Hi,

I have been experiencing problems regarding to my desktop. I am using Debian sid as distro and Gnome. I ran a dist-upgrade to hopefully fix a few small problems a had with other software. I was happy to see that they were solved, but only till i realised that there was something very wrong with the Desktop.

The system is functioning properly, the wallpaper, the icons etc, but both the task manager (or whatever it's equivalent name is) and the menubar disappeared. So now i cant use the menu, i cant use the hot launch buttons i had on the toolbar, i can't see the gadgets (like cpu load, wireless signal strength, time and date etc), and when i minimize windows i have to do Alt-Tab to jump in between windows..

Although it looks kinda cool with just a shell, i would very much like to learn what's wrong and how i can fix it, because it's quite disturbing to not be able to use what you're very accustomed to.

Thanks in advance,

That's really weird - I've never had a problem like that before

Try checking the permissions (and owner/group) of directories like:
~/.gnome2/panel2.d/ (and all subdirectories)

There was one time that I screwed up my Gnome-panels and I tried somewhat of a drastic solution. I logged out of Gnome, (in a terminal) I moved my .gnome and .gnome2 directories to another location, then I logged back onto Gnome. Doing this recreated the .gnome and .gnome2 directories and everything underneith. I could then copy over existing Themes and recreate the icons. I know this isn't usually the "ideal" solution, but it's quick and dirty and works.

well changing permissions didnt work, any other ideas?

...did you try bc808's second idea? That happened to me when I upgraded to Gnome 2.13

It fixed it for me.

If you can get to a terminal...

# apt-cache policy gnome-panel
# apt-cache policy gnome-panel-data

Entirely possible that gnome-panel didn't install with your upgrade due to dependency issues. That happened to me a while back. Had to resolve those first. I think that can only happen in SID. Unlike the other distros in which dependency hell can descend from anywhere.

yeah it turns out that the apt-get somehow messed up, and didnt install the panel.. weird.. i ran apt-get install gnome-panel, and restarted x..

anyways, thanks for your time and help
cheers,