ubuntu 11.04 failed to load gnome3
 

hi,

i installed ubuntu 11.04 on my presario cq40-115au but it does not load the default gui (unity). i only see a blue background and an icon of my other partition on desktop.

even alt+F2 does not pop the "run application" windows.

anyone had the same issue? especially with radeon hd3200?

First of all, Unity and GNOME 3 are unrelated.

Anyway, does right-clicking on the desktop do anything? Could you figure out a way to launch a terminal?

When you get to the login screen and hit enter to activate the password bar you also activate the the lower panel on that page. Before loging in select "Ubuntu Classic" in the session check box. Then log in.

This should take you to the Gnome Panels Desktop. When there make sure you have the compiz control center (or whatever it is called) installed. Make sure the Unity Plugin is activated.

I bet that is the problem. If it is just reboot to that session. There are faster ways to change the DE but by rebooting you will make sure that you get the right one when booting.

when I entered ubuntu classic session, the screen was twitching (panel appears & diasappeared non-stop), so I logged in to ubuntu safemode session, install compizconfig manager, enabled unity plugin, but the same problem persists.

i can right-click though. alt+alt+Fn is working.

You do not say what your graphic card is but you may want the proprietary driver. Not sure how you do anything but ATI cards but there you can get the fglrx driver from the repos, usually works. Some ATI cards need a specific driver from the ATI website.

If you want to stick to open source drivers you may want to try the xorg-edgers ppa as those drivers (for many card manufacturers) are put out ahead of the release date for them.

so i installed ati fglrx driver using the "additional drivers" app, remove .gnome2* folders, reboot & change my theme to ambiance.

this may be caused by previous gnome2 setting from installation of debian and opensuse (shared /home partition)

If you check your Gnome version you will find that you are using Gnome2 with a few features from Gnome 3 implemented early as they are compatible with Gnome2 (my Debian for instance uses gdm3). Gnome3 will be on 11.10.

Unity is not Gnome3. Gnome Shell is not Gnome3. Gnome Shell is the desktop environment for Gnome3 as the Panels were for Gnome2. Unity is a desktop environment for people that do little serious work on a computer. Fine for tablets but just silly on a laptop or desktop.

As long as you do not use several windows of the same app open at once you can use Unity fine. Do not, for instance, drive yourself nuts trying to work on several images in Gimp at once.

Yes, there are keyboard shortcuts that help. Get a cheat sheet like we did with MSDos (MSDos had better designed shortcuts). Menus were implemented years ago to do away with the need for shortcuts but you need to target your OS at people that are literate to use menus efficiently. Unity appears to be aimed at teenage dropouts used to working at fast food joints with pictures on the cash registers.

Kind of fun but just not real workable for serious use.

There is hope that Gnome Shell is better but there again there is a menu problem.

Both seem to think that people want to use more keystrokes and more mouse clicks to do the same jobs they are now doing with less. Touch screens should work better but they are not really good for a desktop or laptop because of the strain of using them in that environment.

I suggest xfce or lxde (Xubuntu or Lubuntu in Ubuntu speak).

Deleting ???
 

Hi there Malayo, I have had many problems with Ubuntu and KDE and decided NOT to delete a file but to rename it with extention ".old" till I was sure that the new onw worked at lease reasonably.

With earlier Gnome I could rename the ".ICRauthority" to ".ICRauthority.old" and reboot which created a brand new setup and allowed me to change things as necessare.

Chriatopher