how to restore netbook to desktop appearance

[tomcloyd]

I've searched everywhere for the answer to this - a rare but nasty problem with an easy solution which I cannot find.

I just did a packages update on my netbook, in preparation for upgrade to 14.10. It asked for a system reboot. When the OS came up, it had defaulted to that special netbook interface - which I detest. It can be turned off or reset in System Settings so my netbook once again looks like my desktop (OR updates could just leave my settings along, but that would make too much sense). I cannot locate how to do this.

Can someone please give a clue on this?

Thanks.

[kubicle]

Right-click on desktop and choose desktop settings in the menu. Change your layout in the layout dropdown menu (you may need to unlock widgets to be able to change the layout).

[tomcloyd]

Right-click on desktop and choose desktop settings in the menu. Change your layout in the layout dropdown menu (you may need to unlock widgets to be able to change the layout).

Arrrgh! This is nuts. I'm not quitegetting it fixed.

My situation: I have a taskbar across the top of the screen - this is standard for the netbook default interface. AND I have the usual desktop taskbar on the bottom. I want the latter, but not the former. And I do NOT want a screen splattered with assorted icons, which the netbook interface insists on giving me. Selecting the newspaper layout fixed the icons mess. But I cannot get that taskbar strip across the top of the screen to go away. Netbook screen space is to precious to allow it to be there when is serves no purpose AND I had previous had it removed.

Any idea what I need to do?

Thanks!

[kubicle]

For the normal desktop layout, you should choose the "default desktop" layout (if you do not have that as an option, check that package "plasma-desktop" is installed). If you have more panels (task bars) that you need, you can remove them by right-clicking on a panel (when widgets are unlocked).

If I have misunderstood the problem, please post a screenshot your desktop.

[tomcloyd]

Sorry to be slow responding; got back as quickly as I could.

Plasma-desktop is installed, but I have no option via R-click menu to choose any layout at all. Something's wrong with the windowing system, I'm guessing.

Your suggestion about plasma-desktop helped me recall something I could not previously remember: In System Settings > Workshop Appearance and Behavior > Workspace Behavior > Workspace is a workspace type option - desktop or laptop. I checked this, thinking it might have been reset by the security upgrade with caused this problem I'm having (I assume), but it was already set to desktop.

But that's not what I'm seeing. I'm seeing that goofy laptop GUI which I do NOT want. So, I thought to set it to laptop, so I could reset it to desktop, in the hope that that might improve the situation. It made things worse. Now I no longer have the standard desktop taskbar which I usually have on my netbook. I previously removed everything I could from the laptop taskbar that is sitting at the top of the window (yes I did have BOTH taskbars!).

So at this point, I could do very little. I did have a "run command" option, and used it run Konsole, but the maximized widow was too large and I had to resize to default size (?) to close it. Broken broken broken.

At this point I finally got a notification popping up that told me that there was a new version (14.10) of the OS available - my netbook is always notified of this late. Thinking that installing this would solve my problem, I searched for how to download and install a Kubuntu OS upgrade from a command line, and found this:

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

Didn't seem to do anything. Further searching led me to https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...m-command-line

There, James147 suggested that this should "update your system to the latest version, fix any broken packages then reinstall the packages needed by kubuntu":

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install -f
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

Nope. No go. James147 had another suggestion:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -a

That led to a bunch of text screens, with options, and I took all the defaults.

Finally, that terminated with: /usr/bin/dpkg-reconfigure: initramfs-tools is broken or not fully installed.

At this point I so far in over my head I have no idea where I am.

I'm going to try to download the 14.10 image so I can burn an installation disk and just install from that. Don't know what else to do, and I cannot afford to spend a lot of time trying to fix this.

UPDATE: I got systemsettings launched from the command line, reset with workspace to desktop (which restored the netbook GUI, not the desktop GUI), and rebooted...back to the netbook GUI. I'm still going to try to burn a 14.10 installation disk, as I can use it on my desktop, too.