Broken taskbar and desktop issue Zorin OS Lite

[LinuxPenguin]

Hello all,

When I turned on my computer today, I noticed that all of the dock/taskbar (not sure what it is officially called; it’s the bar spanning the bottom of the screen) icons were gone (except for the start menu and the Sound/Wifi/Clock at the far right). Open applications also did not show on the taskbar. I was able to get open windows showing on the taskbar by changing the panel settings, but I could not get it back to its original look. I also worry something is broken with the desktop, as I cannot change the Layout of the desktop in the “Zorin Appearance” app (there’s just white space below the “Layout” title). There should be a dot below applications that are open but with minimized windows, and the open application that I am using should have a line underneath the application icon. I still had the original installer USB, so I booted from the USB (and the taskbar worked as expected) and found that I was missing this thing called “Dockbar X,” but I cannot find a version of it for Zorin OS. I installed a version from GitHub, but it didn’t work. However, my main concern is the fact that I cannot change the desktop layout. Is there any way to reset this or will I have to reinstall the OS? I am using Zorin OS Lite 15.3.

[carmar]

Hi, LinuxPenguin.
Can you do a Search for “zorin-appearance” (without quotes) in Synaptic Package Manager (SPM)? Then right click on it, Mark For Reinstallation, and then click Apply.
If you don’t have SPM in your System Tools sub-menu, press ctrl+alt+t and in the terminal window type sudo apt install synaptic

[LinuxPenguin]

Hello carmar,

Thank you for the info, but that unfortunately did not work. I installed SPM and I re-installed Zorin Appearance. I then restarted the machine, but nothing changed; I still could not change the Layout of the desktop. What would you suggest doing next?

[Aravisian]

There seems to be an influx of Panel issues as of late:

Panel changes color minor bug

So it goes like this. I’ve had the PC up, the screen eventually locks, later I unlock it, and the panel is dark. As seen in pic 1. [DeepinScreenshot_Desktop_20201010150213] I can’t quite tell you what’s next but if you quit the open app, either the color changes or the transparency increases. As in pic 2. [DeepinScreenshot_select-area_20201010155936] Possibly related – once when it came out of sleep the darker browser window bled into the right hand side of the panel. I was playing a v…

System panel icons missing after log-in back from lock-screen

<<REWIND! Can we establish how you downloaded the iso, whether any Download Accelerator Manager was used and that you checked the SHA/md5 sum before creating installation media?

Taskbar moving up on its own after screenlock

You are saying that your panel jumps to the top and remains there after unlocking the screen, correct? Is this top-placed panel identical to the normal bottom panel? Does it contain the Zorin App Menu and all the applets you normally have?

Some of the above had me suspect a change in Gnome-Shell. However, Zorin OS Lite does not use Gnome-Shell.

Dockbarx is in the repository as the following packages:
dockbarx - 0.93+git20190103-1~ppa3+zorin1
dockbarx-theme-zorin - 1.1.0
dockbarx-themes-extra - 2.1-1~2

I do not know if it is involved- I have had no trouble but I am not using Gnome or XFCE at this point,but Cinnamon on Zorin. And my first act upon install of Zorin OS is always to remove dockbarx.

[carmar]

LP, that is all I can suggest.
Aravisian is not only more versed in troubleshooting but also runs Lite (I run Core). Further, I don’t have dockbarx installed on my machine. Given those two, if you haven’t already removed dockbarx (as he recommends), then you can try that (also through SPM).

[LinuxPenguin]

Thank you for the information. Weird that other people are experiencing issues with the taskbar. Anyways, I will try installing those packages. Are they in the apt repository or do I use Synaptic Package Manager? If that does not work, then is there any other sort of window/application manager thing you would recommend? I don’t mind resetting the computer since there’s barely anything on its hard drive, but I worry about that issue popping up again later on down the line.

Thanks again for the help; I will see if it works out.

[JohnnyHart]

Mine was core

[Aravisian]

@LinuxPenguin

Are they in the apt repository or do I use Synaptic Package Manager?

Yes, you can use terminal or Synaptic. Synaptic relies on your sources list in the same manner as APT does.
Zorin OS comes with all the Zorin Repos added. So, either installation method will see them.

That aside, I have no idea of the cause.
Until your thread, I was examining exclusively code in Gnome-Shell (With no results as of yet) wondering of that was where the fault is.

@JohnnyHart

Mine was core

I believe tan10vir is also using Core (Gnome).
So either coincidence or something outside of gnome or XFCE is affecting panels on both…
Another post:

Panel changes color minor bug

Understandable that you do not need help fixing, but you may be able to help diagnose or lead to a fix. I do not use Gnome and have not for a while, now. But, this effect seems similar to that of Dynamic Panel Transparency, a Gnome-Extension that is for gtk 3.22 and up. (XFCE has a similar version: xfce4-panel-auto-opaque.) Whether or not Zorin uses either - I have no idea. I looked but did not find anything. In my mind, it would make sense for a distro to use similar features on two variants…

For XFCE users that experience panel issues on login or unlock, you might avoid having to restart by hitting alt+F2 and entering in “xfce4-panel --restart” without quotes.
Gnome users may be able to with alt+F2 and entering in “r” without quotes to restart the gnome-shell.

[LinuxPenguin]

Thank you all for the help, but unfortunately I could not find all of the packages. I decided to switch to Zorin OS Core, since my computer is already quite overkill for the Lite version (Xeon E5-2680 V4, AMD FirePro S10000 12GB), and I felt that it would be best for me to use the Core verison. The taskbar now functions as intended.