On Ubuntu 10.04 the powers that be have decided that over the last 20 years that everyone was wrong and the closer button for all your Windows and applications should be in the top left hand corner rather than the top right. If like me you think “Which idiot did that?” and would like to return your desktop to sanity, here’s how;
run; gconf-editor find; /apps/metacity/general/button_layout edit; remove the trailing ":" and prefix the string of options with "menu:"
As soon as you’ve done this, all your Windows will appear as you expect them to … (!)