I have a problem with unity that took me one day to approximatively solve. Approximatively means that it is not convenient and I need to fully fix the problem.
I have bought a viper computer. I installed Ubuntu 14.04. Everything went fine, though I had to install proprietary drivers to have a stable display (otherwise after 5 to 10 minutes the display start to show unreadable things.)
Last Thursday, I ran the (security) update and afterward (on Friday) unity didn't start anymore. I switched to Alt+Ctrl+F1 terminal and tried many things, I also googled my problem.
For instance,
dconf reset -f /org/compiz/ && setsid unity
but this doesn't work (first error is asking for a display, so even running
export DISPLAY=:0 before, it gives another error whose content seems to be put in the .Xauthority file of the home folder)
I finally noticed that removing the ~/.Xauthority file and then running a gnome desktop afterward solve partially the problem. I can start unity and recover my usual desktop.
But after each restart my unity desktop still doesn't start and I have to start the gnome desktop.
What is happening with my unity ? Will I manage to have a stable desktop? (It is a professional computer I need something very stable)
Note: I checked with ccsm, unity is activated.
~/.config/compiz-1directory (as suggested in achiang's and dome cs's answers to Unity doesn't load, no Launcher, no Dash appears)? Did you try installing Unity Tweak Tool and runningunity-tweak-tool --reset-unity? If neither of these other possible solutions work (or for some reason you cannot or strongly prefer not to attempt them), I recommend [edit]ing your post with details. (And if one does fix it, great!) – Eliah Kagan Oct 20 '14 at 01:11