Ubuntu Netbook Remix's Desktop-Switcher Isn't Broken, It's Gone

Desktop-switcher is an application that allows you to switch between Ubuntu Netbook Remix's user interface and the standard Ubuntu Gnome interface. It has been plagued with bugs and problems since Ubuntu 8.04. Desktop-switcher has killed many desktops and has lead to some very frustrating moments for users, and wasn't getting any more stable. While desktop-switcher was available during Karmic's pre-release, Ubuntu 9.10 shipped without desktop-switcher.

The official reason from the UNR developers:

The architecture/design of desktop-switcher of trying to update the live configuration (GConf settings and others) makes it really fragile and error prone; desktop-switcher also takes some backups of gconf settings in ~/ and attempts to restore them, which creates more code pathes and potential problems. It's easy to end up in a completely broken setup with some minutes of playing.

desktop-switcher was intended to help hardy UNR users to disable clutter/opengl when their setup didn't support that nicely. Nowadays, we except these to just work, so it's kind of not required.

Finally, desktop-switcher duplicates the settings from ubuntu-netbook-remix-default-settings, so we need to update two places when we change them,

In karmic+1, we'd like to implement this feature by having an UNR session on the GDM screen along GNOME, that would be a much more solid and clean design. This would also solve the duplication.

So to sum up, we'd like to unseed desktpo-switcher in karmic's UNR and revisit this differently in lucid. We will still attempt to fix top issues if time and complexity of the fixes permit.

UNR is an excellent desktop environment but sometimes the "standard" Ubuntu desktop is better suited for some tasks. Not having the desktop-switcher really hurts UNR usability and because of this I am dropping UNR support on the blog. Until desktop-switcher returns I cannot use/support a broken user interface.
I am excited to try the new dekstop-switcher implementation in the pre-release of Ubuntu 10.04 , but until then I'm focusing on other things.

This saddens me, as many of you know I'm a huge fan of Ubuntu Netbook Remix and loved using it even though it was slow, bloated and clunky.

Have a question or problem that this article doesn't cover? Ask our Ubuntu Mini 9 Google Group for help.

Desktop-Swticher is Kind of Broken

Desktop-Switcher is an application that allows you to switch between Ubuntu Netbook Remix's clutter launcher interface and the standard Ubuntu Gnome desktop. Many readers are complaining that they are losing Metacity (window borders) and the Gnome Panel when switching between the desktops.

This fix comes straight from the Ubuntu Remix Developer:
Run one of the following commands depending on your desktop environment via the terminal:

From the Ubuntu Netbook Dekstop:
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components_list --type list --list-type=string ["windowmanager","panel"]

From the Classic Desktop:
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components_list --type list --list-type=string ["windowmanager","panel","filemanager"]

There is also a i386 .deb (sorry lpia users) attached to the bug tracking thread that should fix the desktop-switcher errors
Download it here

Getting to the Terminal
Right click the desktop and select Create Launcher...




- Use the command gnome-terminal

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Below I'm leaving my not so elegant fix to the solution. Mainly as a reminder of I don't always have the right answer.

- Reboot your PC.
- Using the terminal reboot your Mini 9 using the command: sudo reboot
- Select the Failsafe Terminal Session at the Ubuntu Gnome Display Manager (gdm) login screen.
- After loading into the Failsafe Terminal session, use the command: sudo nautilus

to launch a gnome file manager. Go into your /home folder and after turning on hidden files (ctrl+H) delete the following folders: .gconf, .gconfd and .gnome2

- Reboot your machine.
- Now your panels and window borders will be back.

I then used my Stop Compiz-Fusion From Loading Automatically guide to remove Compiz as my default window manager. Rebooted my machine and then was able to safely switch between desktops using UNR's dekstop-switcher.

Have a question or problem that this article doesn't cover? Ask our Ubuntu Mini 9 Google Group for help.

Desktop-Switcher Released for Intrepid

Desktop-Switcher is a desktop-mode switching applet. It allows you to quickly and easily switch between the default Ubuntu Gnome desktop and Ubuntu Netbook Remix. It has been available for Hardy since launch but only was released for Intrepid three days ago.



Once you have added the Ubuntu Netbook Remix Repository
You can install the desktop-switcher applet by typing in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install desktop-switcher

Once you have installed the desktop-switcher, you can find it under System>Preferences



It will pull up a simple menu allowing you to switch between Ubuntu Netbook Remix and the Classic Desktop.


When the applet switches your desktop, your menus might need a little tweaking, but after a minute I had everything up and running.


Desktop-Switcher has been a long time coming to Intrepid. It's not perfect yet, it did have a problem remembering my theme preferences.
But now is the time to download, test, and report any bugs.

Have a question or problem that this article doesn't cover? Ask our Ubuntu Mini 9 Google Group for help.