Missing menu/task bar

[oshirowanen]

I have been a loyal Ubuntu user for many years and usually stick with LTS releases. However, I can't stand Ubuntu's tablet based Unity interface (even though HUD looks interesting) in newer versions of Ubuntu. In 2013, Ubuntu 10.04 will reach EOL and I don't want to move to Ubuntu 12.04 because of their continued support for a tablet based interface even on a desktop environment... I've been searching for other distros / desktop managers / windows managers and found XFCE and LXDE to be the next best choices as alternatives to gnome 2.

I am now seriously considering doing a clean minimal base command line install of Ubuntu 12.04 when it's released and use either XFCE or LXDE (most likely XFCE), which means I will have a nice little setup which will be supported for 5 years.

However, as I am thinking of making a change, I thought I should atleast give LinuxMint 12 a try especially as cinnamon looks looks really nice, and I light the whole idea behind it, i.e. new technology with the feel of gnome 2 which still allows you to customize it. So I downloaded the livecd without codecs, booted into the livecd without installing. It gets into the desktop, but does not display the menu/task bar at all. I can right click the desktop and go to the desktop settings, but even that has the window border missing.

When using Ubuntu 10.04, I have to boot with the option i915.modeset=1. So I restarted the LinuxMint 12 livecd, pressed tab to edit the grub boot options, entered in i915.modeset=1 and the same thing happened again, i.e. a desktop wallpaper which I can right click on, but no bottom menu/task bar and no window borders.

How do I get around this issue. I would really like to give LinuxMint 12 a try.

[HughT]

I had the same problem, but found no answer. I thought perhaps my PC just wasn't up to the job with only 1 Gig of RAM.

[oshirowanen]

What are you using instead on your 1Gb PC?

[seppalta]

I am now seriously considering doing a clean minimal base command line install of Ubuntu 12.04 when it's released and use either XFCE or LXDE (most likely XFCE), which means I will have a nice little setup which will be supported for 5 years.

You know that Mint has a very nice, customisable LXDE version: http://douwil7.100webspace.net/linux/Tuning.html, which I found preferable to Lubuntu and Ubuntu.

[sagirfahmid3]

The panel not appearing may be because of your graphics card. Are you using integrated graphics or discrete?
The "nomodeset" I noticed is used when people's cards aren't supported.

[oshirowanen]

The panel not appearing may be because of your graphics card. Are you using integrated graphics or discrete?
The "nomodeset" I noticed is used when people's cards aren't supported.

I've tried nomodeset and it made no difference. Why is it that i915.modeset=1 works for Ubuntu 11.10 but not for Linux Mint 12? I don't know the difference between integrated graphics and descrete graphics?

If I can't get Linux Mint 12 and above to work with cinammon, I have a backup plan anyway, to use command line Ubuntu 12.04 with 5 year support plus xfce4. I've tried it out on a vm and can get it to look and feel very similar to gnome 2. So it's not too much of a big deal anymore if I can't use Linux Mint 12 and above.

The panel not appearing may be because of your graphics card. Are you using integrated graphics or discrete?
The "nomodeset" I noticed is used when people's cards aren't supported.

I really really want to like LXDE, but it just doesn't feel "complete" enough compared to XFCE. Linux Mint 13 with XFCE would have been an option, but I doubt it will have 5 year support like ubuntu 12.04.

Thanks for the help everyone.