Help Desk Geek – Help Desk Tips For IT Pros

Once Ubuntu moved from the classic GNOME desktop to its own Unity Desktop, a lot of things changed by necessity.  Among them is the fact that the standard menu bar is no longer available (unless you drop back into the very basic Classic experience).  This means you need to use the Unity Launcher in order to access any of your applications or control panels, unless they’re already on the Unity dock.

Thanks to a handy Indicator applet, however, you can get all the functionality of the standard menu bar, albeit in a slightly different location.  Here’s how it works.

First, go ahead and open your Terminal.  If you already have it in the Unity dock, go ahead and click the Terminal icon.  Otherwise, open the Unity launcher, then search for and open the Terminal.

Now, add the personal package archive (PPA) to your sources list with the following command:

Once you’ve added the PPA, we’ll need to make sure our package managers know about the new PPA, so we’ll use the following command to update our list of available software.

Once this is done, we can easily install the ClassicMenu Indicator with a single command.

Launching the ClassicMenu Indicator is as simple as searching for it in the Unity launcher.

Once launched, a new icon will appear in our Indicator applet.  It won’t be on the left side of the screen as the menu bar as traditionally been, but it’s set up in the same fashion, with all your application categories, followed by a link to the Software Center, and finally the different preferences areas.

That should be all you need to do.  The next time you start your system, the menu should be just where you left it.  To double check this, launch the Startup Applications control panel.

If all went well, there should already be an entry for it, as shown below.  If not, you can create an entry on your own.

And that’s it.  As mentioned, this won’t give you the exact same experience as the traditional GNOME desktop provided, but it’s a nearly identical menu configuration.  While this probably isn’t the best way to get to know and understand the new Unity desktop, it’s a nice measure to ensure at least a bit of familiarity while new ways of launching programs and dealing with documents are learned.