October 26, 2009, 6:53 pm
The next Ubuntu release (9.04, “Jaunty Jackalope”) will see the first set of changes introduced by Canonical’s Desktop Experience Team: The much-discussed notify-osd notification system, and the indicator applet.
The idea came up to allow both developers and users to be able to choose between the “Ubuntuized” and a more “upstream-like” GNOME experience. Martin Pitt (maintainer) has called that “stracciatella GNOME session”, after the favourite kind of ice cream which is mostly vanilla (GNOME), but with some brown chocolate chips (Ubuntu modifications) in it.
To enable this feature simply run the following:
apt-get install gnome-stracciatella-session
and select the “GNOME (without Ubuntu specific components)” session in gdm.
In Jaunty or Karmic, this will suppress the messaging indicator and flip back to the classical GNOME notification-daemon again. Martin Pitt plans to keep stracciatella-session up to date with new developments in future Ubuntu releases as well.
October 8, 2009, 9:23 am
So, you have just installed Debian GNU/Linux. Good for you! But, what now? All you have is a black screen in front of you with no mouse pointer or application menu or anything! What gives?!
What you need now is to install a Desktop Environment. Don’t fret, it’s actually pretty easy.
Continue reading ‘Install X Window System and a Desktop Environment in Debian’ »
April 10, 2009, 8:17 am
One of many’s pet peeves is how slow the Gnome menus appear when you hover over them, which is a shame really because that’s something we can fix in five seconds flat – just put this text into the file .gtkrc-2.0 in your home directory:
gtk-menu-popup-delay = 0
April 10, 2009, 8:12 am
Running Ubuntu is great until you try to install Kubuntu (or vice versa), because your previously neatly organised menu system goes into overload meltdown with dozens of programs from both desktops fighting for your priority.
But there’s a fix: you can force individual shortcuts to appear only in Gnome or only in KDE as opposed to being in both. To do this, switch to root and browser to /usr/share/applications (for Gnome apps) or /usr/share/applications/kde (for KDE apps). Then open a shortcut file in your text editor, and add one of these two lines to the bottom:
OnlyShowIn=KDE
for KDE-only applications; or
OnlyShowIn=GNOME
for Gnome-only applications.
December 20, 2008, 2:40 pm
Gnome does a pretty bad job at utilizing screen real estate. Desktop environments in Linux use up far too much screen real estate for just about everything. This problem is not exclusive to Ubuntu.. 8px font in Windows is hard to read, but an 8pt font in Linux is perfect, if not a little large for alot of things (icon text in nautilus, window manager text, panel bar text, etc..) But in Gnome icons are too large. Buttons and fonts are too large. The panels are too thick. The toolbar buttons in Nautilus are far too big. And apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Maybe it’s something Mark Shuttleworth should definitely pay attention to as he’s calling to be mailed screenshots of user’s desktops to judge how to best beautify Linux and wishes to outdo Apple in the looks department in the next year or two. While this posting is not about the beautification of the desktop, it is about efficiency and usability.
Continue reading ‘How to best utilize screen real estate in Gnome’ »
July 14, 2008, 6:14 pm
GNOME Do (Do) is an intelligent launcher tool that makes performing common tasks on your computer simple and efficient. Do not only allows you to search for items in your desktop environment (e.g. applications, contacts, bookmarks, files, music), it also allows you to specify actions to perform on search results (e.g. run, open, email, chat, play). Want to send an email to mom? Simply type “email mom.” Want to listen to some music? Simply type “play beatles.” Do provides instantaneous, action-oriented desktop search results that adapt to reflect your habits and preferences. For example, if you use Firefox web browser often, typing “f” in Do will launch it. Or, if you visit The New York Times webpage often, Do will open it if you simply type “nyt.” Unlike other search tools that present search results as flat, homogeneous lists, Do provides familiar graphical depictions of search results that assure you that your intent is being realized correctly; searching for “mom” will show a picture of mom, and searching for “beatles” will show a Beatles album cover. Do has many more powerful and exciting capabilities that must be seen to be appreciated.
Continue reading ‘Installing & Using Gnome-Do’ »
July 14, 2008, 5:52 pm
TimeVault is a simple front-end for making snapshots of a set of directories. Snapshots are a copy of a directory structure or file at a certain point in time. Restore functionality is integrated into Nautilus – previous versions of a file or directory that has a snapshot can be accessed by examining the properties and selecting the ‘Previous Versions’ tab.
Snapshots are protected from accidental deletion or modification since they are read-only by default. The super-user can delete intermediate snapshots to save space, but files and directories that existed before or after the deletion will still be accessible.
A snapshot is a copy of a directory at a certain point in time. Snapshots don’t use space for the files that haven’t changed but instead simply increment the link count for them. On Linux, when a file is deleted, the link count is decremented, but it isn’t actually removed until the link count hits zero.
Only files are hard-linked this way. Directories have to be recreated for technical reasons (since a hard-link is actually the file it points to, you would find yourself in a completely different path if directories were hard-linked).
Continue reading ‘Installing & Using TimeVault in Ubuntu/Debian’ »
July 13, 2008, 9:54 am
I prefer a clean desktop with no icons cluttering it up, but by default most Gnome based distros adds icons to the desktop for every single removable drive that you attach to your system.
Continue reading ‘Quick: How to Hide Mounted Drives on Gnome’s Desktop’ »
April 9, 2008, 7:11 am
Did you know that Email is sent in clear text over the Internet? Unless you take steps to secure it, anyone who intercepts a message can easily read it. It’s also really easy for someone to send an email that looks like it came from you. The open source solution for this problem is called GNU Privacy Guard. It uses public key cryptography to encrypt a message, so that only the rightful recipient can read it, or simply sign it so that the recipient can confirm that it came from you. Here’s an installation walk-through for GNU Privacy Guard on Fedora and Ubuntu, along with a brief overview of how to use it with Evolution to send secure email.
Continue reading ‘Encrypt / Sign your Email in Evolution’ »
March 24, 2008, 10:39 am
We’ve already covered how to make that Windows Key useful in KDE and Xfce, but what about Gnome? Well these instructions should help you out getting the Windows Key to open up the Gnome Panel Menu.
Continue reading ‘Make the Windows Key Open the Gnome Panel Menu’ »
