I've installed 11.10 and the proprietary ATI drivers using "additional drivers" The performance of my system is absolutely awful and it shouldn't be. I tried to remove the proprietary drivers using the Additional Drivers tool and it appears to remove them. However after I reboot I cant get back into my desktop properly (the panel and launcher go missing). This doesn't seem to be an isolated problem in 11.XX. This guide covers how to restore the desktop (panel and launcher), but the guide doesn't fix my problem though.
Whenever I do sudo unity --reset it runs through its normal processes until it hangs at setting update "run_key" and never gets past that. I must reinstall the proprietary drivers using jockey-text or jockey-gtk in order to get back to my proper desktop.
Interestingly enough the system performance seems improved while it is in its "broken" state (missing panel and launcher).
I think restoring the default drivers may solve my problems but I cant figure out how to do it.