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I've upgraded from 12.10 to 13.04 and now I'm missing my launcher and menu bars. I can open terminal through keyboard shortcut. Can anyone help

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marked as duplicate by minerz029, karel, belacq, Radu Rădeanu, Eric Carvalho Jan 15 at 20:43


2 Answers 2

up vote 8 down vote accepted

Install CCSM

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

And then run it in terminal (CTRL+ALT+T)


Then search for "Ubuntu Unity Plugin". If it's not checked, check it.

If it is checked you may have another issue. Try restarting compiz:

kill -9 `pidof compiz`

This will kill it, it should start up again, if it doesn't, CTRL+ALT+F2 and then type:

sudo service lightdm restart

to restart the window manager. Go back to the terminal and run:

unity --reset

Which should reset unity. Note that in more current versions of unity, the reset option is now deprecated.

You could also try another desktop environment though this isn't a solution.

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just activated the Ubuntu Unity Plugin. now all is well. Thank You. –  Tez Bayliss Apr 27 '13 at 21:17
Have the same problem (not after upgrading ubuntu, but suddenly after a reboot without a readon). Followed these instructions, didn't change a thing. The "Ubuntu plugin" actually wasn't enabled (don't know why), but enabling it didn't fix the issue. Nor did killing compiz nor restarting the lightdm service (which only let to a black screen with a blinking cursor). Everything is still equally screwed up –  matteo Oct 13 '13 at 19:59

I had the same problem where the desktop would load with no menu after a clean install of 13.04 on my old intel atom board. At some point I had turned down the integrated graphics memory setting in the BIOS since it only had 1GB of RAM total. After resetting the integrated graphics to the default RAM values unity loaded fine. The tip off was when I ran 'unity --reset' the terminal had a message about 'device out of space'. So I checked the video RAM in the BIOS.

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1GB of GPU memory should be more than enough to load Unity. I don't think this is very relevant to this question.. –  gertvdijk Jul 13 '13 at 18:34
@qertvdijk, I'm sure he meant the whole device had 1GB of system ram. On these integrated systems, the system RAM is split between being used by the system and the integrated graphics. He adjusted that split in the BIOS so that less of it was dedicated to the integrated graphics and more to the system. –  Dustin Wyatt Oct 3 '13 at 14:58
