GNOME virtual desktop

[Dazed_75]

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 8:44 PM, Trent Shipley <tshipley at deru.com> wrote:

> Occasionally, when I am using out-of-the-box Ubuntu, I wind up on an
> empty screen with only the wall paper showing--no system stuff, no icons
> on the desktop, nothing but wallpaper.  I suspect what I am doing is
> getting to a new virtual desktop, but maybe not because in KDE and OS X
> a new virtual desktop keeps desktop furniture like toolbars, start
> symbols, and icons on the desktop.
>

That should be true for gnome as well in any version of ubuntu I have used.
That being said, what version are you using and on what kind of hardware?
Is there any pattern to what you are doing before things go bad?

Also, before the swap happens, do you see 2 or more rectangular icons at the
right end of the bottom panel?  Those are your Virtual Desktops. One way to
switch is to click on oner of them.  Try that and see if you get the totally
blank (other than wallpaper) display you describe.  If not, you are not
accidentally switching.

Also take a look at System / Preferences / Display and look to see what
resolution you are using.  If it is wider than your physical display
resolution, perhaps you managed to install some sort of viewport and you
simply end up looking somewhere of the screen and could try scrolling back
(I doubt this but thought it worth mentioning).

>
>
> The big problem is that I can't figure out how to do anything useful
> with the empty screen, so I have to shutdown (with the power button) and
> restart.  (I guess I could look up how to change shells with a key
> chord, go to a command line shell and 'sudo shutdown -r now' or startx
> with a new shell number.)  But what I really want to do is to go back to
> where I was (and figure out how to use virtual desktops in GNOME).
>

If you are not using Ubuntu 9.10, try doing ctrl-alt-backspace to restart
the GUI.  9.10 disabled that hotkey although you can re-enable it using
System / Preferences / Keyboard.  Go to the Layout tab and click on the
Layout Options button.  Search for the " Key Sequence to kill the X
Server".  Click on the arrow at the left and check the box for
ctrl-alt-backspace.

That's not a solution but may be a workaround to get you back to a usable
display so you can start looking at logs ans such without having to cycle
power.

>
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-- 
Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions,
that I wish it always to be kept alive.
 - Thomas Jefferson
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