Recently, volume and sound stopped working. Soon after I lost the ability to go into System Settings other than through the console. Then many of my launcher icons vanished. Now my workspaces have become disabled and I can't find the Appearance app from which to re-enable them. How can I access Appearance so I can get my workspaces back?
On a related note, are my troubles Ubuntu's fault or is there something I'm doing that's causing the problem? I don't know of anything that I'm doing other than automatically installing updates. I haven't manually apt-get installed anything recently, either. I would normally assume that these problems were abnormal and my fault, but others in my department are experiencing similarly frustrating interface problems (e.g., workspaces breaking, windows becoming inaccessible, etc.); quite frankly, we're all getting good and fed up with Ubuntu 14.04's apparent instability.
