Update Deleting Minimize/Maximize/Close Icons on the top right corner of windows

[Vincent Trouilliez]

Harold Sawyer <hrsawyer at comcast.net> wrote:
> Has anyone else been plagued by the loss of the three window control 
> icons on the top right hand corner?

No.

> This has caused me a great deal of grief as my family is quite computer 
> illiterate and no longer can figure out how to quickly shut windows 
> down.  All of the several clicks that is now necessary make using Ubuntu 
> a pain for everyone.
> 
> Is this a general Linux problem at this time or only with our flavor?

Neither.

The only way I can see for buttons to disappear from the window title,
is that the window manager has been configured to do so, since Metacity
provides Gconf options to rearrange these buttons in the order you
want, or indeed (I just tried it to check), remove one or more buttons
altogether.
The Gconf key is at apps->metacity->general, key is called
"button_layout". By default, it should be set to:

"menu:minimize,maximize,close"

To start the Gconf editor, press Alt+F2 to open up the Run dialog, and
type "gconf-editor".

Other possibility, is that you activated the 3D desktop effects.
Everytime I do that, some bug causes the window manager to not start at
all, so of course I don't get any button, that goes without saying ! ;-)

HTH

BTW, your request would have been much more at home on the ubuntu-users
list, not sounder.

Regards,

--
Vince