There are no menus(Bitcoin menus) and no tray Icon. The tray icon appears when you launch a second instance and it crashes because bitcoin is already running.
FWIW, no such problem here with ubuntu 12.04 and bitcoin-qt 0.6.2 from the stable channel. Menu's work, tray icon works.
Strange. Doesn't work here. Same problem as OP, since day 1. Stable channel also. Only beta stuff I have here is Armory and Firefox. And now that I talk about it Armory tray icon also not there anymore, but at least has the menus lol
+1, and thank God now I don't feel like I am losing my mind. Yeah, basically the only way for me to access bitcoin is to shut the computer down. When I restart, I can go to bitcoin qt and start it. Then it is there for me. But as soon as I minimize the window it is GONE. Like, totally gone. It isn't shut down- I know this because if I go to the bitcoin qt icon and double-click again it tells me it is already running. I just have no way to get to it.
As a Linux n00b, this is baffling to me.