[plug] GNOME help please

[Jim Householder]

Hi

I'm trying GNOME 2.6 for a while but am having difficulty configuring it.  The documentation indicates I should have a panel at the top of the screen with configuration options.  Not there.  It mentions Applications - Configure Desktop.  There is no 'Configure Desktop' anywhere.

Nautilus is supposed to have a side pane.  Not there, and the View menu has no reference to side panes even though the help file says there should be.

Shortcut keys to work with panels do not work.  I cannot find any way to configure the panel at the bottom of the screen short of hacking some text files (which I'm reluctant to do).

Do I have a crippled or deliberately restricted version or is something missing?

I'm using a fresh install of MDK 10.1 Official.  When installing, I selected everything in the left column (games, development, documentation, etc) except the last (LS?), and selected individual packages.  I added a few things but deleted none.  GNOME was the only gui selected.

I kept my previous /home partition.  However I've tried deleting the configuration files in my home directory so that fresh ones would be installed.  No change

I really would like to give GNOME a go, but if I don't make progress soon I will have to go back to KDE.

TIA
Jim