Get the Linux desktop you always wanted in 10 easy steps!

I took a screenshot of my desktop. The bottom bar is all screwed up and I can not figure out how to add or remove or move items from it. I have no system tray, battery reader, network connection etc. and everything tha I open appears twice???

 

@toymom

whew your taskbar really is screwed up. all you need to do is remove all those by running xfce4-panel -a and then dragging them back to the window that will be opened by the command. please take note that when adding to the panel, it should be by the order that they should appear, like when it is clean and does not have anything, the xfce menu should be first followed by the show desktop and then the dock for applications followed by system tray and the power button and etc.

please tell me if that has worked for you.

 

i am at work right now and should be home in about 2 hours, i will tell you how to fix it when i got home.

i acciddentally deleted my panel before that's why I know how to fix it. hehehe.

 

thank you, at least that is better. I am completely lost with Linux. here is my new screenshot.

 

okay I screwed it up again, than was able to fix it, but now I can;t find the battery monitor? any suggestions?

 

Got a blank desktop with no ability to do a terminal edit. How do I restore the system if I only have the CD and no CD drive?

 

with another pc

 

Let me rephrase the question.

I've got WindowsXP machine.

I've got a USB thumb drive.

I copyied all the stuff from the CD onto the USB thumb drive.

I've got the USB thumb drive plugged into the Acer, and can view the contents of the USB thumb drive in my file manager, but I can't seem to set boot priority to the USB thumb drive.

Given the above information, can anyone help me do a factory restore? The directions that came with the Acer leave much to be desired, so I'm turning here for some help.

Thank you.

 

when you boot there is that initial screen that flashes that say "press F2 or F12 to set boot order" if yougo in there you should be able to change it.

 

The machine finally recognized the USB thumb drive as the first to boot from, but I got a file manager with the contents, not a USB that was bootable from. The directions from my Acer didn't make it clear how I could make a bootable USB, or even if it was possible. Being a Linux noob, I don't know how to make a USB thumb drive bootable.

Anyhow, I went out and got a hard drive, and I'm restoring it back to factory software settings.

The mistake in the 10 steps that I made was at step 4, where I made a typo and hit return before I realized the mistake.

At least this way, I can always restore if I need to after my next attempt to get a real desktop on this thing, and pay more attention to what I'm doing.

 

it is because you did it the wrong way.

you are not supposed to copy/paste the contents of the cd rom on the usb flash drive, you should:

insert the cd on your windows machine
boot from the cd at start up
then it is going to ask you where you want to install the cd
assuming that you have the desired usb machine plugged into your computer, choose the corresponding drive for it
when it is finished, go to your aspire one and plug the usb flash drive then turn it on
press F12 and your done

hope that helps

 

it may be better but still looks bad. let's try to fix it once again. First, please press alt f2 on you keybord and then type in xfce4-panel -a.
the click on Run. once the window appears, drag and drop ALL the items you have in your misconfigured panel. then when your panel does not show anything, drop and drop the following in order:

1) XFCE Menu
2) xfdesktop go home [it is going to ask a command though i forgot it, i think it is xfdesktop, i'll update this soon]
3)task list
4)Add a launcher, entitle it as Sound Settings, the command should be: gnome-volume-control and you can choose the icon for sound.
5)system tray
6)clock
7)action button

hope the helps. by the way here's my brand new desktop:

 

I had the same problem. You can just go to Keyboard Settings though, under Settings on the desktop menu, and after you create a new key binding profile, add "gnome-system-monitor" and add that key binding or any other for it.

No idea which of the "10 easy steps" did that, or why.

 

this is great, thank you so much !!!

i got stuck on how to change to KDE, can you help? thanks !

 

Tried this process a second time.

Guess what? No Alt-F2 ability upon reboot.

Now doing a factory reset and resigning myself to the stupid simple desktop.

 

Back when I was was doing all kinds of odd things trying to figure this out, I did manage to get into a situation where the Alt-F2 key binding got lost. I don't remember clearly what I was doing at the time, but I believe it has something to do with mcs-manager getting loaded incorrectly, or loading the wrong settings. I ticked "let xfce manage the desktop" and that's when I lost the key bindings.

I didn't happen once I got the hang of the procedure, and it did not occur when I was stress-testing the guide. It didn't happen after I started moving the ~/.config/xfce4 directories.

I suggest deleting ~/.conifig/xfce4 and ~/.config/xfce4-session and rebooting. This should reset everything back to the correct defaults.

If you don't have the xfce menu on the taskbar well, you can't open the file manager to delete the directories, so there is no option but to do a system restore.

If you start again, though, consider doing two things after you restore but before you start the guide:

1. Connect to the internet, and do a live update.
2. Run "xfce4-panel -a" and put the xfce start menu on the taskbar. That way you'll always have access to the system even if you have lose the key bindings.
3. when you get to step 4, use thunar (the file manager) in "show all files" mode to navigate to those directories and delete them rather than move them using the terminal. That way you get positive confirmation that they are really gone.

 

Hi rjm, I am glad you are still here.
I have a minor issue now, everytime I reboot, it asks me my WiFi key.
Any way to fix this and what causes this in the first place?
Thanks.

 

I ended up setting the system for advanced users, so that when I right-click, I pull up all sorts of goodies.

I may try and make more space by removing other languages, games, etc, but for now, the system seems to be running smoothly.

 

This is a fantastic post and works first time...Great and thanks

 

RJM,
I did this over the weekend and it worked perfectly for me too.
Many thanks for taking the time to write these instructions in a very easy-to-follow way.
Cheers!