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I'm using Unity 7.5.0 with Ubuntu 17.10, is there a way to enable Grid workspaces ?

What I have tried:

  • Unity Tweak Tool -> Workspace Settings. Changing the number of workspaces here have no effect.
  • Compiz config -> Desktop Size. This has no effect either.
  • Also, no Appearance menu in Settings screen (it looks like this)
FlyingPumba
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  • Have you had a look at this ? – Robert Riedl Feb 04 '18 at 19:35
  • @RobertRiedl Sadly Gnome3 did not work for me. I had to switch to Unity because when I upgraded from 17.04 gdm login screen was broken. – FlyingPumba Feb 04 '18 at 19:39
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    pity, have you tried to completely remove all gnome packages and install them again ? I'm sure there are some howtos on here for that. Thats not really an answer, but that shouldn't impact your Unity setup. – Robert Riedl Feb 04 '18 at 20:17
  • Thanks, I'll try your suggestion. I have already uninstalled gnome, so it shouldn't be that hard to purge the remaining packages and install gnome all together again. – FlyingPumba Feb 04 '18 at 21:32
  • Have you tried this? – Elder Geek Feb 05 '18 at 18:35
  • @ElderGeek I have a different Settings screen, no Appearance menu. here is what it looks like. – FlyingPumba Feb 05 '18 at 19:04
  • I'm using unity no real issue in 18.04-dev, previously was in 17.10. What your are showing for System Settings is not unity-control-center, it's gnome-control-center Are you sure you are actually logging into a unity session? (one must reboot after installing unity to get it with gdm3) If so what does unity-control-center produce if run in a terminal. Also what does this return? env |grep DESKTOP 1st 3 lines should show unity in them – doug Feb 05 '18 at 20:50
  • @doug I didn't know that. Running unity-control-center shows an almost empty settings screen: image. Running env | grep DESKTOP yields: DESKTOP_AUTOSTART_ID=10460160173ff2b27151785420132590700000014790008 DESKTOP_SESSION=ubuntu XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP=ubuntu XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=ubuntu:GNOME GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID=this-is-deprecated

    I'm starting to think something is not quite right in my configuration :)

     – FlyingPumba Feb 05 '18 at 22:21
  • you are not running a unity session,i.e. DESKTOP_SESSION=ubuntu That should say "DESKTOP_SESSION=unity" Did you reboot yet after installing unity?? Then at greeter click on cog wheel > unity – doug Feb 05 '18 at 22:25
  • @doug I think you were right, but I had rebooted several times already. What finally "fixed" it was choosing "Unity" on the cog wheel as you pointed out. With this, unity settings and unity-tweak-tool started working just fine. I' m removing this question since it seems there was something really missconfigured on my setup. – FlyingPumba Feb 06 '18 at 03:33
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    For the best unity experience in 17.10/18.04 one should switch to lightdm vs. gdm3. There are also a few minor issues in the unity session, for 18.04 there will be at least 2 ppa's (one mine) to help deal with these.. – doug Feb 06 '18 at 13:32
  • Mr. Pumba, I don't think you can remove a question with a bounty on it. Perhaps we should encourage @doug to write an answer which you can accept? – WinEunuuchs2Unix Feb 07 '18 at 02:58
  • @WinEunuuchs2Unix Sure! I would be glad to accept an answer from doug. – FlyingPumba Feb 07 '18 at 16:37

1 Answers1

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Installing & using a unity session in 17.10

This is generally quite simple, just go

sudo apt install unity

When done you must reboot, when back at the login screen click on little cog wheel to dropdown session choices & choose unity.

If auto logging in then after the reboot just log out, at the login screen expose the dropdown & choose unity.

Once chosen unity will then become your default login.

To get the best unity session experience one should use lightdm instead of gdm3, to do that simply

sudo apt install lightdm

At the conf prompt choose lightdm, reboot.

If not intending to use gnome-shell after switching to lightdm feel free to remove gdm3 & gnome-shell, i.e. sudo apt purge gdm3 gnome-shell

There are some minor issues, most will be fixed or worked around for 18.04 but not for 17.10. As one example alt+print will not work to screenshot a window. The current workaround is this, (I've 'fixed' it in 18.04 via compiz & gnome-settings-daemon but hoping for more direct fix) - 

press and hold Print Screen
press and hold Alt
release Print Screen (and then Alt)

Also if not getting onscreen notifications make sure notify-osd is installed,

sudo apt install notify-osd

doug
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    added something about the notify-osd package as not sure it's included in 17.10, maybe not.. – doug Feb 07 '18 at 18:08