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

[TheGear]

First, thanks to Lenny for his answers in thread 1143, regarding changing screen resolution.

I want to make sure I'm seeing everything on the screen that I'm supposed to. My guess is that something is being truncated off the top and/or bottom. I haven't been able to accomplish useful work yet except via the terminal.

Here's what's on the screen when I log in:
     the Pine64 logo
     Computer
     Debian's home
     Trash

A couple of these are truncated on the left side by the edge of the screen. Nothing else. No menu bars, no shutdown buttons, nothing. Is this correct?

Similar to another person in thread 1143, my monitor does not have controls to allow adjusting width and height of the image.

Thanks for your help
Bill in SoFla

[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.

[HayseedGeek]

[...]

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

Brilliant! It never occurred to me that you could run a viewer locally, but it works like a charm. I usually VNC in from my laptop, but when I have a need to physically be in front of the system, this helps so much. Like the OP, currently my best HDMI option is a tv monitor with no overscan adjustment. 
Before, I ended up right clicking off the the top of the screen, selecting panel properties on the context menu that popped up, and setting the height to about 71, which at least allowed me to see the panel menus, but was less than ideal. Good stuff!