While Ubuntu‘s new Unity interface has been designed for less clutter, and generally makes getting to common tasks a breeze, many have found navigating through the rest a bit of a nightmare. While everything is supposed to be more simplified, some would argue having all your launchers accessible via categories in the old Applications menu was actually simpler and quicker.
But you can actually have the best of both worlds, so if you’re avoiding Unity and using the Classic Desktop simply for access to the Applications and System (or Wine) menus, read ahead.
While you can’t actually add the old menu system to the Unity panel, since it is not gnome-panel that is running, there is actually an “indicator” available for Unity that will do the same thing. So while this new (or old?) menu won’t replace Unity‘s “Dash“, you will see an Ubuntu icon in your system tray’s notification area. Click that, and you will see the old familiar Applications menu, with all the categories you’re used to.
To install Classic Menu Indicator, enter the following commands in sequence in a terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:diesch/testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install classicmenu-indicator
Once installed, hit Alt+F2 and enter classicmenu-indicator as the command to run.
Apart from easy access to all your launchers, you’ll find your old System menu is there too, split into the familiar Preferences and Administration sub-menus.
More importantly for many, you will also have your old Wine menu back for running Windows programs. Unity‘s Dash menu system does not currently show a Wine section, and finding those apps can be near-impossible, but classicmenu-indicator will rectify this.
If you find that this menu/indicator does not automatically run upon your next boot (which it should), simply add classicmenu-indicator to your Startup Applications, and it will be forced to load from then onwards (it should already be in there, so check it isn’t disabled).
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Did this information make your day? Did it rescue you from hours of headache? Then please consider making a donation via PayPal, to buy me a donut, beer, or some fish’n’chips for my time and effort! Many thanks!
Awwwsum!
Thanks UG,
I appreciate the works of those like yourself.
I really despised the unity desktop at first. I’ve basically forced myself to get used to it in line with the direction in which Ubuntu is heading.
Suprisingly, I’ve actually come to like the unity desktop.
Okay that was a bit much… I’ve come to “not mind” the new unity desktop. I wonder how Orceilot is going to turn out. I really hope they do give “normal” users more ability to customize unity.
The changes that have been made have in many circles been touted as simplifying things. I really beg to differ. Unity looks good but what’s the use if you can’t even find programs easily!!!!?? Among other associated tasks.
I really hope the Dev team pull their heads out of their Azzes, listen to large outcry that has spilled out on forums regarding the lack of usability on unity and make some changes!
Anyway thanks again ‘n best wishes.
Cheers, buddy! As for Unity, well, they’ll be adding features to it as it evolves, since they admitted it was released a bit more basic than they would have liked to, but the emphasis was on making sure it was stable, and offering ease of use, and features most would want. Soon enough, if there isn’t an official config tool available, someone will make one (but I doubt the Unity team haven’t already realised the need for this). But there are already some rather awesome “hacks”, which suddenly make Unity look quite impressive (so stay tuned)! My only gripe is the lack of Taskbar, which I really don’t want to be without. The fact that open tasks are spread out in a seemingly random order throughout the Dash menu seems incredibly stupid and definitely confusing for new users (not to mention too many mouse-clicks). I’ll be starting a whole new section on Unity/Dash, so if you want to be informed of article as they are posted, subscribe to this blog. Some of the customisations I’ll be featuring are nothing short of awesome! Cheers.
Real great. thanks
Thanks for the help doc. Easy to read and worked great.
Thanks for posting this. At least now I will be able to find programs.
new menu -> too many mouse-clicks
Well, that worked exactly as advertised. Thank you! The lack of a comprehensive program menu in Unity is a definite oversight.
Worked great!!! Nice Doc.. Thanks
excellent! Thank you!
You have made my day. I’ll go and get drunk with relief. I’ve got two laptops, the larger one is running Mint since the day the Unity madness broke out, but the little one still has Ubuntu. And now, unexpectedly and thanks to you, I can enjoy Wine, a bit of logic and order, everything I’ve been missing. Thanks!
Unity is not bad, but certainly lack the system menu feature. Maybe they may switch to MacOS-like style with system menu at top left and application bar, that may be placed anywhere on desktop. Anyway, you save my day. Thanks :)
Thank you so very much. you made my life so much easier
Thank you for the easy to follow solution.
Thank you sooooo much for that. it took 30 minutes just to find Terminal ???????
i have a problem to run last one command …this error msg is “unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg), is another process using it ……?
pls help me …..
OK, the first thing I think of whenever I see that is that I’ve got another package manager going, which really is the most common cause. I used to see that a lot when trying to install a package via GDebi and forgot Synaptic was still open. So, basically, the usual “fix” is just to close the other package manager, or terminal if installing via the command-line.
BUT, since that could be locked from an installation that didn’t successfully finish, in which case you’d end up in a loop always seeing that error, you could try the following command (actually, it’s 2 commands, with the second finishing any installation problems):
sudo fuser -vki /var/lib/dpkg/lock; sudo dpkg –configure -a
Please note that is a double-hyphen before configure, not one long dash (so change that before pasting into the terminal). You will be prompted for confirmation before proceeding, so say yes. Let me know how you go.
dude, i fking love you!!!
I first got lots of
Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: “pixmap”
but fixed this with
sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-pixbuf
But I still get
ClassicMenu Indicator: Failed to open file ‘/usr/share/xdiagnose/media/icon.png’: No such file or directory
I am on Ubuntu 11.10.
Seems to be a bug, but one that doesn’t affect many thankfully: https://bugs.launchpad.net/classicmenu-indicator/+bug/882415
Only the person who submitted the bug has commented, but the more that add to it, the more likely it will be fixed. If you haven’t already joined Launchpad, please do so, then add to that bug report (and report any bugs in the future. It pays, as once I was probably the only person on the planet with a specific fault, and yet the developer went out of his way to find the cause, rectify it, and update the package).
I wish I could offer some advice, but the indicator works fine here, despite the fact that when I went to see what’s in /usr/share/xdiagnose/media/, the folder doesn’t even exist (no xdiagnose folder at all in /usr/share/). Not sure what to make of this yet. Especially since the person who filed the bug report seems to be missing a couple more files the indicator complains about. OK, just realised xdiagnose is an app (X.org diagnosis tool), so did you have xdiagnose installed before? Maybe installing (or reinstalling) that might at least get rid of this error. Here’s the latest package: http://pkgs.org/ubuntu-11.10/ubuntu-main-i386/xdiagnose_1.6_all.deb.html
I logged the bug at Launchpad, as you suggested. I already had xdiagnose installed. I noticed that despite the error message, Classic Menu Indicator was installed and is correctly running! In fact, it even allows access to xdiagnose on the bottom of its menu, but without displaying an icon. This makes sense, given the error message. So this appears to be a non-fatal glitch.
i got this error :Unable to locate package calssicmenu-indicator
OK, first off, I’m going to assume the typo “calssicmenu-indicator” isn’t what you were looking for (in other words, you didn’t do the same spelling mistake in the terminal; if you did, there’s your answer). You may need to add more software sources (https://ubuntugenius.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/synaptic-cant-find-it-add-more-software-sources-in-ubuntu/), though I was sure this was in the standard repos. Failing that, do a Google search for classicmenu-indicator and you should find a .deb installer to download somewhere. Cheers.
I dont’ see wine or preferences or administration. Maybe I don’t have the software installed for those options or they’re called something else?
WINE: If you don’t have WINE installed for running Windows programs, then you won’t have that menu.
System Menu: If you’re using 11.10, then things have changed, most notably that Gnome 3 has replaced 2, and that Ubuntu no longer ships with the “Classic” version of it. In Gnome 3 Classic, there are only 2 menus: Applications and Places – System no longer exists, but the apps it contained can be found in Applications > Other. Standard “System Settings” can be found in the menu that pops up when you want to log off. Hope that helps.
How can I edit the entries in the menus?
You should be able to use the old menu editor, alacarte, which probably still comes with a fresh 11.04 install, but probably doesn’t with 11.10. So just run the command alacarte in the terminal (or sudo apt-get install alacarte if you need to install it first).
Great. That’s it!
Hey how can i add Application Indicator to startup Menu ?
I have mistakenly deleted that entry
while working with Screenlets.
Please help.
Hi. Can you give me as much info as possible, and I’ll see if I can help. I gather you are using Gnome Classic 3, but confirm this is the case. Also, outlining what you did would help, and I suppose clear up what you mean by adding “Application Indicator to startup Menu”, especially what you mean by “startup menu”. The Classic Menu Indicator you can see is useful for Unity users, but is unneeded if using Classic, since you have an Applications menu anyway. As I said, clear up as much ambiguity as possible, then I can help. Cheers.
Thanks a lot. I’m one of the many that really find unity horrible obnoxious this is a great help.
Updating from 10.04 LTS to 12.04 LTS and unaware of Multity, here’s another life saved.
I imagine it would be likewise, as a vi adept, to find only emacs on a new system (oldies talk I guess).
In my case the title could just as well have read 12.04 LTS fix.
Thank you very much. (Ubuntu remains to be an option)
12.04 LTS
I don ‘t know whether it appeared after the first update or was there from the start but among the heap of programs in Dash / Applications there’s a program now “ClassicMenu Indicator” that adds the menu to the Unity Panel System Tray.
Silly me!
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