Comment 22 for bug 612988

Well, I use Natty without UbuntuOne and Unity simply by removing their packages:

sudo apt-get remove ubuntuone-*
sudo apt-get remove unity-common liboverlay-scrollbar-* appmenu-gtk
sudo apt-get remove indicator-applet-appmenu indicator-appmenu

This won't work for Oneiric, but I expect it to work in Maverick. Please try it and leave a comment about your results!

I also deactivate the resize-gripper-hack (so that apps like StickyNotes work correctly again) by copying these 8 lines into a Terminal:

cat <<EOF >>~/.gtkrc-2.0
style "default-style"
{
  GtkWindow::resize-grip-height = 0
  GtkWindow::resize-grip-width = 0
}
class "GtkWidget" style "default-style"
EOF

You have to logout and login to see the difference!
To revert the changes just reinstall the packages and remove the 8 lines from ~/.gtkrc-2.0