Installing & Using Gnome-Do

Posted on July 14th, 2008 in Applications, Gnome by admin

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.

Installing & Using TimeVault in Ubuntu/Debian

Posted on July 14th, 2008 in Applications, Debian, Ubuntu by admin

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).

Quick: How to Hide Mounted Drives on Gnome’s Desktop

Posted on July 13th, 2008 in Gnome by admin

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.

Encrypt / Sign your Email in Evolution

Posted on April 9th, 2008 in Applications by admin

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.

Make the Windows Key Open the Gnome Panel Menu

Posted on March 24th, 2008 in Gnome by admin

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.

Have a Changing Wallpaper with Wallpapoz in Gnome

Posted on March 16th, 2008 in Gnome, Tweaks by admin

From the home site:

Wallpapoz application enables you to configure Gnome desktop wallpapers in unique way. You could have Gnome desktop wallpaper changes when the specified time has passed. The most important feature is you could have Gnome desktop wallpaper changes when you change workspace. It means you could group your wallpapers into specific workspace. It offers quick orientation cues where you are. You can manage it so when you change to first workspace, your desktop wallpaper will be picked from wallpapers group for that workspace. When you change to second workspace, it will be picked from wallpapers group for second workspace. So you could have situation like this. You change to third workspace and you will get cartoon desktop wallpaper (wallpapers group for that workspace consists of cartoon wallpapers only). You change to fourth workspace and you will get abstract desktop wallpaper (wallpapers group for that workspace consists of abstract wallpapers only). I think you get the idea. Off course you can disable this feature if you just want your desktop wallpaper changes when the specified time (specified by you) has passed and does not change when you change workspace.

Make your xscreensaver your Gnome Wallpaper

Posted on March 16th, 2008 in Gnome, Tweaks by admin

If you found a screen saver that you like, wouldn’t it be nice if you could set it as your wallpaper? Well you can with a few changes to a couple Gnome settings. Generally Nautilus controls the desktop drawing so we need to turn that off.

  • In your terminal: gconftool-2 –type bool –set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false
  • Browse your /usr/lib/xscreensaver/ directory for the screensaver you would like.
  • Then in your terminal: /usr/lib/xscreensaver/name_of_screensaver -root
  • Your screen will now show the screensaver.
  • To resume back to your original desktop: gconftool-2 -s /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop -t bool true && nautilus

And voila, all done.