Cannot Activate Unity. Both 'Ubuntu' and 'Ubuntu Classic' brings me to gnome2

Can anybody help? I would like to have unity, but all I can get is gnome.

Unity does not support Linux and as far as I recall it (editor / activation) also refuses to work on a plentitude of VMs

the thing is: it used to run. but one day I started it and just had nothing but gnome. since then I’ve tried everything that I could think of to be helpful. but still no success.