I have seen this question come up a couple of times on IRC channels and now on twitter (warning: passionate language) so I thought I would explain how to retrieve the location bar that has seemingly been replaced altogether by the ‘windowsy’ location browser since 2.30.
Just in-case you do not know what I am talking about here is a screenshot of what we generally do not want:
And here is a screenshot of what we generally do want:
It’s not a difficult fix. All you need to do is open a terminal window and enter the following:
gconftool-2 -s -t bool /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_location_entry true
and to switch back:
gconftool-2 -s -t bool /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_location_entry false
Done.
Ubuntu One is great in theory, but I have not been able to get it working in a way that I can rely on. I am constantly experiencing connection issues and finding it randomly crashes, so until that becomes more stable it remains shelved as I need something reliable and don’t have the time to keep an eye on it.
I recently read about SparkleShare which looks like a very easy to use take on version control (it’s built aroung Git). But its not actually officially released yet, so I’ll be keeping an eye on that one.
I’ve been using Dropbox in the mean time, which is really great, for a lot of reasons. Problem is that it’s not free and the version control side things seems to be very limited and I can’t host my own files, I use it and enjoy it’s ease of use but I never really wanted to use it.
When I saw this post on the sync box (a non-dropbox solution to syncing files across different computers using Mercurial) I was inspired to do something similar and re-usable with Bazaar.
The company I work for has a dedicated server with loads of space and bandwidth so I started by initializing a project in my home directory there.
I then branched that project on my desktop and added a sync directory inside it with the following scripts:
server
#!/bin/bash
bzr updateclient
#!/bin/bash bzr add bzr remove bzr commit -m "Update" bzr push bzr pull
sync
#!/bin/bash cd $HOME/notdropbox sync/client
I also added a README file to remind myself because I could be forgetful.
I copied the file named sync to my home directory then pushed the project back to the server. Now the project has a stored push and pull location and should push and pull quietly. I set up a cron job to run the sync script every so often.
I then went back to the server and set up a cron job to run the server script at regular intervals to update the project with pushed revisions.
After that its just a case of branching the project on other computers I use and setting up a cron job, if I want a cron job.
Another advantage to using Bazaar is that if I want to quickly get my files on a colleagues computer there is no configuration or sharing folders, I can simply just branch the project get what I need then discard it, if you know what I mean?
So thanks to Paul Bissex at e-scribe.com for inspiring this one.
I’ve got loads of wallpapers. I really like high resolution images and the idea of having them on my desktop is great. I have collected so many because I thought it would be great to have all these wallpapers on my desktop. Problem, though, I somehow never find the time to change between all these wallpapers. So I thought I would write a little python script that I could run on a cron job as well as on login to pick a random wallpaper from my wallpaper folder and change the displayed wallpaper on my desktop.
There may be the facility to do this already somewhere hidden in Gnome but I don’t know about it and this seems like an incredibly simple solution.
Long overdue in my opinion, but here it is.
import os, random WALLPAPER_DIR = '/path/to/wallpapers' walls = os.listdir(WALLPAPER_DIR) wallpaper = os.path.join(WALLPAPER_DIR, walls[random.randint(0, len(walls)-1)]) if os.path.exists(wallpaper): os.system('gconftool-2 -s -t string /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename "%s"' % wallpaper)
Just save it somewhere it can execute from and run it as a cron job and/or at login.
This is an update of an earlier post where explained how to easily get set up to play video with the Nvidia ION chip that comes inside this tiny little Revo box.
As of 30th May 2010, version 1.0 rc3 of Mplayer is shipped with support for VDPAU output and is available in Ubuntu’s multiverse repositories.
More information at Mplayer’s website here.
I tried Fedora Core 4 (or was it 5) a while back. I remember downloading and burning 4 CD’s and battling to get it installed on my old Dell Dimension PC.
I found it a little bit buggy, difficult to configure (I don’t like spending a lot of time configuring an OS) and had loads of problems with regards to networking amongst many other things, it just didn’t feel right. So I sacked it, binned the CD’s and went back to using SUSE 9.0.
Since then I have made the switch, like so many others probably have to everyone’s favorite, Ubuntu and have been using the most current release since (as of writing this that is Lucid Lynx). Everything was going well until with Ubuntu until I upgraded to 10.04. A few of their latest packages seem a little unstable (I am running Evolution with dbg right now waiting for it to crash). But I am not writing this to talk about issues I am having with Ubuntu.
I had been following news on Fedora for a while, since I had not fallen out of love with it completely. When I saw the announcement for the release of Fedora 13, I immediately downloaded it and created a Live USB using unetbootin.
I decided to install it on my laptop as I could safely destroy all the data on it since all my work lies in subversion repositories and my dropbox account.
I was well impressed with the installation experience. There was, all the usual options that you would expect from an installer and it was rapid! After about 5 minutes of booting the Live USB, setting up the installer to start running, I left the room and made some coffee. When I returned it was complete. This suggests it took less than the 7(ish) minutes I was away from the laptop.
On first booting Fedora 13 you are asked to set up your user account and log in. The packages that come with the Live version are not too overwhelming, which is good, in most cases all you need is a simple set of tools to get the job done. ie gedit, empathy, rhythmbox, pino, etc.
The configuration is simple, and well designed. There is not a huge array of ‘configurators’ that you get with a distro like Ubuntu, there is a simplified well defined set of easy to use controls to configure your desktop and system - there is even a colour manager, to set up colour output for your display (very cool). The graphical package install is a little difficult to use, however.
All in all, the whole feel of Fedora 13 is really robust and stable, sometimes other distro’s desktops just feel like your mouse cursor might fall through the desktop , I am yet to experience this feeling yet with Fedora 13.
I am still getting to know Fedora but what I have seen so far it has been a great experience. I’m going to leave it on the laptop and continue using it to see how it goes.
I like t-shirts a lot, so today whilst I was taking a look at the Satchmo Project (a Django based shopping cart framework), I was really pleased when looking through their gallery of sites that use Satchmo, to find Last Exit to Nowhere, an online T-Shirt shop that sell t-shirts with designs inspired by fictitious places and companies from movies.
I think I may have to buy the Initech shirt immediately.
One of the things I do like about Google Chrome is that you can select any web application and create a short cut to in on your desktop that will run the application in it’s own window, but I don’t particularly like Chrome because it is still marked as BETA and I have experience some unexpected behavior whilst using it.
Enter Prism, there is no use me trying to describe it to you so this is taken from Ubuntu Software Centre:
“Prism, previously called WebRunner, is a simple XULRunner based browser that hosts web applications without the normal web browser user interface. It is based on a concept called Site Specific Browsers (SSB).”
Basically, it will allow you to create shortcuts on your desktop for your favorite web applications to run in their own windows and (sort of) appear as a desktop application.
A good web application makes most, if not all, of the browsers user interface redundant. So why waste precious screen real estate stuff you don’t need?
So to get started, install Prism:
sudo apt-get install prism
This will install Prism, you probably already knew that.
Next start Prism from the menu Applications>Internet>Prism
Enter the URL of the application (for example http://mail.google.com) and under Create Shortcuts check Desktop.
Click OK and you will have a shortcut ready to start on your web browser.
That’s it really. I am running Google Mail, Facebook, Hootsuite and they are all running brilliantly. If you want an easier, Google Chrome like way of adding Prism shortcuts you can install the Firefox plugin.
This is not necessarily limited to being an Ubuntu tip, it is just my primary operating system.
This one was driving me nuts. For some reason this was already active on my desktop running Karmic Koala at work, but I just could not remember if or how I activated it.
I don’t think I did. It must have already been turned on when I installed Karmic Koala back in November.
Anyway.
Run gconf-editor (Alt+F2 and enter ‘gconf-editor’ and Run)
Use the tree on the left to browse to /apps/gwd/
Select the key mouse_wheel_action and change it to ‘shade’
Hope this helps somebody!
Over the last 3 weeks, myself and Mike Buttery (http://www.mikebuttery.info/) have been working on our own simple jQuery Rich Text Editor Plugin, to allow us to provide our client with a rich text editor that supports embedded fonts using the @font-face rule in Internet Explorer 7/8, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari.
This has proven difficult for a number of reasons and has caused many tempered debates between Mike and myself, however, we do have a working version that we will be beginning to use in our various projects.
Anyway we want to share it and make it available for people to use and modify. If you make it better then please let us know as we are also continuing work on it when time allows. Next on our wish list is text shadow and opacity.
We have used mlColorPicker (http://www.mlambir.com.ar/project/show/mlcolorpicker) as our color selector. It is a brilliant light-weight color picker provided as a jQuery plugin and is required as css3-jrte depends on it. If you wish to use your own color picker, please do modify our source.
It occurred to me that, although I encourage people to switch to a free operating system I do not really provide them with a proper introduction. Reason being that they do not really need one, switching from Microsoft Windows to Ubuntu should be pretty smooth, the user interface is intuitive enough to be self explanatory and the over all user experience is built upon pretty solid ideas about how to make things easy to use.
A friend recently took an interest in installing Ubuntu Karmic Koala at home on an old machine but didn’t really have any direction for beginning to use the operating system once it was installed. So here are some things I thought of that would be good to exercise a person completely new to Ubuntu.
1. Switching Empathy for Pidgin
Since 9.10 Ubuntu has been bundled with Empathy, which is a good IM client but I find that at current, it lacks the stability and richness that Pidgin provides.
The switch can be achieved by using Ubuntu’s new app-store-like ‘Software Centre’.
Click Applications -> Ubuntu Software Centre
Select ‘Installed Software’ from the menu on the left.
Search for ‘Empathy’
Select the item named ‘Empathy’ in the search listing and click the arrow to the right.
The next page provides you with some information on Empathy. Click the ‘Remove’ button and enter your password to remove Empathy.
Now select ‘Get Free Software’ from the menu on the left.
Select ‘Internet’ from the main menu and search for Pidgin.
Select the item named ‘Pidgin Instant Messenger’ from the search listing and click the arrow to the right.
The next page provides you with some information on Pidgin a long with a rather unimpressive screenshot.
Click the ‘Install’ button and enter your password and wait whilst Pidgin is installed.
Once installed Pidgin will be made available in the Applications menu as well as the notifications area by the clock.
I would like to note here that this is in no way a ploy to get people to switch to Pidgin from Empathy. Honestly I use Empathy at work and Pidgin at home, I don’t know why. I guess I don’t really have an opinion on IM clients.
2. Installing Gwibber and posting a message on Facebook.com
Gwibber is something that I consider to be a productivity tool. I rarely use my computer for anything other than work and believe visiting social websites is a real waste of my time at the keyboard, however, I like to keep in touch and have never ruled the use of social networking out. Gwibber brings all the social noise you have together on your desktop, notifying you of other’s updates as well as empowering you to update and reply using a few keystrokes without disrupting your focus.
You can install Gwibber in a similar way to how installing Pidgin is described above or use the command line as follows.
Hit Alt+F2, enter ‘gnome-terminal’, hit RETURN.
Enter the following commands.
$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install gwibber
You will need to enter your password. Once the instructions are completed by your system Gwibber should be available in the Applications menu along with the notification area by the clock.
When you start Gwibber you will be prompted to add an account. Once you have added your accounts to Gwibber click the menu item Gwibber > Preferences.
Under the Messages Tab in the preferences window you select the option ‘Automatically shorten pasted URLs’. This will save you a lot of time when posting a link.
3. Setting up your music library in Rhythmbox
There are a lot of great alternatives to Rhythmbox, like Listen (https://www.listen-project.org/), however I have never had the calling to try another on Ubuntu since Rhythmbox is great.
Open Rhythmbox by selecting it from the Application menu.
Once Rhythmbox is open, Mac users might notice the layout is similar to iTunes. Select the menu item Edit > Preferences. Select the ‘Music’ tab and check the option ‘Watch my library for new files’
Minimise Rhythmbox and select ‘Places’ next to the Applications menu and from the list select ‘Music’. A new file browser window will open. Place your music collection here and Rhythmbox will automatically add it to your library ready for searching and playback.
4. Turning on ‘funky’ compiz desktop effects.
This one requires an ok-ish graphics card. I have on board Intel chipset graphics built into my laptop and this seems to work quite well.
This could possibly add a productivity bonus to your desktop but I am yet to see it as anything more than a bit of fun.
From the ‘System’ menu select Preferences > Appearance.
Select the ‘Visual Effects’ tab. Three simple options are provided here None, Normal and Extra. Select Extra and have some fun dragging your windows around, switching workspaces/windows.
If you are feeling a little more confident install CompizConfig Settings Manager. From a terminal window enter:
$ sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
You may need to enter your password again.
Once the instructions are complete, a new item should be listed in the System > Preferences menu titled ‘CompizConfig Settings Manager’ and tweak the options to balance your personal preference against the performance you get from your computer. Hints can appear whilst your mouse hovers over options, these help a lot when using the settings manager for the first time.
more…
There are a lot more ways to start enjoying using Ubuntu. Using it day to day I take a lot for granted which made this entry quite difficult to write. I will add more items here as I think of more interesting ways to get started with using Ubuntu.