Installing and uninstalling unity destroyed my desktop

[Darxus]

Binary package hint: unity

Ran "aptitude install unity".
Logged out, logged back in.
Tried unity.
Ran "aptitude remove unity".
Logged out, logged back in.

Got nothing but an entirely white screen and a mouse.

My login screen doesn't have any way to select a desktop interface, so I assume it's still defaulting to unity while unity is not installed.

I noticed "aptitude remove unity" only removed the unity package, and not the dependencies that got installed with it.

I was able to get a terminal with ctrl-alt-t, and run compiz and gnome-panel, which gets me a mostly functional desktop. Only thing weird with it so far is my tasks aren't showing up on the panel. And it failed back to metacity instead of actually using compiz.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: unity (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-23.41-generic 2.6.35.7
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-23-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Dec 9 13:08:38 2010
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity

[Darxus (darxus)]

Yup, it was still defaulting to unity ("ubuntu netbook edition"). Switching back to gnome fixed everything, and it then it continued defaulting to gnome.

I discovered after I enter my username I get the option to select my desktop.

So I guess the problem is primarily continuing to default to unity after the unity package is removed.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Darxus, please try re-installing it, running ccsm, and enabling the
Unity plugin?

[Darxus (darxus)]

Mark, I'm unclear what you're requesting since this report was for a maverick install, and I believe there is no unity plugin for compiz for maverick.

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

@Darxus: right, the session is defined in unity-netbook-default-settings which change the default session once installed. However, once installed, the default session is considered as "customized" by the user, and as you still have the session file, it tries to still launch mutter and unity.

What you can do for this is to select the "Ubuntu Desktop Edition" in gdm once you enter your username as you stated. This will be fixed tomorrow in Natty as I'll upload a new session system and so, defaulting to the a traditional if unity isn't installed will then be possible.

I'll mark it as fixed then.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Ah, sorry Darxus, I thought you were reporting the issue on Natty.