14 DAY TRIAL // If you noticed that your Unity panel in Ubuntu 13.10 was freezing constantly, here is a solution that will provide a temporary workaround.
Long before the release of the stable version of Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander), a problem with the Unity panel plagued the distribution. I hoped that it would be fixed in time, but the problem lingers.
The Unity panel is the one that holds all the indicators and menus for the opened applications. When using Ubuntu 13.10 for a few hours, the panel would freeze, along with the dash button.
The menus would not change according to the applications that had focus, and it became downright annoying when I couldn't even shutdown the computer without opening the terminal.
The solution is very simple. You will need to restart compiz. To do this, you will need to open a terminal and enter the following commands:
sudo apt-get install dconf-tools dconf reset -f /org/compiz/ setsid unity
compiz will restart. You might have to resize the Unity icons again, but that's a minor inconvenience. You can now continue to enjoy Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander).