Bdtyktl

Few days ago I erroneously run the command unity within XFCE. As expectable, what happened was that Unity started (it's a Ubuntu XFCE).

I hoped to solve the problem by just restarting the device, but, at the startup, unfortunately:

• I lost the title bar of every window (the one containing also the minimizing, maximizing and closing window buttons)




• It is like if my session was automatically saved, because now every time I log in I got the same configuration I haved at that time (3 terminals opened, firefox and thunar)




• Plus, doing atl-f4 was not working for closing the programs opened.

I found out that xfwm4 reset the title bar, and I was then able to either close the windows by pushing the small "x" button on the top bar or by doing the shortcut atl-f4.

What did unity command exactly screw up on my XFCE environment? The problem is still there, since everytime I log in, I still face the same 3 above-mentioned problems.

Thanks

Well, if you don't use Unity then you can completely uninstall it. Just run this shell supercommand:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get check && sudo apt-get purge unity -y && sudo apt-get autoremove -y && sudo apt-get clean && rm -rf ~/.unity ~/.local/share/unity && sudo telinit 6

After your system reboots, at the login window make sure that at the right top corner the section selected is Xubuntu (if you're not in XUbuntu, select the Xfce option). Once you've done it, login and check if now everything's ok or still messed up.

If your XFCE environment is still messed up, go back to the shell terminal and then:

• 
  

  To access the windows' config manager (in order to try to fix the title bar problem), run this:

  
  
  

  xfwm4-settings
  
  

  
  


• 
  

  To access the XFCE session settings (in order to try to fix the problem with the "resilient" session config), run this:

  
  
  

  xfce4-session-settings
  
  

  
  

...and then restart your system.

If the problem persists, the easiest workaround is to quit the XFCE panel (xfce4-panel), kill XFCE's configuration daemon (xfconfd), delete your customized XFCE panel settings and then restart the system. This is the shell supercommand that does it all:

xfce4-panel -q ; sudo pkill xfconfd ; rm -rf ~/.config/xfce4/panel ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-panel.xml ; sudo telinit 6

After this, your XFCE interface will be restored to its defaults and you'll thus have to redo your interface customizations, but the normal behavior of the interface will be back, too.

PS: I use XUbuntu. When you install it, it doesn't pre-install Unity. If you're using XUbuntu it's weird that Unity's installed: it shouldn't be. Hence, it's safe to completely remove Unity.