What should I see on login? (Missing stuff, I think)

[MarkHaysHarris777]

There is supposed to be tool bar(s) one at the top, and one at the bottom; menus on the far left, and notifications at the top far right, with the screen splitter at the bottom far right and the open apps on the bottom far left.

There is a way around all of this mess, with your monitor. Use VNC locally.

... the technique is basically this: setup Xorg (an X server) which is truncated (but we don't care) and then display your local VNC session on your local X server. How does this help ? ... glad you asked.

When you start a local VNC session you can determine its geometry (width and height) precisely, and you can display that VNC session (with or without a window manager) anywhere on the X server display. It will look great, it will be fast because its not going across the network, and you won't have to purchase a new monitor.

A geometry of 1366x768 is a good place to start at 10 10; then experiment with it from there. See the VNC info for details. If you think it would help, I can post a sticky how-to on the display page.