paneltimeunity
I'm running Ubuntu 13.10 with dual boot along side Windows 8.
The top panel or bar doesn't display the time.
When I open the Clock menu, all the settings over there are grayed out
Settings > Time and date > Clock
I tried other methods (like dconf) but that didn't work.
The top panel isn't empty. It is used for applications menus and titlebars, and you can add many indicators which also requires space. I sometimes like to use my screens narrow and tall, and then there would really not be any room for anything more.
You can't add a taskbar to the top panel. Adding a bottom panel with a taskbar is fairly easy, though. You can use Gnome Panel (the panels from earlier versions of Ubuntu -- they are still available), Xfces panel, LXDEs panel or any other panel you like. There will be no conflict with Unity as long as you only use a bottom panel. In the case of Gnome Panel, you'd have to delete the top panel manually, either by pressing alt and right-clicking the top panel, or you could use dconf-editor from the dconf-tools package.
For instance, this is Unity with an xfce4-panel taskbar, with extras. As you can see, there's no conflict. I would probably recommend that you use Gnome Panel if that's what you're used to. Just remember that in Gnome Panel 3, you have to press alt to display the right-click menu on the panel or move applets. Otherwise, it's just the same as in earlier versions.
Launchpad bug #863341 has the solution to my issue:
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure --frontend noninteractive tzdata
After I ran the above command, "Time" disappeared and the current time is now displayed in my menu bar. The bug also notes that this question has previously been discussed on askubuntu.
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