Gewtting Unity (or the Panel) to start

For some reason my installation of Ubuntu 11.04 is messed up and Unity doesn't start automatically. I can't find what command I need to start it nor how to make it start at boot time. (Running

unity

in a terminal gives some output but no GUI.)

What can I do? I'd be happy to go back to gnome-panel if that's easier, but not having any way to see what windows are active or start applications easily is getting to be a pain,

You can try Unity-2D, it's a full version without 3D effects.

Try to update Unity with these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-desktop/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Then reboot your system. Taken from here:

Install The Latest Version For The Unity Interface On Ubuntu 11.04