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I'm testing Natty on a dedicated test machine. I've not used nor seen Unity before this except in screenshots, but I understand that one of the main elements of the Unity UI is a dock. Well, for some reason there is no dock on this machine. The Global Menu is there, and the Ubuntu Button and such like, so I'm satisfied that Unity is running (I also verified this by trying to run it from a terminal.)

I'd appreciate any ideas as to why the dock never showed up and how I can install or activate it manually.

Here's a screenshot with Unity desktop ("Ubuntu" option in login menu): Natty desktop with dock missing

Here's a screenshot with GNOME desktop ("Ubuntu classic" option in login menu): GNOME desktop on same machine

As you can see, it's somewhat difficult to tell by looking which one is running. IMO since both desktops ship with Natty and neither one of them is 100% bug-free, there ought to be an easy way to tell them apart. As it is, they can be distinguished by the slightly different appearance of the upper banner and lower banner. For example, in "Ubuntu Classic" the Ubuntu Button at upper-left corner of the screen is in larger and colored orange and yellow.

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  • when you hover your mouse at the left-top corner does it show up? It's also possible that your computer couldn't handle unity and reverted to gnome.
    – bntser
    Apr 13, 2011 at 3:39
  • Could you attach a screenshot of your desktop. It would be helpful in recognizing the desktop you are currently running...
    – nik90
    Apr 13, 2011 at 4:08

1 Answer 1

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You are running the old Gnome classic desktop, not Unity. They made it look somewhat like Unity, but the classic Gnome configuration has been updated to look more like it used too.

Try logging out and manually select Unity as your session. Maybe you lack 3d acceleration so you are stuck with classic Gnome?

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  • You can't select "Unity" as your session. The choices are Ubuntu and Classic Ubuntu. I just updated this machine four hours ago, so the packages should be up to date. An hour ago I logged out and logged in to "Classic Ubuntu" and it looked markedly different. I would provide a screenshot, but when I tried it again a few minutes ago it didn't work so I gave up in EXTREME FRUSTRATION. I will try again tomorrow.
    – koanhead
    Apr 14, 2011 at 9:00
  • Video card on this machine is Radeon 9200. "radeon" driver in use. glxinfo indicates DRI active. glxgears does about 180fps iirc. When first I installed Natty to this machine I got the warning dialog saying that it didn't have 3D support, so falling back to GNOME. After I installed the Radeon this warning went away.
    – koanhead
    Apr 14, 2011 at 9:04
  • OK, I've added a screenshot for the GNOME session.
    – koanhead
    Apr 16, 2011 at 0:20
  • I think that I've shown that I'm not, in fact, running the old GNOME desktop, and yet this answer keeps getting up-rated. Fair enough, if someone can show me definitively that this is the case (or tell me how to establish it for myself) then I will accept the answer.
    – koanhead
    Apr 16, 2011 at 3:51
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    Both your screenshots show a bottom panel. Unity doesn't have one, so it must be gnome-panel. Run pidof gnome-panel in a terminal to verify.
    – Egil
    Apr 16, 2011 at 10:38

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