Installing gnome2-globalmenu on Maverick

Posted: December 11, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: GNOME | Tags: , | Leave a comment »

Edit: the guys over at WebUpd8 posted easier instructions here.

As reliable instructions seem to be missing from the Interwebs, I decided to put these ones up.
Please note that the links are for 32-bit Ubuntu only. If you run 64-bit Ubuntu, you’ll need to copy the links to your address bar and replace i386 with amd64 where needed.

You’ll just need to download and install the following files, in the given order:

If you want Xfce support (not needed if you’re running GNOME), also grab xfce4-globalmenu-plugin.

OK, that was it. Easy, right? Be sure to tell me if I helped in the comments section.
P.S.: you can probably omit gnome-globalmenu (the last package), but I put it there just to be sure.

On Keryx, Xfce and Puppeee

Posted: November 1, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment »

I have mentioned Keryx before. In case you’re late to the party, Keryx is a cross-platform application meant to ease offline installation of packages for Debian systems (that includes Ubuntu).
It’s marvellous. It’s wonderful. It’s manna from heaven.

Provided it works, of course, which it didn’t on Maverick. First, I found out that Maverick mounts FAT32 partitions with the noexec flag. Meaning you can’t run applications from them. So I had to copy the whole keryx/ folder from my USB drive to the desktop, then do my work, and then merge the 2 folders. Fortunately, it was relatively quick.

Now I just have to
dpkg -i --force-depends /mnt/usb0/keryx/projects/eee0/packages/*.deb
and all will be right with the Debian world. Hopefully.

“But what are you trying to do?” you ask. Well, I’m giving up on Puppeee and installing Debian on the Eee PC. I’m too enamoured with apt-get to give up on it and use plain “./configure && make && make install”. Yes, Puppeee has PetGet, but it doesn’t really cut it.

I’ve also switched back to GNOME on the main laptop. Why? Because GNOME Just Works (TM). Xfce has a few integration problems that I can’t seem to get past. I’ve also switched to the classic Human look (think Intrepid Ibex) and I have to say it doesn’t look bad at all.

To some of you, that’s ugly and/or evil. To me, it’s a memory of the good old times when I first experienced Ubuntu. Well, actually, the second time; the first time I destroyed a fakeRAID array with Vista and a lot of personal files on it. Thank goodness for backups.

So now I have Debian installed on the Eee PC. Tomorrow: setting up ~/.bashrc, /etc/sudoers and X. Probably with IceWM or Awesome, depending on what I dream tonight.

Guess what this is…

Posted: September 11, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: GNOME, HP ProBook 4510s, Ubuntu | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Can you guess what DE this is?

OK, the apps probably betray me. That’s GNOME with a semi-custom theme, detailed here:

  • Window borders: Equinox Evolution Squared
  • Controls: QtCurve
  • Icons: Faenza
  • Pointer: DMZ White (default)
  • Wallpaper: Widescreen Dreamy World 2nd by “grafixeye”, clicky
  • Bottom panel: GNOME menu, DockBarX (from WebUpd8 PPA), standard clock
  • Top panel (set to autohide): notification area, indicator applet, session applet

You might have noticed the huge drop shadows and that the panels don’t have any. The secret? Go to “Window Decoration” in ccsm and replace “any” with “!type=Dock” in the Shadow Windows field. Max out radius and opacity, hit Back and quit ccsm.

Top panel is set to autohide because I don’t like it taking up my screen space. Those 3 applets (notification area, indicator and session) look absolutely horrible when placed on the bottom panel, so I left it there.

Yes, I know, looks like a weird mix of Windows 7 and KDE4, right? Well, at least I got rid of that boring “GNOSX” look that made me install Debian in the first place.

Oh, did I mention I use Kupfer to launch apps? It’s way faster than the GNOME menu and looks pretty good if you ask me.

Arch fails where Ubuntu wins

Posted: September 4, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: GNOME, HP ProBook 4510s, Ubuntu | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Oh well. Back to GNOME again.

After wasting about four hours of my time installing Cygwin on my Windows box and trying to do an offline system update with Pacman (and failing, of course), I decided Arch isn’t going to be my piece of cake until something like Keryx is available for it. The STA driver wouldn’t compile because it needed the 2.6.33 kernel headers, but the only headers available to download were for 2.6.35. Which I didn’t have.

I reinstalled Ubuntu 10.04 on the HP because I decided to start learning Python again today and needed a stable base and IDE.

Now I use GNOME as DE, Firefox as browser (at least it’s stable), Equinox, Faenza and Docky for eye-candy, Kupfer as app launcher, Thunderbird as mail client, Pidgin as IM client, Rhythmbox for media and so on.

For developing, I use Geany. And I absolutely love it. It does exactly what I tell it to do, it has unobtrusive autocompletion, it doesn’t get in my way and it can compile/run whatever I throw at it. Right from the main window. So it’s perfect for me. I just have to find out how to debug C code with it, because I really need variable watches sometimes :roll:

So, from now on, I’ll just use a VM whenever I feel like experimenting. ;)

Quick HOWTO: Remove GNOME from a Debian install.

Posted: September 2, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Debian, GNOME | Tags: , , | 16 Comments »

Surprisingly, the Squeeze CD I downloaded today had GNOME on it. Thinking I’ll be able to remove it, I installed it. It was useless, except the fact that it fixed my framebuffer :D , so I tried removing it.

Well, after a few unsuccessful attempts, I found a command that removes all of GNOME:

sudo apt-get autoremove --purge gnome*

Isn’t that sweet? :roll: Tell me if it helped you down in the comment section.

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