Re: Ubuntu font of wisdom

[Javier]

> While I'm at it, the new version uses the ugly Motif-gray toolbar,
> while the packaged version uses a much more attractive, colorful
> toolbar (and puts the scrollabar on the right).  

It looks you are using different toolkits on 24 and 25 versions.
Look at the output of 
M-x display-about-screen

This is what it says for me (compiled with the lucid toolkit):
GNU Emacs 24.5.50.1 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars)

What does it say for you on 24 and 25?

The available toolkits can be seen in the source code from ./configure --help:
--with-x-toolkit=KIT    use an X toolkit (KIT one of: yes or gtk, gtk2,
                        gtk3, lucid or athena, motif, no)

If you have root access you can just download teh source from the GNU project
directly and istall in  --prefix=/usr/local

If you dont have root privileges you can just install it in ~/local in
your homedir

wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/emacs-24.5.tar.gz
tar xzvf emacs-24.5.tar.gz
cd emacs-24.5
./configure   --prefix=/usr/local ; make ; make instal