Show Desktop ICON

[Tommy Trussell]

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 5:49 PM, Jay Ridgley <jridgley2 at austin.rr.com>wrote:

> On 10/16/2013 03:22 AM, Colin Law wrote:
>
>> On 16 October 2013 04:45, Jay Ridgley <jridgley2 at austin.rr.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Folks,
>>>
>>> I do not know what I did but on one of my systems I have a green box
>>> shaped
>>> icon that displays "show desktop" when I hover my mouse over it. However
>>> I
>>> can not seem to activate it.
>>>
>>
>> Where are you seeing this icon?  Is it on the launcher (the column of
>> shortcuts on the left hand side of the screen) or somewhere else
>>
>
> It appears next to Menu on th top left portion of the screen, it has been
> an icon that looked like the Ubuntu wallpaper.
>
>
>
>>
>>> All my settings have gone away... I want themm back...
>>>
>>
>> What do you mean your settings have gone away?  What settings?
>>
>
> The window decorations on each of the windows, there are several incons
> missing or displayed incorrectly (such as the one for terminal).
>
> What has happened as far as I can tell various portions of the theme have
> changed from Ambiance, even though that is what is set as the theme. The
> buttons for minimize, maximize and close are a different shape and color. I
> have discovered others as well but am certain that they are all related to
> the proble I have outlined.
>
>
This sounds similar to something I see occasionally on this Ubuntu 12.04
system -- the window decorations will all disappear or distort, and the
launcher and top bar will disappear, though if I mouse around, sometimes
tooltips will pop up, but few of the controls are functional.

The only "cure" I have found is to log out and log in or reboot. I mouse
around to find the log out menu. When I cannot find a functional log out
menu, I press ctrl-alt-F1 to get to a console terminal VT1. I might issue
some ps commands to look at the processes, but I have never been able to
kill applications to make VT7 functional. Since I don't know any better I
usually just issue a sudo reboot and all will be well after the reboot.

It seems completely sporadic, and doesn't happen very often -- maybe once a
month or less. I have not yet found a pattern, but it usually seems to be
after a long session (several hours) after I have been away from the system
for awhile, so I would have just unlocked a blank screensaver screen with
my login credentials. This is a (mostly) stock Ubuntu 12.04 system with all
updates.

(I just looked and the only non-standard repository I'm connected to is a
LibreOffice PPA so I can be running LibreOffice 4.1.1.2. I don't believe I
have seen the issue since the most recent LibreOffice update, so on MY
system it could always be a conflict or bug with something in that
non-standard PPA.)
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