How to Log Into Ubuntu Classic Desktop or Gnome Shell Instead of Unity

Beginning with 11.10, Ubuntu no longer ships with the old Gnome 2 “Classic Desktop“, but you can easily install it (or at least the Gnome 3 version) if you prefer it to the default environment, Unity. While Gnome has evolved to version 3 and its sleek and flashy Gnome Shell, the minimalist Classic desktop is still available as the “Fallback Mode“. Or you may be dying to try Gnome Shell, as it certainly gives Unity a run for its money, and the rapid development of extensions makes it better with each passing day.

Check out this guide on how to install Gnome Classic and/or Shell, log out once installed, open the login menu (should be an icon near your name, currently a gear), and choose either:

♣ GNOME: “Gnome Shell”
♣ GNOME Classic: The Gnome 3 version of the “Classic Desktop”
♣ GNOME Classic (No Effects): “Classic” for older PCs & video card issues
♣ Ubuntu: The default “Unity” environment
♣ Ubuntu 2D: “Unity” desktop for older PCs & video card issues

It’s as simple as that! You can now enjoy your new preferred desktop environment, or have fun jumping between them. And don’t forget, you easily can install many more desktop environments, like Kubuntu‘s KDE, and log in between them at will.

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Related tip (Gnome 2 Only): Ubuntu 11.04 Classic Desktop: How to Log Into The Old Gnome Environment Instead of Unity

Missing “Applications”, “Places” or “System” Menus? How to Reset Ubuntu’s “Classic” Gnome 2/3 Panel

Ubuntu has moved on to “Unity“, and Gnome has evolved to version 3‘s “Gnome Shell“, but many people (like myself) still prefer to use the old “Classic” desktop – be it the old Gnome 2 version, or the “Fallback Mode” of Gnome 3 (users of 11.10 upwards have no choice but to use the Gnome 3 version).

While the 2 versions of the “Classic” interface do have some differences – no “System” menu in Gnome 3 (read this if this is your only concern), and having to hold Alt while right-clicking it to access options – both have panels that are much more customisable (and infinitely more useful) than what “Unity” and “Gnome Shell” currently offer.

But things can go awry, like after doing some tweaking, or installing a program, or having to do a hard reboot, and you can find your panel altered (particularly minus the menus), or even completely missing. So we’ll look at a few different scenarios, and how to rectify them, including how to force Gnome to reset your menus back to their defaults (which is probably the quickest and easiest method). Also, because I’ve seen a lot of newbies in forums say “My Applications menu is missing!” when they should be saying “My top panel has totally vanished!”, we’ll look at how to get your panel back as well.

Finally, because some will need to take a harder approach (or just prefer an easier one), we’ll look at how to totally reset your panels back to their defaults. This is by far the most drastic measure, but it’s quick and easy, and for most people there are no customisations to worry about losing. Besides, if your panel has totally died or vanished, and nothing else you’ve tried has worked, then it’s the only option left.

Try A Quick Panel Restart:

First off, it might be enough to simply refresh the panel by forcing it to close then re-open, which can be done by a reboot, or logging out, or simply entering the following command into the terminal or via Alt+F2:

killall gnome-panel

It pays to do that first, in case that’s all that’s really needed, but chances are you’ve already tried logging out or rebooting, so check out the following tips.

Restore Missing Menus to Panel:

If just your main menu (the “Applications” and “Places” menus, and the “System” menu in Gnome 2) is missing, then perhaps all you need to do is add the menu back to your panel. Right-click an empty area of your panel (holding Alt in Gnome 3) and choose “Add to Panel…“, then scroll down till you find “Menu Bar” (ignore “Main Menu“, as that is a small icon version), and drag it to the left area of your panel.

If it’s conceivable that you perhaps accidentally right-clicked the menu and hit “Remove From Panel“, then it might pay to do this, especially if you have panel customisations you don’t want to lose.

Force Reset of Main Menus:

If you can’t add the menus back to your panel, for example you can’t invoke ”Add to Panel…” with a right-click, it’s time to reset the menus to their defaults, which is done by deleting some configuration files. Actually, technically you’re not deleting anything, as the 2 files in question are simply renamed with .bak extensions [so they're still there if you really need them later], forcing Gnome to recreate those files with default values.

To force Gnome to rewrite its panel menus with default values, enter the following command into a terminal:

mv ~/.config/menus/applications.menu ~/.config/menus/applications.menu.bak && mv ~/.config/menus/settings.menu ~/.config/menus/settings.menu.bak

(That should work with either Gnome 2 or 3, though the settings menu part of it probably won’t do anything in Gnome 3).

All you have to do now is log out, then once you log back in again, your panel should be back with all its menus. Or you can simply enter killall gnome-panel into the terminal and it should successfully refresh your panels without having to log out.

Make a New Top Panel if Missing:

If your panel is absent, you could have even accidentally deleted it yourself, if you unwittingly right-clicked the panel and chose “Delete This Panel” (in Gnome 2 – in Gnome 3 that is harder to do, since you need to be holding Alt while right-clicking the panel). But don’t immediately blame yourself, as all sorts of mishaps can result in a missing panel.

Whatever the case, you should be able to recreate your top panel simply by right-clicking the bottom panel (while holding Alt in Gnome 3) and choosing “New Panel“. You’d then move it to the top, then right-click it (holding Alt in Gnome 3) and choose “Add to Panel…” to add back all the various bits and pieces you had before (the “default” panel is actually a blank panel with a bunch of plugins added).

Obviously, this would be the most time-consuming method, but if you plan to customise your panel anyway, you may as well start from scratch. However, the easiest method would be to totally reset your panels, so keep reading.

Force A Complete Panel Reset:

When all else fails, it’s time to force Gnome to completely reset your panels, which is done by deleting the configuration files. That might sound drastic, and in reality this really is the last resort, but if your panel is totally messed up, chances are your old settings are useless anyway, or rather that having to stick some launchers back on a clean panel will be a welcome alternative to having no panel, or one that is buggy, or missing the “Applications” menu or whatever.

To force Gnome to recreate its panels with default values, enter the following commands into a terminal:

gconftool --recursive-unset /apps/panel (This wipes the panel’s settings)

rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/panel (This deletes the panel’s folders and files)

killall gnome-panel (This forces the panel to close and restart)

Your panel should now be back with all its menus (but of course minus any customisations). If for some reason they don’t appear immediately, a reboot should fix it.

Alternative Commands for Panel Reset:

ΔΔΔ Some guides have gconftool-2 --shutdown as the first command (this shuts down the current user’s gconfd), though gconftool --recursive-unset /apps/panel should work perfectly fine without it. However, if you aren’t having success, then run it first.

ΔΔΔ If you’re running the commands via the Alt+F2 Run Application box, chances are it won’t like the tilde (~) in the second command, so use rm -rf $HOME/.gconf/apps/panel instead.

ΔΔΔ Instead of killall gnome-panel, you can use pkill gnome-panel (which is basically the same thing), or nohup gnome-panel --replace &, or nohup gnome-panel --replace </dev/null &>/dev/null & (note that nohup specifies the command not halt when the terminal is closed, so is not needed if using Alt+F2).

ΔΔΔ If you’d rather make a backup of the panel’s files before deleting them, run mv ~/.gconf/apps/panel ~/Settings/PanelBackup (note the second path can be whatever you want; in this case, it’s a folder called PanelBackup inside a Settings folder within my home folder I have for storing various config files and settings backup). It actually moves the whole folder to a new location, which is basically the same as deleting it, so you shouldn’t need to run the second command (since there is nothing left there to delete, anyway).

How to Reclaim Reserved Space On EXT4 Partitions & External Hard Drives in Ubuntu

If you’ve attached an external hard drive to your system, then decided to use your partitioner to format it to EXT4 for greater efficiency (or just to match your Ubuntu system), you may have been shocked to find that your empty drive seemed to be missing a few gigabytes when mounted afterwards. And this has nothing to do with the good old binary (base-8) vs decimal (base-10) situation which would see your “750Gb” drive be more like 700Gb (in Windows and earlier versions of Ubuntu – now Mac OS X and Ubuntu have followed hardware manufacturers and use decimal, so that’s more like 738Gb).

This is because Ubuntu (and other Linux distributions) reserve typically around 5% of the space for the root user and system services, so should you run out of hard drive space, the administrator can still log in, and system services continue to run.

However, this is only really needed for your Ubuntu partition, so if you have an external EXT4 drive, or have an EXT4 partition on your internal drive (other than the one your system is on), you are needlessly wasting space (40Gb of the drive in the example). But you can free up that disk space quite easily, without having to re-partition the drive or anything. All it takes is a couple of commands pasted into the terminal.

In the following example, an external hard-drive will have the reserve set to 0 (zero), since this is what most people will need this for. First, we have to determine the device name, as using its mounted name – /media/700Gb Ext4 – won’t suffice. To do so, enter the following into the terminal:

mount|grep ^'/dev'

Look for the line containing your device:

/dev/sdc1 on /media/700Gb Ext4 type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks)

… and you can see what it is named (/dev/sdc1 in this case). To free up reserved space, enter the following (replacing /dev/sdc1 with whatever the appropriate device name is, if need be – just make sure you don’t do it to your main drive!):

sudo tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sdc1

You should then be presented with the following message:

Setting reserved blocks percentage to 0% (0 blocks)

To confirm all has gone well, you can right-click an empty area of the folder window for the device and choose Properties, then compare the free space from before and after, or run the following command (once again replacing the device name with the correct one in your case):

sudo tune2fs -l /dev/sdc1 | grep 'Reserved block count'

You should be greeted with the following:

Reserved block count:     0

That’s it – you now have all of your drive to use.

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Note: if you receive the following error message:

tune2fs: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sdb1
Couldn’t find valid filesystem superblock.

… then the filesystem likely isn’t EXT4 – chances are the drive is actually formatted as NTFS or FAT for use on Windows systems (which would be the case if you’ve bought an external drive, and never did anything other than copy files to it). You would have needed to partition/format the drive to EXT4, so if you didn’t, then you actually don’t need this guide.

Ubuntu Package Management: Locate Commands/Files Within Packages With Apt-File

If you find yourself trying to figure out which package contains a certain command, or any other file for that matter, apt-file is a command that will make this easy. It probably won’t be installed by default, so do so with this command:

sudo apt-get install apt-file

You will then be presented with the message:

The system-wide cache is empty. You may want to run ‘apt-file update’ as root to update the cache. You can also run ‘apt-file update’ as  normal user to use a cache in the user’s home directory.

It’s probably best to run the former option (that is, as superuser), so enter the following:

sudo apt-file update

Let it update the cache, then you can search for the command or package or file. Simply use apt-file search followed by whatever it is you’re looking for. For example, we’ll search for the command ccsm, which is what runs the Compiz-Config Settings Manager, as there is no actual package of that name:

apt-file search ccsm

You might find the list presented is quite long, so it may pay to set your terminal to unlimited scrolling beforehand. In the case of the example, the line we’re looking for:

compizconfig-settings-manager: /usr/bin/ccsm

is not visible, since it is right near the top, which is beyond scrolling. If this happens to you, edit your terminal settings and run the command again.

Generally speaking, if it’s a command/program, then the line that has /usr/bin/ followed by the command (like ccsm) will be the correct one. The actual package that contains it will be listed at the beginning, in this case being compizconfig-settings-manager.

Remember, this can work with other types of files too, so if you’re looking for a specific config file or icon or whatever, just specify that at the end of the command. Eg:

apt-file search ccsm.desktop

Hopefully this is all you need to find that elusive file, or the package that installs a program you’re after.

Ubuntu Command-Line: Enable Unlimited Scrolling in the Terminal

At times when using the terminal, the output from a command can be so long, you simply can’t scroll to the beginning, as it is no longer in view. But you can actually set the terminal to display as many lines as you like, or even set it to unlimited scrolling.

In the terminal, go to Edit > Profile Preferences, and in the Scrolling tab you will see there is a default amount of lines to be displayed (probably something like 512). If you have an older computer and are worried about memory, you can up the amount to 2000 or thereabouts, as that should suffice, otherwise the best option is to place no limit on the amount of lines displayed. Under that, you will see “Unlimited“, so check that, and from the next command onwards you won’t have that limitation any more.

Various terminals available might differ as to where to change that setting (like a Settings menu, or Edit > Preferences or Tools > Settings), but they all should have it, and you should find it easy enough.

Ubuntu 11.10 Fix: Safely Removing USB Drive Causes System Freeze/Kernel Panic (in Kernel 3.0.0-12)

If you’ve upgraded your Ubuntu system to 11.10, or have a fresh install, you might find that when you right-click a USB drive and choose “Safely Remove Drive” in the left pane in Nautilus, the system hangs. This appears to affect some users of the Linux kernel 3.0.0-12, which at this early stage would be what most users have, so if this applies to you, it should be easy enough to fix.

Go to http://people.canonical.com/~ogasawara/lp844957/ and into the folder for your architecture (i386 or amd64). Install the 3 .debs located therein (I did so with GDebi, but should be the same in Ubuntu Software Centre, just slower), and reboot. You should now be able to successfully remove the drive without issue the next time you connect it.

NOTE: What you’re actually doing here is replacing the 3 main kernel packages, but for me and a bunch of others affected, there were no issues, with kernel 3.0.0-13 replacing the old one in GRUB, booting into Ubuntu just fine, and resolving the freezing issue when trying to remove USB drives.

Do not use this if your kernel is a later version (i.e. higher than 3.0.0-13). It probably wouldn’t kill your system, but reverting to an earlier kernel is extreme measures, so try find a more current and applicable solution (this fix appeared within days, so it does pay to spend a few minutes looking around the web, especially the Ubuntu Forums).

Ubuntu 11.10 Fix: How to Add the Classic Desktop and Gnome 3 Shell As Login Options

If you’re new to Ubuntu using 11.10 upwards, you might be scratching your head when you see people mention they’re using Gnome Shell instead of Unity, or even the “Classic Desktop“. Or if you’ve been using Ubuntu but decided to do a fresh install, you’ll find there is not only no “Ubuntu Classic” option at login, but no Gnome at all.

This is because the decision was made to drop Gnome as it moved from the familiar 2.x to Gnome 3, since Ubuntu and Unity are built on it anyway. The logic is that should people need a less resource-hungry environment  for slower computers, they can log into Unity 2D instead. But while Unity is gaining fans, and most certainly will gain many more as development continues and we see a flood of plugins and customisation apps, some of us want to play with the new and shiny Gnome Shell, or just to get our old Gnome Classic desktop back.

Now, it’s actually easy to get either or both, but while I’ve seen in forums that installing Gnome Shell will also install the legacy “Classic” desktop, this isn’t true (though it makes sense people might assume that). That’s because while the meta-package gnome is installed, gnome-shell isn’t part of it, but a separate package. Likewise the “Classic” desktop doesn’t come in either gnome or gnome shell, but as exists as the package gnome-session-fallback (which also installs a 2D version).

So, you can pick either, or have both, and it’s as simple as pasting a command or two in the terminal. If planning to have both, you may as well install Gnome Shell first, though it shouldn’t really matter.

To install Gnome Shell: sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

To install Gnome Classic: sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback

Once installed, you should be able to just log out and log back in to one of your new desktops, but if not, then do a reboot. Then you can log into Gnome Shell at the login screen by choosing “GNOME“, or the more familiar legacy desktop by choosing “GNOME Classic” (or “GNOME Classic (No Effects)” for less powerful computers or graphics card issues).

If you can’t find where to log into other environments, it’s always a hidden menu you need to access, previously by the word Options at the bottom of the screen, but in 11.10 is a gear icon near the user name; in following versions, that will no doubt change, but just look for something to click on and you’ll find it. Obviously, if you’ve set your login option to be automatic, meaning you never see the login screen but end up straight at the desktop, then you’ll need to change that in order to be able to change between the different window managers.

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Related Tip: How to Log Into Ubuntu Classic Desktop or Gnome Shell Instead of Unity

Ubuntu 11.10 Fix: Correct Mixed-up Colours in Video Clips (MPlayer, Totem Movie Player, SMPlayer, etc)

If you’ve upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10, you may have noticed your movie files not looking as they should in the default Movie Player (Totem), and probably others like SMPlayer and MPlayer. For me, the clips actually looked fine first off, but only in Totem, as SMPlayer kept crashing. Then, after getting some updates, Totem started displaying the colours all mixed up (as did SMPlayer, which wasn’t crashing any more). I tested GNOME MPlayer, and that was fine, but all my other players were affected.

From the looks of comments I’ve seen around, updating/installing Medibuntu is a likely suspect, but whatever the cause, it should actually be quite easy to fix. Simply go to Edit > Preferences > Display in Totem, and adjust the Hue from the default 50% mark all the way up to 100%. If yours is all the way down at 0%, as some have reported, then you definitely need to do the same. You may need to do this with each player, but in my case changing the setting in Totem immediately rectified the problem in SMPlayer. If it doesn’t for you, however, then you know how to fix this easily.

Lastly, don’t be surprised if later on you go to play a vid and your colours are all mucked up again. This time, you’ll probably find the Hue is still at 100%, so you’ll need to drop it back to the default of 50%. It might be a bit of a hassle, but this should be fixed up at the development end soon enough, and at least it only takes a few seconds to get your movies looking as they should.

Ubuntu 11.10 Upgrade: Missing Your System Menu (Preferences & Administration) Launchers?

If you upgraded your Ubuntu system to 11.10 and are in the Classic desktop, you’d be wondering where a whole bunch of useful settings launchers got to. If you avoided Unity in 11.04 in favour of your old familiar Gnome desktop (2.x), you would have noticed the new Gnome Shell (3.2) is quite different, and that the System menu in the top panel is no longer there. You can access System Settings by clicking your name in the top-right, but many useful apps are missing.

But those launchers that used to reside in Preferences and Administration still exist (at least most of them), but you can be forgiven if you didn’t see them in your Applications menu. Rather than do the obvious thing and stick them in System Tools, or even Accessories, they now exist in Other.

If you can’t see that sub-menu, right-click Applications, choose Edit Menus, and unhide Other.

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Are you looking for a missing Applications menu? This tip is for those with a working panel who want to find the System menu after upgrading their Classic desktop to Gnome 3. If something is amiss with your panel, you should check out this article on how to repair your Classic panel.

Privacy in Ubuntu: How to Disable Facebook Spying on Your Internet Activity When Logged Out

Lately, there has been a bit of an uproar about Facebook collecting information about the sites you visit even when logged out of their system. If you’re unfamiliar with this, basically it comes down to a cookie that Facebook stores info in that should be deleted once you’ve logged out, but in reality remains. This might not sound so sinister, but what happens – and again I stress this is even if you’ve logged out of Facebook and don’t even have their page open – is that any site you visit with a Facebook Like or Share button informs that cookie, which Mark Zuckerberg first denied, but has since become obvious.

Now, emphasis has been on people’s history of visiting porn sites soon to be seen by all when Facebook rolls out its Timelines feature, so many can become complacent since that doesn’t apply to them. But in this day and age, visiting a porn site could seem pretty normal, while looking up info on Islamic terrorist groups – however innocent your quest for knowledge – could be seen as suspicious.

And would you want everyone knowing you’ve been looking up info on a particular sexually-transmitted disease, or info on suicide, or heroin addiction, or how to clean a sniper rifle, when you were just curious, or actually helping a friend? Whatever the reason, you can fight back against Facebook’s invasion of your privacy, with steps outlined for altering your settings effectively (including a couple of optional ones that aren’t related to this issue, but will increase general security), and deleting Facebook’s cookie from the two most popular web browsers in Ubuntu, Firefox and Chromium.

Firefox Extension ShareMeNot

Now, before showing you how to limit Facebook’s intrusion via your own account settings, I’ll mention a Firefox add-on called ShareMeNot which, for most people, should actually be enough. You can actually be logged into Facebook and have your page open and this extension will still limit the tracking. You’ll notice that when at a page with a Like or Share button, you’ll need to sign in if clicking one of those, and then once again enter your password to successfully submit it. If you find yourself visiting a whole bunch of sites where you’d like to Share or Like without that fuss, you can simply disable ShareMeNot via Tools > Add-ons > Extensions, then re-enable it later.

Facebook Account Settings

Here are some things you can do via your account preferences when logged into Facebook, first in the Security Settings section (go to Account Settings, then click Security on the left), followed by Facebook Ads (go to Account Settings, then click Facebook Ads on the left), then Privacy Settings.

Security Settings

Click Edit after Secure Browsing and enable Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) when possible.

Click Edit after Login Notifications and check either Email or Text message, or both if you desire. This will send you an email and/or SMS message each time your account is accessed from a computer or mobile device that you haven’t used before (OPTIONAL).

Click Edit after Login Approvals and enable Require me to enter a security code each time an unrecognized computer or device tries to access my account (OPTIONAL).

Facebook Ads

Click on both Edit third party ad settings and Edit social ad settings and make sure they are set to share with No one.

Privacy Settings

Click Edit Settings next to How You Connect and set each option to Friends.

Next, we disable the setting all the fuss is about: Instant Personalization. This is where partner sites can see your Facebook profile and information without you even being logged into Facebook (which is evident when you see your Facebook picture and name on these sites).

To disable it, click Edit Settings next to Apps and Websites, then click Edit Settings next to Instant Personalization, click Close on the ‘Understanding Instant Personalization‘ dialogue, uncheck Enable Instant Personalization, ignore the warning presented, and click Confirm.

You can also go back to the Privacy Settings page and set the default sharing permission to Friends. You may not really want this, but if you do decide all your posts shouldn’t automatically be Public, since you can now easily make individual posts public, then change the default here. Of course, you can also choose Custom and tailor your privacy settings manually.

Lastly, you can go back into Apps and Websites and click Edit Settings next to Apps you use to remove any applications that you no longer use. Alternatively, you can Turn off all platform apps if you want to leave them installed but temporarily disable them.

Delete Facebook’s Cookie in Firefox

Go to Edit > Preferences and in the Privacy tab click on remove individual cookies. When the Cookies dialogue box appears, scroll down the list of sites and select facebook.com (clicking the first entry and hitting your F key will get you there quicker), and click the Remove Cookies button (alternatively, you can click Remove All Cookies).

Delete Facebook’s Cookie in Chromium

Click the spanner icon in the top right corner of your browser, and click Preferences. In the Preferences tab you’ll notice 3 sections available via links at the top left: Basics, Personal Stuff and Under the Hood. Click Under the Hood, then the Clear Browsing Data… button.

A box will appear with a drop-down menu that says Obliterate the following items from:. You can leave it as the past hour if you recently logged out of Facebook, and probably only that cookie will be deleted, or if you want to delete all cookies select the beginning of time (alternatively, you can tailor the period from a day, week or month).

Make sure Delete cookies and other site and plug-in data is checked, then click the Clear Browsing Data button to proceed.