Ubuntu – Removal of unity-preferences makes launcher not show up

11.10unity

In 11.04 I used the unity-preferences tool (called menu and launcher in the the dash I believe) to set Unity to only reveal when the mouse was moved to the upper corner. I liked this method better as there was less of a chance of accidentally opening the launcher.

Now in 11.10 unity-preferences is gone, and the corner no longer opens up the launcher. That's fine, but now the launcher won't open at all. I can't hover over the edge of the screen to open the launcher. I'm guessing something is still respecting the "corner only" launch option I had set previously, but the new window controls are preventing that from triggering the launcher. And now that unity-preferences has been removed, I have no way to set it back.

I looked through all of the settings for unity in gconf, but couldn't find anything pertaining to this specific setting, only the compiz only settings.

Does anyone know where the old unity-preferences tool stored its setting? Or could this be a different issue?

Best Answer

To adjust the reveal mode of the Launcher, you can use compizconfig-settings-manager . To install CCSM, run the following command from the terminal:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

In CCSM, look for Ubuntu Unity Plugin and click on the option for Reveal mode. Using the Reveal mode, you can choose which part of the screen should trigger the launcher.

You might want to configure the launcher to never hide such that you can use the launcher properly.

How can I configure Unity's launcher auto-hide behavior?

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Ubuntu – What exactly does GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=text do

13.1.9 gfxpayload

If this variable is set, it controls the video mode in which the Linux kernel starts up, replacing the ‘vga=’ boot option (see linux). It may be set to ‘text’ to force the Linux kernel to boot in normal text mode, ‘keep’ to preserve the graphics mode set using ‘gfxmode’, or any of the permitted values for ‘gfxmode’ to set a particular graphics mode (see gfxmode).

Depending on your kernel, your distribution, your graphics card, and the phase of the moon, note that using this option may cause GNU/Linux to suffer from various display problems, particularly during the early part of the boot sequence. If you have problems, set this variable to ‘text’ and GRUB will tell Linux to boot in normal text mode.

The default is platform-specific. On platforms with a native text mode (such as PC BIOS platforms), the default is ‘text’. Otherwise the default may be ‘auto’ or a specific video mode.

This variable is often set by ‘GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX’ (see Simple configuration).

But more importantly: I found the message error: no video mode activated you get on Bug 699802 and it has a possible solution:

Decommenting #GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480 in /etc/default/grub actually solves the problem. Remember to run sudo update-grub after changing /etc/default/grub.

Also look at comment 27 and also comment 24 and 30 as interesting workarounds. Comment 30:

Just wanted to confirm that the method for number 24 works well for people with the encrypted partition (don't bother with the uncommenting stuff). Just so anyone like myself out there doesn't have to look all over to figure out how to do simple commands (my first time ever using linux). Launch the terminal and go to the directory cd /usr/share/grub/ . Copy the font files to another directory (cp, needs sudo, and *.pft copies the three font files at once) with sudo cp *.pf2 /boot/grub then update grub with sudo update-grub.

Ubuntu – Set launcher reveal mode to Intellihide

The gsettings command to tweak the hide mode of launcher would be:

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity2d.Launcher hide-mode 2

Do note that this command will work only for Unity-2D and not for Unity-3D.

The supported parameters for this command and what they do:

0: Never hide; The launcher is always visible.
1: Auto hide; The launcher will disappear if it not actively used.
2: Intellihide; The launcher will disappear only if there is an active window over it.

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – What exactly does GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=text do

Ubuntu – Set launcher reveal mode to Intellihide

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