Resetting gnome panel

How does one reset the gnome panel to the initial state?

During use, gnome panel applets move and get replaced with the ones users like. After some time the panel becomes so cluttered that it requires a cleanup. The easiest way would be to reset the panel to the original state that it was in after install. Is there an easy way of doing that?

Solution 1:

Move the old configuration directory out of the way, and it'll get reset. Of course, to take effect, you'll have to restart the panel.

mv ~/.gconf/apps/panel ~/gnome-panel-backup
gnome-panel --replace &

Solution 2:

You can reset the panel by running

gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/panel

in a Terminal or by hitting Alt+F2 and pasting this command in the textfield and then hit run. After that gnome-panel needs a restart and therefore it has to be killed with the command

pkill gnome-panel

the same way as the command before. The reset gnome-panel will start again automatically.

Solution 3:

Run rm -r ~/.gconf/apps/panel in a terminal, then log out of Gnome and log back in.

Solution 4:

gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/panel
pkill gnome-panel
nohup gnome-panel --replace </dev/null &>/dev/null &

This formula is based on the above answers. This works slightly better.