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I recently upgraded from 10.04 LTS to 11.10. I use this machine remotely via NoMachine during the day and had some issues with Unity so I switched the desktop to Gnome while at home last evening. It worked fine, but when I'm using NoMachine the applications menu is missing from the top toolbar.

I would like to switch it back to Unity, but it logs directly into the desktop without being able to set the desktop option.

I'm guessing the desktop setting is contained in a file and I can edit it via ssh shell and Vim, but have no clue where the file is or what it's called.

Any suggestions?

Bruno Pereira
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jacoulter
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2 Answers2

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Add a custom command to your Nomachine NXClient, which says gnome-session --session=ubuntu-2d. That will launch Unity 2D which uses Metacity instead of Compiz. NX is not capable of using Compiz (Unity) or Mutter (Gnome Shell). Unity 2D with Metacity works nicely though.

Jo-Erlend Schinstad
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This link explains what the problem is and how to get NX Client to work with Ubuntu 11.10. The instructions there worked for me.

http://www.nomachine.com/tr/view.php?id=TR10I02623

Excerpt for your convenience:

The system menu may be missing in a NX session running on Ubuntu 11.10 if the desktop environment is Unity 3D

The system menu is missing inside the NX session when the Unity 3D desktop environment is launched instead of Unity 2D.

Unity 2D is the fallback for those X servers not supporting 3D graphics as it is for the X11 agent, nxagent. However, if the hosting machine has support for a 3D graphic card, Unity 3D is launched also inside the NX session.

Ubuntu 11.10 comes with a script, the Unity Support Test, to verify if the hosting computer supports or not Unity 3D. If yes, a file is stored in the /tmp directory.

In order to override this behavior and run Unity 2D instead of Unity 3D, it is necessary to delete the file created by the Unity Support Test tool inside the /tmp directory. This file has format /tmp/unity_support_test.X where X is a progressive number, for example:

/tmp/unity_support_test.1

Mark Leone
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