I came home today to my desktop looking like this (look at the top panel):

You can’t even tell there is a panel there in the screenshot, click for full view.

A normal panel should look like:

I unlocked the Firefox icon so I was able to move it around, I moved the panel to the side just to check, I added a new panel to the top and clicked properties, but no joy on re-adding the Applications / Places / System drop down menus. I’ve played with the menu settings, and you can add specific programs to the panel, but I haven’t found the menu settings.

I’ll have to reach out to the Ubuntu community and figure this one out. Gotta love that a 1 year old can remove it with a few clicks, and it stumps me.

Update about 5 minutes later: To reinforce the discussion Novell gave at the recent GUADEC, there are some usability issues in GNOME, this being one of them. Right click on the panel, click add to panel and choose “Menu Bar – a custom menu bar”. What’s so custom about it? It’s the default panel menu option in GNOME – it’s not custom at all.

At least it’s back.