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Yes, this is a noob question, but that's how bad I am at navigating in Unity.

I have Ubuntu 12.04 and I have XBMC to start directly at login (the machine is used primarily as my media player), and to respawn when it crashes/is stopped (this explains how, if that matters). What I am unable to figure out is how to get access to the Unity desktop. Is there not a keyboard shortcut I can use or something?

There must be some way to do it, since if I attach a USB drive to the machine, for example, it mounts, I get a window popping up and THEN I can access the Unity panel, and I can alt+tab my way back and forth between XBMC and that window. But as soon as I close it, I cannot get back to accessing Unity panel (and its GUI functions).

So my question, more specifically, is if there is a way to put XBMC in the background or something so that I may access the Unity desktop. Or another good way around the problem.

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Nick The Swede
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    Try pressing backslash / to toggle windowed mode. In windowed mode, you should be able to access other windows with alt+tab. – Smile4ever Sep 26 '14 at 13:36
  • Thanks, that did not work, but it got me playing around with other options I was not sure I had tried out, and suddenly I found a way! (See answer) – Nick The Swede Sep 26 '14 at 13:48

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Thanks to @Smile4ever and the excessive key-pushing his suggestion induced in me, I found a solution: simply pressing AltGr made the trick! Then I suddenly enter the Unity GUI. Where it wants me to enter a command, admittedly, but that does not matter, since I can now access the desktop, minimise XBMC or do whatever I want.

One headache less for me -- having to insert an external disk in the machine every time I wanted to access the Unity GUI did not really strike me as the most sleek solution.

Nick The Swede
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