I’ll have more time to help this evening, right now I’m getting ready for company and the floor doesn’t vacuum itself.
In the meantime, you might go ahead and install the XFCE4 desktop. You can run XFCE concurrently with your current setup; you don’t have to uninstall Gnome3 or Cinnamon or reinstall Mint. Go into your package manager and install:
xfce4
xfce4-goodies
xfce4-panel — is probably already going to automatically install along with xfce4
Or you can go into your terminal and type:
sudo apt-get install xfce4 xfce4-panel xfce4-goodies
Next logout and log back into the startup screen. You can choose what desktop you want to run by clicking the little gears icon on the login box. Choose XFCE and you’re good to go.
XFCE is the new favorite with people who want a minimal environment. You can have different widgets or not, and even running every feature will still leave your system much faster than under Gnome3/Cinnamon.
“If this was DOS, I would be SO happy I knew what other people don’t.. and feel real smart.. sadly.. I am on the side of the ‘unknowledged’ people now :/ “
If you want a true, bare-to-the-bones lightning-speed System of Coolness, take a look at:
Awesome Window Manager
http://awesome.naquadah.org/
Xmonad
http://xmonad.org/
Awesome-WM and Xmonad are designed to be 100% Pure Coolness for people who run multiple monitors. They don’t have moveable windows that you drag, instead they are keyboard-based. Programmers who use these are so much more productive than using graphical managers. You still have a mouse, but you don’t use the mouse to switch windows... it is a real time-saver.
Benefits:
* Completely customizable — Search http://images.google.com for ‘Awesome WM’ and Xmonad and you’ll get a sense of the power and flexibility of these managers. You can have all the settings just like you like them.
* Unbelievably fast — Their tiny size means your computer runs lightning fast. They are on almost as you hit the return button to login.
* Very stable — Since their codebases are so small and rarely change, you don’t have the graphical hiccups like what you are facing now. They JUST WORK.
Cons:
* Pretty steep learning curve — They are very different from a graphical environment. If you’re used to clicking windows and dragging, it’s a big step.
* You customize by making changes to a settings file — This is a good thing. They let you make whatever changes you want, and those changes will rarely have to be changed when you upgrade.
Xmonad reads a file in Haskell, and Awesome-Wm reads a file in Lua. Lua is said to be the easier of the two for a beginner to understand, but Xmonad has many fans. Supposedly a beginner doesn’t have to know Lua or Haskell to make changes, you just copy and paste code into the file to make your customizations.
I wanted to get into one of them a few months ago, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance. I’d like to adopt one of the two within the next few months, but right now my XFCE is running nice and I have other things to do. And I have only one monitor so it isn’t that big of a deal.
These lightweight window managers really shine when you have multiple monitors. They are capable of having not only two monitors, you can have as many as you want and you will have no problems with them. You can have 8 or more monitors and assign certain programs to run on specific monitors in just the right part of the screen.
For now give XFCE a try. This multiple panel problem you’re having sounds like a bug.
Wait, I just searched Google for: Ubuntu multiple panels — and I found something:
[gnome] Multiple empty top panels - Ubuntu Forums — http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1873528
They are having the same problem you are, multiple panels when a second monitor is active. The responder says “You can remove them with Alt+Rt Click”.
I’ll check back in tonight; right now I need to get back to house cleaning...