I finally got Focal to install successfully under Virtualbox. I first configured the default Gnome shell the way I wanted it, then installed Unity and switched from gdm to lightdm. I prefer lightdm since I can enable “Guest” accounts. I have it configured on my “live” Bionic systems along with ecryptfs to secure each user’s home directories. Not sure why this was removed after Xenial; I don’t require Enterprise-level protection for my personal computers. Anyway, after rebooting I see Gnome has made tremendous strides since Bionic in performance but it STILL can’t hold a candle to the response I get out of Unity. I also prefer Unity’s implementation of virtual desktop switching compared to Gnome’s. I also noticed that Aislerot Solitaire no longer has the “Global Menu” under Unity. That’s too bad. Still digging around in preparation to POSSIBLY upgrading this summer when 20.04.1 comes out.
Hopefully by then a lot of the “indicators” and applets I rely on will be upgraded to work with Focal.
“Hopefully by then a lot of the “indicators” and applets I rely on will be upgraded to work with Focal.”
If something isn’t working as expected then the odds of that changing in 20.04 are slim to none
(- unless there is a user-side workaround…
The time to address such things is during dev, not after…
As far as global menus, I wouldn’t be surprised if 20.04.x is the end of them. As it stands here mosr of the apps I use still have them in fine working order.
It’s not that the applets and indicators don’t work… it’s that the developers haven’t updated their repositories to recognize “focal” yet. This happened the last LTS cycle, too. By the time the .1 version rolled around the PPAs were updated to recognize “bionic”
Sad to see Global Menus going away. In the older days of “taller” displays it probably wasn’t needed as there was plenty of screen real estate and putting a launch bar/task bar at the bottom of the screen was fine as well. Now, with displays getting wider, horizontal space is plentiful, but vertical space is starting to get “squeezed.” Unity was WAY ahead of the curve by placing the launcher on the left of the screen instead of the bottom and introducing the “Global Menu” concept. Screens aren’t getting any taller but I feel like I’m losing my vertical screen space to unnecessary “gadgets” (for want of a better word). Putting the menu bar within the title bar was a good solution and I don’t understand why the developers are shying away from that.
Another recent observation. Still running Focal under VirtualBox. When I opened the “Software Store” under Unity and clicked on the “Installed” tab it was blank. When I logged out and back in under the default Gnome desktop and opened the Software store the first thing it did was update its cache and I was able to see my installed software. No one else noticed this behavior?
Maybe it is because you are testing in VB. I have installed it and have not experienced the issue you described. VB is not a really good way to do in depth testings especially for graphic issues.
How is that a “Graphics Issue???” There is a difference between “Not displaying anything” vs. “There is nothing in the cache.” Now that the cache has populated itself under Gnome, it shows when I open it under Unity.
@jaime-cruz GNOME Session isn’t present in Ubuntu Unity 20.04.1 (or even the earlier V4 version). I suspect you may be using an old version of Ubuntu Unity (before V4 or Ubuntu Unity 20.04.1) in the VM. I haven’t faced this issue in Ubuntu Unity 20.04.1. Also, the Snap Store (Ubuntu Software) has been removed in 20.04.1 (and has been replaced with GNOME Software, with Snap integration). I recommend you install Ubuntu Unity 20.04.1, since it doesn’t have GNOME Session, uses lightdm and has many bug fixes.
What I had done was install Ubuntu 20.04, and then installed unity-desktop from the unity7maintainers PPA. I did not install the Ubuntu Unity ISO you uploaded. That actually came along after I had already done my installation. I’ll give your ISO a try.
Seems to be a bug in libunityshell or in some compiz plugin.
Best way to replicate is to install joystick and run ffmvforce test (or real force feedback device if you have one plugged in), now the desktop crashes. Sometimes other programs (especially if they’re run with Wine) present this behavior. I’ve also tried on liveusb and on an Amd machine with the same result.
Somebody is having the same issue? Should I fill a bug report to Canonical? if so where?
Little update for anyone interested: after I found myself unable to understand how to run Unity when compiled from sources, I’ve decided to go for the horrible solution.
I’ve run a compiz instance, with gdb attached, in Xephy. Compiz crashes when in function unity::decoration::Window::Impl::ComputeShapedShadowQuad (_ZN5unity10decoration6Window4Impl23ComputeShapedShadowQuadEv nambled).
In file /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/compiz/libunityshell.so at symbol _ZN5unity10decoration6Window4Impl23ComputeShapedShadowQuadEv I’ve replaced the first instruction of with 0xc3, the opcode of retq on amd64, basically eliminating the logic to compute the shadow of a windows that uses the X shape extension.
Is it a terrible solution held together with tape? Yes. but at least the desktop doesn’t crash randomly anymore
Not sure where to post this. What distribution is recommended to install when I want Unity? Ubuntu Unity, or Ubuntu, and 20.04 or 20.10? If I go with UBuntu Unity, will I still be using Ubuntu’s repositories for everything but unity packages or how does it work?
Is 20.10 more broken than 20.04 or are they the same? It seems to me, reading through here, much more effort was put into making Unity work in 20.04, so that seems to be like the safer option?
Hey! Many thanks for your advice! I would not come up with such a solution by myself. My IDE triggers this crash for some reason. I filed a bug-report to launchpad, but it feels like nobody is gonna fix it. Moreover, Unity 7 seems to be abandoned in favor of Unity8 (or something else) at this point. I followed your advice and now everything works fine, at glance. So you saved my workflow! Thank you
When my Ubuntu 20.04 laptop wakes up from suspension, there is a warning that says “Could not switch the Monitor configuration, could not set the configuration for CRTC 441”.
This only happens in the unity session, not in gnome shell. I installed unity by installing ubuntu-unity-desktop and use lightdm instead of gdm
I have googled the issue but everything I found involves people having two graphic cards or two monitors, I have only one graphic card (Nvidia GTX 1070) and no external monitor is attached
$ xrandr -q
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 32767 x 32767
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-0 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm
1920x1080 60.02*+ 47.99
DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-4 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
$ lshw -C video
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: GP104BM [GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile]
vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
version: a1
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
resources: irq:140 memory:db000000-dbffffff memory:90000000-9fffffff memory:a0000000-a1ffffff ioport:e000(size=128) memory:c0000-dffff
Other than a mild annoyance when computer wakes up from suspension the message seems to be harmless as everything functions normally. graphic card is Nvidia GTX 1070 with Nividia driver 460
How can you change the GTK theme and the window decorations separately? gsettings doesn’t work.
Tried gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme Yaru-Dark & gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme Arc-Dark, but only the former works.
@YamiYukiSenpai Did you find (after logging out and logging in) that the title of the window is in the left (for non-CSD programs like nemo)? That indicates that the window manager theme has been changed (Yaru has it in the center of the titlebar).
