4

I'm new to Ubuntu, and had some trouble installing desktop (installer kept freezing up). I was able to install using the Ubuntu Server installation package (64 bit), and added ubuntu-desktop and the appropriate nvidia drivers for my GT240 video card afterwards using apt-get. When the system boots, the Unity login prompt comes up and I can login, but the sidebar and other unity chrome doesn't appear (it's just the desktop background). If I right-click, I can get the appropriate context menu to appear for the desktop, but can't launch a terminal using Alt+T, or other means of triggering functionality. I can use Alt+Ctrl+F6 to drop to the command line, where I am prompted to login, and after running startx I can get the entire Unity/X Window UX to come up, complete with toolbar and everything at my enhanced resolution, etc.

I should add that I've also already added compiz, and enabled the Unity Plugin per these instructions.

That's why everything looks right after typing startx at the command line interface.

My questions are:

  1. how can I figure out what is going on with the login that prevents the desktop from loading properly? I've already tried reinstalling the desktop, video drivers, etc. but it always seems to hang right after the login. I've read other posts similar to this problem but none of them seemed to mention being able to kickstart X from the command line and have everything come up fine.

  2. how can I get it to load directly into the standard desktop mode properly without having to drop down under-the-hood and typing in startx every time I boot up?

When answering, please keep in mind I am totally new, and will likely need clear, step-by-step instructions to grok what I need to do.

Community
  • 1
Keith Pepin
  • 51
  • 1
  • 5

1 Answers1

1

I finally got this to work right by first switching to a terminal using CTRL + ALT +F2 and then running the following series of commands:

sudo service lightdm stop
rm ~/.config/dconf/user
sudo service lightdm start

The following article is where I found this answer and it goes into more details with a few other things folks could try, but it was this last option that solved my problem.

(update to 14.04) unity is not loading after I login to the admin profile after upgrade

Community
  • 1
Keith Pepin
  • 51
  • 1
  • 5