Ubuntu – Ubuntu calculator in dash

You are using the Nouveau driver for the graphics card which probably doesn't support sufficient 3D acceleration for Unity. If you are able to install the proprietary nVidia drivers, it would certainly improve performance.

Open System Settings and select Software and Updates. There is an Additional Drivers tab which will show you if any alternative drivers are available.

You can also run the following command which will show you whether your current driver supports Unity 3D:

/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

Check the lines that say "Not blacklisted" and "Unity 3D supported"

Hope that helps.

When you perform a search on the home scope, there are a number of inputs that influence which scopes will be queried including:

1. Scopes selected through the filters (either through "Categories" of scopes, or directly as "Sources").
2. If the search term includes a keyword (e.g. your example of calculator:1+1).
3. Recommendations from the smart scope server based on the search query (e.g. if the search term looks like an equation it recommends asking the calculator scope).

It is probably the third one that is enabling the scope usually, and that recommendation doesn't come through if you've disabled online results.

I don't think there is an alternative way to force it to be used unfortunately.