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I upgraded to GNU/Linux Ubuntu 12.10 but have been unable to use Unity properly afterwards. Indeed, I encountered the exact same problem as a lot of people: the Unity side and top bars are not displaying, although in my case, Unity seems completely broken, as I can't even right-click. However, in my case, it's worth noticing that I have an Optimus laptop with a Nvidia graphics card (GeForce GT 540M). Bumblebee and its 'optirun' command is working just fine, as usual, after the upgrade.

I tried several things, as resetting Compiz and Unity (with the command 'setside unity') -- which works but I have to do it everytime I boot and it resets all my settings -- updating/reinstalling/reconfiguring my Nvidia drivers as well as bumblebee, trying with Nouveau drivers instead of nvidia-current, check if linux-headers-generic were installed (they were). However, I couldn't reset xorg.conf files as they're just not there. There is neither xorg.conf file, nor its backup in /etc/X11. I think this is where the problem comes from, although I'm far from an expert. Maybe retrieving a xorg.conf file will fix this mess, but I have no idea how to do that.

I'm just tired and don't know what to do. So, here I am, begging for your help.

4 Answers 4

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On my Dell XPS 15z (Optimus graphics), I had the same problem. I managed to get the computer working again by completely removing all the nvidia drivers. (For me, it was not enough to simply remove xorg.conf; instead, the nvidia drivers had to be completely uninstalled.)

This is what I did: note that you can open a terminal by pressing ctrl+alt+T

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

then rebooted.

Of course, this is not ideal, because the nvidia graphics is completely useless, but it will give a working desktop.

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    Thanks for the reply! However, like mentioned previously, I don't have any xorg.conf file so the second command failed. The rest succeeded but it had no effect: still the same problem.
    – SyS
    Oct 22, 2012 at 10:15
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I have the Nvidia Geforce GTX 560M which also uses the proprietary drivers. Basically what I did was,

  1. open terminal or a shell

  2. run command: sudo apt-get install linux-source

  3. run command: sudo apt-get install linux-headers-3.5.0-17-generic

  4. run command: sudo apt-get install nvidia-current-updates

Then reboot the computer. That worked for me anyway.

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  • Thanks!However, I can't do that as nvidia-current-updates is not compatible with bumblebee (community-made, open-source Nvidia Optimus technology), which is required if I want to use my graphics card (I play games sometimes).
    – SyS
    Oct 22, 2012 at 10:51
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If you use bumbleblee simply reinstall it. bumbleblee on ubuntu

I had exactly the same problem and it solved the fact that unity was broken.

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  • Thansks for the reply! But this had no effect. :/
    – SyS
    Oct 24, 2012 at 17:42
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i would try to reinstall desktop: sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop then run: sudo apt-get install --reinstall unity . Usefull info that might help command to restart Unity: setsid unity ,to restart Compiz: setsid compiz --replace ,restart X Display: Manager: sudo -s , then run: setsid service lightdm restart

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  • I reinstalled/erased the configuration files of both Compiz and Unity, but the result is the same.
    – SyS
    Oct 30, 2012 at 14:20

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