Questions prior to Installing Mint

[clair]

Hey Vincent -- thanks for that tip re the dual monitors -- the first one -- AandR was a real mess of a program -- might have been able to make it work if the instructions had been more than minimal as well as totally incomprehensible. Ended up having to unplug!! And, I have, it seems, totally lost the applications menu.

BUT, I then tried Grandr and that was a piece of cake. My hat's off to that team for sure.

So, it looks like I have ONE LAST QUESTION -- how can I get the applications menu back on the work bar (which was also shurnken to half its size by AandR? AND the menu that includes Shut Down???

Then I will ride off into the sunset. And, when I know more, I can come back and help somebody else, I hope.
Thanks!

[chipbuster]

I have no experience with LXDE, and certainly not with the Mint Edition, but almost every panel/taskbar based DE I've tried allows you to add things to panels. Try right clicking on the bar and seeing if anything to the effect of "Add Item" pops up. If you can get that to go, you're probably looking to install the MintMenu (seems to be its name in Xfce and GNOME) and some sort of shutdown/power management doohickey.

[clair]

Hi chipbuster --
Well, I reinstalled and consider the previous installation a learning platform. Things have been fine since then. But just to file away, Aandr really mucked up the system.
Grandr doesn't save settings, but it only takes about 15 seconds to set up the monitors at each fire up. So, I can live with that. Before I dis-installed however, I did install Cinnamon thinking it might start afresh -- however- -- that just seemed to adopt the issues that I already had -- no menu, no access to anything. Kept all the misadventures. That was when I decided to to a complete reinstall.

Thanks much!