Workspaces missing in ubuntu 16.04. No appearance preference in settings.

Question

Recently installed ubuntu 16.04, and could not find a way to enable workspaces. There is no option called appearance in my settings

Solution 1

Hi i figured out what to do in this case. I did a

sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop

and it came back. But while doing this some of the unwanted softwares that in uninstalled earlier also came back (like thunderbird, libreoffice math etc)

Solution 2

This did the trick for me:

sudo apt install unity-control-center

For some reason i had previously installed gnome-control-center

They look almost identical, but the "Appearance" icon is missing.

Comments

[Cbhihe]

It is possible that in removing some (of those ?) packages eralier, you also accidentally got rid of some dependencies related to the settings which were missing. Look out for all the dependencies affected by purging or removing certain bundled packages if you insist on removing them.

[screenslaver]

i only uninstalled thunderbird, libreoffice math, stock browser, gedit and the default music and video players.

[Cbhihe]

"Only" ??? Hahaha ! We'd have to propose a new logarithmic (open) scale going from "none" to "very many" just for you. What you removed was a lot.

[screenslaver]

really! I thought all of these are third party stuffs, so no direct interaction with the OS

[doug]

You somehow caused unity-control-center to be removed, what's in your screenshot is gnome-control-center. Next time pay closer attention and or use synaptic so you can easily parse your history & see what was done.