Ubuntu – How to make Unity Launcher menu be almost always hidden and not influence window placement

If you want all your windows to be initially placed in the top left corner, the follow settings in ccsm > Place Windows makes it work for me: in the fixed window placement tab, add an entry for Windows with fixed positions and set the type to any, x to -1, y to 48 and untick keep in workarea. It's quite a hack and the window is 1px off screen (which you'll hardly notice).

I usually use the ccsm Grid plugin to place my windows, since I normally want them side-by-side anyway i.e. Alt-Kp-4 for left tile, Alt-Kp-6 for right tile etc. Grid ignores the launcher if set to auto-hide.

There is a tool named Unity 2D Settings made by Krytarik Raido for configuring Unity 2D. It wasn't working under Ubuntu 11.10; however, he updated the tool and now works under Ubuntu 11.10.

Install it through terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:krytarik/tuxgarage
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unity-2d-settings

Run this when you are logged in via Unity 2D.

Source: OMG! Ubuntu!