gnome panel

just checked my zorin os you actually removed the gnome panel or never installed it very unsave method It should be done this way so you still have access to get to it if awn crashes also noticed under gconfig there is no desktop/gnome/session/required_components
doesn't exist

How to remove GNOME panel (it’s not to remove gnome-panel package)

Removing the last panel isn’t possible, and as long as the panel is running as Gnome component it will automatically spawn back if you try to kill it.

So, if you want to remove the Gnome-panel from your desktop you need to start gconf-editor and then remove “panel” from the list in desktop/gnome/session/required_components list (and perhaps also unset the desktop/gnome/session/required_components/panel -key).

But if you are planning to just run some other panel or dock instead it would make sense the leave the panel in the session components, and then just set the desktop/gnome/session/required_components/panel to use whatever program you are planning to run. This would automatically start that app for you and also autospawn it back if it crashes or is killed.

Also note that if you disable Gnome-panel you will loose the Alt-F2 Run dialog as well, so make sure you have some other way to start applications that the Run dialog and panel menus.. If you want similar functionality without running the Gnome-panel Gmrun is a nice app for the purpose, just set Alt-F2 as keyboard shortcut to launch it. This is not the prefered method. Why not simply keep the panel and place it on top bar with autohide

yes should have used yellow instead just highlighted to show that there was a better way