, this is just a workaround and this bug still needs to be fixed. The basic and obvious way would be to make sure that users CCSM custom settings are always respected, unless they are really incompatible with Unity settings. But since Ubuntu/Unity already provide scale functions with the super-w key combo, the best way would be to integrate some scale activation by mouse/button within Unity itself, i.e. maybe in relation with the Launcher.