I can't find the workspace switcher and the bottom panel won't display hidden windows.

Here is how it started: I was working away when all of a sudden everything on my desktop slides left into oblivion.

I am not a programmer so please don't talk techspeak to me as that will only frustrate me further but I do know that my operating system is the Debian Ubuntu version of Linux. I speculate that when the upgrade from 9 to 11 that Ubuntu forced down my throat took away my old word processor (which worked perfectly well and I was happy with it) and stuck me with something called LibreOffice Writer that this new word processor is the source of the problem. It has a low capacity because it is constantly giving error messages about document recovery. Before I lost my normal desktop, one of these recovery problems was occurring.

I am a writer and nothing infuriates a writer more than bad word processing software. LibreOffice Writer also can lock up a thumb drive and render it useless but I have discovered ways to work around that. But I need my bottom panel back functioning and identifying minimized windows. Right now I cannot minimize anything because if I do, it is gone forever. This makes for a crowded desktop and extreme inconvenience to the point that I cannot work.

How do I get minimized and hidden windows to show on the bottom panel? Nothing in system preferences or administration helps and the Ubuntu website is all full of indecipherable unhelpful techspeak but no live humans to answer questions.

I can't be the only one who has had this problem.

LibreOffice is nearly identical to OpenOffice. When Oracle bought Sun they made it real hard for the people working on OpenOffice so they forked and became Libreoffice. Open office installers are available here. I believe your problem is more to do with the new desktop environment in Ubuntu 11.10 and not Libreoffice. I like you did not feel that Unity worked with the way I work so I switched to Xubuntu using the XFC desktop. The Unity desktop messes with windowing in many programs I had problems in LibreOffice and Gimp. If you switch you will need to backup your home directory remember to show hidden files when pulling the backup and reloading your data. I like Xubuntu I did install evolution and uninstall Thunderbird but other than that I found it to be a good desktop.