Huh! I lost my panel last night when I tried to uninstall some of my unused application. And after rebooting my dreaded laptop (Thinkpad R51), boom! No panel at all. What I did was:
- Press Ctrl+Alt+F1-F6 (F1 used) to go to the terminal
- michaelm$ sudo apt-get install -y gnome-panel
- michaelm$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
- After that I rebooted my laptop. Bingo! My panel is back!
Now checking, I also removed this component: evolution-data-server-common
Anyway, its there already, and using it!