How can I diagnose and report screen flickers in Unity after upgrading?

Question

I just upgraded and was excited to try Unity. I logged in normally, but got the following symptoms:

• Although my background image showed normally, all my icons and any windows I opened flickered in and out every few seconds
• I opened a Terminal window with a keyboard shortcut, but couldn't type anything in it
• I didn't see any menus for shutting down or logging out, so I had to do so with the power button

After rebooting, I tried Recovery Mode, but that eventually went to a black screen and did nothing else.

I succeeded in booting by doing this:

• Boot to "normal" Ubuntu (not Recovery Mode)
• Choose my user name
• While the password box is on the screen, choose "Ubuntu Classic" from the menu at the bottom
• Log in

Everything looks fine now, but I'm using GNOME and not Unity. How can I diagnose my issues with Unity and get it working?

Answer 1

Without knowing your graphics hardware I suspect you cannot run Unity, when you log into GNOME open a terminal and type the following;

/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

It will let you know if your hardware supports Unity, if you get a NO response at the end you can always install Unity2D:

• How do I install and switch to the Unity 2D desktop?

You can then log out and Select Unity 2D at the log in screen