switching to classic mode does not stop launcher

This is fixed in the latest desktop-switcher 0.4.3 package. It was trying to kill the wrong launcher!

Fix released to Ubuntu.

I installed Jaunty UNR a while back, then just upgraded to Karmic RC last night, using "update-manager -d" as described at http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/910overview.

I am seeing this issue; when in netbook mode, I switch to classic mode, and what I presume is the launcher window (standard "menu" of icons to launch apps in netbook mode) is still visible, and operational. However, the forced-maximization luckily isn't active.

I have desktop-switcher 0.5.8-0ubuntu2. Which package version contains the fix mentioned above?

Actually, it seems that forced-maximization is still active in classic mode. For some reason, it's applying for firefox and evolution, but not a gnome-terminal window...

We recommend not using desktop-switcher anymore; this was only provided to accommodate for poorly supported graphics cards. In karmic+1 we should provide a different mean of switching between the two types of sessions.

That's a surprising response. I'm curious how desktop-switcher is related to graphics drivers?

Anyway, a) Is there an already existing alternative to desktop-switcher? b) Any idea how to get the netbook desktop back; I'm basically stuck in classic mode now, or random cross between classic and netbook mode. c) If desktop-switcher shouldn't be used, perhaps it should be pulled from the repositories?

Relation with graphics drivers: UNR's launcher uses Clutter which requires a working OpenGL stack; this used to be rare, but is nowadays common. The classic desktop doesn't require GL support in anyway (falls back from compiz to metacity for window management if no GL present) which is why desktop-switcher was shipped to allow this last resort option of using a classic desktop when GL wasn't working.

Getting back to netbook mode > short of wiping all your settings (rm -rf ~/.gconf), there's no definitive way to recover from any situation; sorry.

Removing from repos > we certainly will, but we were hoping to fix the ugliest issues before release but didn't manage to; removing it from the repos wouldn't remove it from your computer, but I agree we could force the removal in some other way.

Thanks for the info. Removing all of ~/.gconf seemed a little drastic. I removed the following which seems to have done enough to be useful:

rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/gnome-settings*
rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/panel
rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/maximums
Maybe one other.

logged out & back in & things look good.