I have just installed Ubuntu 12.04 using Wubi. It gets installed successfully but now I am only able to see an empty desktop. I could not find any softwares anywhere in home etc, no where. Where are Firefox and all other softwares?
I clicked Ubuntu help and it says about launcher but I don't have it how to get that?
If you have a standard installation you just have to move your mouse to the left edge of the screen and the Launcher will show. Alternatively you can simply press the Windows key on your keyboard (referred to as "Super" on Linux) and the Dash will open, where you can type in the name of any Program you search. If this does not work try right clicking on your desktop and click "Change Desktop background" (or something similar, my Ubuntu is not in English).There you can configure the behaviour of the Unity launcher. If all that does not work, Press Ctrl+Alt+T and type software-center into the opened terminal. Then search for unity and reinstall the package.
Unity is supposed to realise that the graphics drivers don't supply 3D accelleration and should automatically fall back to the 2D mode. As you probably found out, this does not always work in Ubuntu 12.04 (I never tried it, but it seems this issue is fixed in 12.10).
If you have an nvidia or AMD graphics chip, you probably need to install proprietary graphics drivers if you want Unity to start. To do this, I recommend to first log in using the Unity2D session (you can select what kind of session you want on the login screen, by clicking on the Ubuntu Icon next to your username, at least if you haven't configured your system to automatically log you in). Once you are logged in and got a working Unity 2D, find the system settings. They should be in one of the menus on the top right of your screen. In the system settings you'll find an entry called "Additional drivers". Find the one for your graphics card and install it. If you have a very new graphics card (for instance an AMD A-Series APU), choose the entry labelled with "updates", otherwise use the one without (more stable). If you are running an AMD graphics card, the entry with "updates" gives an error, which you can safely ignore. After installing the suitable graphics driver, you should reboot your PC. If everything worked, you can now select "Unity" as your session, again by clicking the Ubuntu Icon on the log-in page.
One final rant: I consider Unity not yet ready for release and I don't understand why Canonical decided to ship it as default desktop, despite its premature and unstable state.
