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Томица Кораћ
Asked: 2013-04-26 23:02:44 +0800 CST

After upgrading to 13.04 Unity interface is not showing

  • 772

I've upgraded to Raring last night. The upgrade itself went okay, no errors. But when I rebooted the computer afterwards and logged in to my Unity session, all I could see was the Desktop background (together with Desktop icons), and no Unity interface. The Super button shortcut wasn't showing the Dash, there was no top panel etc. Please see the screenshot.

No Unity after upgrading to 13.04

As a hint, I'm suspecting it's got something to do with my switchable graphics. I'm running Ubuntu on Acer Aspire AS5830TG with nVidia GT540M and an Intel integrated card. In 12.10 I was using Bumblebee to manage the graphic card switching. During the upgrade I saw something related to nvidia had to be uninstalled, but didn't pay much attention to it. I can't be sure if it has anything to do with my problem though.

What could possibly go wrong?

unity

10 Answers

  1. This worked for me:

    1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a terminal window.
    2. At the terminal prompt, type ccsm. If the CompizConfig Settings Manager window appears, skip to step 5. If not, continue with step 3.
    3. Type sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager. Type your password when prompted.
    4. At the next terminal prompt, type ccsm.
    5. In CompizConfig Settings Manager, select the check box for the OpenGL plugin if it isn't already selected.
    6. Click the Ubuntu Unity Plugin item.
    7. Select the Enable Ubuntu Unity Plugin check box, if it isn't already selected. If it is already selected then uncheck this and again select it.
    8. Exit from the CompizConfig Settings Manager.
    9. Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete. When asked, confirm that you want to log out.
    10. I did a cold reboot at this point. I'm not sure it's necessary, but I'm a bit paranoid.

    After this, Unity came up as it's supposed to for me.

    I have a 64-bit AMD Phenom CPU and an nVidia GPU; I'm running 64-bit Ubuntu with the nvidia-current driver set, and I've just upgraded to 13.04 (at which point Unity disappeared).

    • 23

  2. I fixed this issue by opening a terminal with Ctrl + Alt + T, resetting compiz with dconf reset -f /org/compiz/ and logging out with gnome-session-quit.

    When I logged back in the interface was there again.

    • 7
  3. Best Answer

    Resetting Compiz as indicated by arkx worked for me. However, I had to update the Nvidia drivers first, as detailed here: http://falkvinge.net/2013/02/15/how-to-install-nvidia-drivers-in-ubuntu-12-10-quantal/

    Unity seems to be working OK now. Thanks!

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  4. I ended up installing gnome-panel just to get an interface so I could launch applications.

    If you launch the Compiz settings manager and reset the configuration to defaults, it should launch your interface again after you log out / in.

    You can safely remove gnome-panel after doing this; I launched it from a command line to get to the compiz settings icon.

    Hope this helps!

    • 2

  5. I had this problem running an Ubuntu virtual machine on VirtualBox after upgrading from VirtualBox 4.1 to 4.3. I had to reinstall Guest Additions from a terminal. After that, everything worked as expected.

    • 1

  6. This also happened to me and switching to gnome fixed my problem. To get gnome open the terminal (CtrlAltt)and run the following command:

    sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback

    After it installs just logout and hit the icon next to your name, then select gnome fallback.

    • 0

  7. I tried several of previous options, and it worked for me installing: compizconfig-settings-manager, enabling unity plugin and after that i did ./compiz --replace and it started to work.

    Before doing this step, I created another user, and when I logged in as that new user, unity was working. So, I understand that the problem was that while doing upgrade some config file had some obsolete settings that got updated after changing settings in compizconfig-settings-menager.

    • 0

  8. Dang I hate when this happens. Somehow everything's back to normal. I've been fiddling around with my system, installing some drivers, uninstlaling some kernels, I actually have no idea what exactly was it that I did that fixed it. I remember deleting /etc/X11/xorg.conf and renaming /etc/X11/xorg.conf.failsafe to /etc/X11/xorg.conf which fixed a few things, but not all. Now I wouldn't try to explain the rest because I'm simply not able to explain in a non-confusing way. I hope the rest of you guys with the same problem will find your way around this.

    • -1

  9. My solution was to remove all nvidia and just use intel opengl driver. Waiting for it to just work. Better batterylife anyway :)

    • -1

  10. I just uninstalled the ATI driver and reinstalled it and everything is fine.

    My system features hybrid graphics and I installed driver 13.1 from AMD website for discrete card and everything was fine until I update my system and rebooted it. After I logged on the screen goes black and the Unity wont start. I do a lots of googling, and do the Unity reset but that does not fix it. Reinstalling the ATI driver fixed it in the end.

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