How To Create A Screencast In GNOME 3

GNOME 3 has an inbuilt software that allows you to record your desktop. This makes it very easy to create a screencast in GNOME 3. Here is how you do it ...
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GNOME 3 Won't Have Minimize And Maximize Buttons

GNOME 3 is doing away with minimize and Maximize buttons for applications in its user interface. The basic premise being they don't make sense within the current shell design.

Of course, that doesn't mean you can't minimize or maximize your applications' window in GNOME 3.
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Ubuntu Might Ship With Qt Libraries

In future iterations of Ubuntu (Natty and onwards), Ubuntu CD might ship with Qt libraries - Mark Shuttleworth noted in one of his blog post.

The basic premise behind this announcement is that it is the quality and usability of the application (to be included) that is important; the choice of toolkit should be irrelevant.
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First Look At GNOME 3 Prior To Its Release

GNOME 3, due for release in April 2011, is going to be revolutionary. The Desktop is designed to reduce distraction and interruption and to put the user in control. Messaging has been seamlessly integrated into the desktop. An improved file manager, redesigned work spaces, and better accessibility are some of the notable improvements.

The GNOME Project has published a new website Gnome3.org showcasing the GNOME 3 Desktop environment.

If you are really interested in trying out GNOME 3 just now,you can do so by compiling it yourself using GNOME's JHBuild sandboxing tool.

Cover Thumbnailer - How to install in Ubuntu Linux

Cover Thumbnailer is a small Python script which displays music/video album covers in Nautilus in place of ordinary icons of folders, preview of pictures in a folder and more.

It is similar to what you see in Microsoft Windows 7 where the folder shows a preview of the pictures contained in it.
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GNOME Census - A Glance Into Developer Participation In GNOME

As a GNOME user, have you ever wondered - How big is the GNOME project ? What is its make up ? How are decisions taken ? And how many GNOME developers are there ? If yes, then you need look no further. Because Neary Consulting - A Free software consultancy, has released the GNOME Census giving an overview of the GNOME project and its functions. The census report analyzes how developers participate in the GNOME project and looks for patterns within the project itself.

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GNOME vs KDE - Income and Expenses

Being avid users of GNOME and/or KDE, have you ever wondered how much revenue these well known open source projects generate ? If popular perception is taken into account, GNOME should generate far more revenue, in-turn more profits, than KDE. But reality is somewhat different.

The following are some nuggets of information gleaned from the quarterly reports that give a birds eye view of the income and expenses of GNOME and KDE respectively.
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GNOME Do - An intelligent launcher tool for GNOME

GNOME Do is an intelligent launcher tool which makes all your default menus and panels in GNOME redundant. Since last time I had written about GNOME Do, it has gotten only better. Just a glance through the numerous plugins available for GNOME Do will be enough for any sceptic to fall in love with it.Read more »

Linus Torvalds ditches KDE 4 for GNOME

Linus Torvalds says he has ditched KDE for good and is now sleeping with its arch rival GNOME. Oh well, rhetoric apart, he says the move over to GNOME happened because in KDE 4, he found it quite bothersome that he couldn't get his Right mouse button to access the right menu he wanted. In short, he ran into usability issues while using KDE 4.0.

In an interview given to Rodney Gedda of "Computer World" - Australia, he had this to say, and I quote :

I used to be a KDE user. I thought KDE 4.0 was such a disaster I switched to GNOME. I hate the fact that my right button doesn't do what I want it to do. But the whole "break everything" model is painful for users and they can choose to use something else.

I realise the reason for the 4.0 release, but I think they did it badly. They did so may changes it was a half-baked release. It may turn out to be the right decision in the end and I will re-try KDE, but I suspect I'm not the only person they lost.

I am sure the GNOME camp must be rejoicing in having won over a high profile Linux user to their side. This when a few years back, Linus Torvalds had gone on record severely criticizing GNOME for over simplifying the user interface.

Linus Torvalds was in Australia to attend the annual linux.conf.au organised by Linux Australia. While he was rather critical of KDE 4 in its current form, he did say it was a good thing for Nokia to release Qt as LGPL. Among other things, he also gives his views on Microsoft Windows 7 advising Microsoft to release sooner and decouple the operating system from the applications. A really interesting interview.

Tip : Quickly open special locations in Nautilus

It is really amazing that in many ways than one, it is the open source software developers who are in the forefront of innovation the most. If you ask me, one reason may be because they listen to the end users more than any proprietary software developers. Secondly, the open source programmers are not tied down by the bureaucratic hurdles that weigh down on their closed source counterparts. But in my opinion, the most pertinent reason is that creating open source software is purely a labour of love - a love of coding and creating something of real value to themselves and to others.

Take Nautilus file manager for instance, it has a plethora of hooks built in which allow a user to navigate to different locations by just typing in a name. For example, to get network locations, you type in network:/// in the location bar of nautilus.

There are a number of such shortcuts which allow an end user to navigate to different locations with ease. Shankar has compiled a set of nautilus shortcuts which throw light on the in-built versatility of Nautilus.

GNOME Do - a universal launcher for the GNOME Desktop

When ever I have logged in to Windows, there is one program which I use on a regular basis and which I cannot do without. The program is called Launchy. The unique feature of this program is that it helps me to navigate the file system, open applications, visit websites and a lot more by just typing a couple of keys. Launchy runs in the background as a service and is activated when a key combination is pressed. On my machine it is [Alt] + [Space].

Fig: Launchy in action in Windows

In KDE, we have a similar program called Katapult. But if you are a GNOME user then you should check out a recent project which tries to equal or even surpass all the features found in Launchy. The name of the project is "Gnome Do". Simply put, Gnome Do is a launcher ... of applications, web pages, Firefox bookmarks, system config panels, your documents residing on your hard disk and so on. But you can also extend the functionality of Gnome Do using an add-in framework.

Fig: Gnome Do interface

Gnome Do is the brain child of David Siegel who started this project to be submitted to his university as a part of his curriculum. It has been entirely coded using C# and uses Mono. David Siegel claims he was motivated to work on Gnome Do seeing a similar project called Quick Silver on Mac OSX.

I installed "Gnome Do" using the method explained in the official website and the installation was successful. If you are using Ubuntu, then you can download and install the binary instead of compiling the program from source.

Once installed and running, Gnome Do acts as a background process waiting for the specific key press combination from the user. The default key combination is [Win Key] + [Space].

When you press the key combination, Gnome Do will make itself visible and you can start typing. It takes only the first couple of key strokes from the user to zero in on the correct application you wish to launch. For example, if I want to open Gedit text editor, instead of navigating the Gnome menu, I activate Gnome Do and type the first three characters namely 't', 'e'. 'x' and by then Gnome Do has zeroed in on the gedit text editor and all I have to do is press enter to open the text editor.

Fig: Type 't','e','r' and Gnome Do highlights terminal.

When you press the hot key combination and bring Gnome Do to the foreground, you will find two boxes side by side. You can navigate between either of the boxes using the [Tab] key. And while one of the boxes have the focus, if you press the [Down arrow] key, it will open a drop down list which will list alternate actions that can be taken such as opening a terminal in the current location and so on.

Features of Gnome Do

• All applications in your Gnome menu are indexed.
• Supports an add-in framework so it is easy to write and extend the functionality of Gnome Do to suit your needs via pieces of code called add-ins. You can find a couple of add-ins at do.davebsd.com/addins. You have to place the add-ins in ~/.do/addins and restart Gnome Do.
• It keeps track of your Firefox bookmarks so you can start typing the first few letters of a bookmark and Gnome Do will open the webpage for you.
• Type an English word and it will open Gnome dictionary to give you the meaning of the word.
• You can open any file or folder in your home directory by typing the first few letters of their name and pressing enter. For example, to open my home folder, I press the hotkey combination and type 'r', 'a', 'v' and Gnome Do will open my home folder.
  

GNOME 2.20 released - some new features

GNOME is a popular, multi-platform desktop environment which focuses on ease of use, stability, and first class internationalization and accessibility support. GNOME rolls out a new version of its ever popular Desktop every six months. And in keeping with its commitment, it has yet again made available the newest release which is GNOME ver 2.20.

This begs the question as to what is new in GNOME 2.20. There are a number of new features. But most of them are subtle in nature and are not conspicuous to the end user. Here is a concise list of the new features in GNOME 2.20.

Evolution enhancements

• Gives an attachment reminder to the user if he tries to send a mail without any attachments but certain words in his mail indicate that he has attached a file to the mail.
• Backup all the mails and profiles in the Evolution client with the click of a button.
• A new mail notification icon and many other tiny miscellaneous enhancements.
  

Epiphany Web browser enhancements - More intuitive inline completion in the address bar

Image viewer enhancements

• Eye of Gnome (EOG) has a menu which allows you to open an image using another software program such as Gimp, Fspot, a web browser or G-thumb while viewing the image using eog. And if the image is modified, the modifications are updated in the eog in real time.
• The new image properties dialog provides easy access to basic information and metadata for your images, and now includes XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) data that your camera or software might store in your image files, along with the existing EXIF data. This might include location, copyright information, license, and tags.
  

Evince PDF viewer

Supports interactive PDF forms. That is forms which allow you to enter data and then which can be send to print. Evince's page rendering features are also noticeably faster.

Great media player enhancement

Totem is the default media player in GNOME. In the new release, totem will search for and install all the required media codecs - even the non-free ones if it finds that the media file requires additional codecs. This is a very cool feature and will do away with all the manual installations required to make Linux more multimedia friendly.

Fig: Totem now offers to install the proprietary codecs

Notes synchronization

Tomboy now supports saving and retrieving notes stored in a remote location via its WebDav framework or SSH. This means that it is now possible to synchronize all your notes say between your home and office machines.

Search integrated in the File chooser dialog

This redesigned dialog now allows you to search for files using Desktop search systems such as Beagle or tracker. This makes it much more easier to open your files.

Nautilus enhancements

• A pie graph incorporated into the Nautilus file properties window makes it much more intuitive.
• File manager can now read EXIF data from digital cameras and will automatically orient and display the thumbnails of images.
  

A new control panel

GNOME 2.20 sports a new appearance control panel which allows you to change various properties such as themes, background images, fonts and such from a single interface. Till now each of these options had their own individual dialogs but not anymore.

Other enhancements
Improved GNOME keyring system providing you with a few new conveniences. I have not used the GNOME keyring yet so can't comment on it.

GNOME help browser called Yelp now sports a much more pleasing style and layout.

Apart from all this there are a number of other minor enhancements all round.

In the system administration side, GNOME offers an improved Lock down and user profile editor as well as incorporating better auditing support and roll based access control in Gnome display manager (GDM).

Having said that, the number one feature which excites me as an end user is the totem's built-in feature of pulling in and installing all the required codecs to play any media file. I guess with this, one can finally say goodbye to poor out of the box support for video and audio files in Linux.

You can read the official news at the GNOME website and also try out a live-cd of Foresight Linux sporting GNOME 2.20.