And like most popular Linux distributions, OpenSuSE offers a Live CD. Most everyone can stick in a CD, boot it, play around with it, and double click the “Install” icon. But what about the full-blown, standard installation DVD? Is that more difficult than the Live CD? I’m glad you asked, because in this tutorial I am going to walk you through the installation (complete with pictures) of OpenSuSE 11.2.

It should go without saying that the first step is to download the ISO image, burn it to disk, put it in the DVD drive, and boot your machine. Once you have taken care of that you are on your way to installation Nirvana. I say that, not necessarily because the installation is the simplest installation you will encounter, but more because it is the cleanest and well thought out installation you might see.

Figure 1

Step 1

The first step (see Figure 1) is to choose the language and the keyboard layout. On this page you will also have the opportunity to read the license agreement. Once you have made these selections, click the Next button to move on.

Figure 2

Step 2

This next step (see Figure 2) will not require any interaction from you. What this step does is analyze your system to gather information that will be pertinent to the installation. There is nothing required of the user here, so just wait until the analysis is complete and then click Next.

Step 3

Figure 3

The next windows (see Figure 3) wants to know the type of installation you are attempting. If you are new to OpenSuSE, most likely this will be a new installation. If you have downloaded either the Non-OSS CD or the Extra Languages CD make sure you click Include Add-on Products before you click Next.

Steps 4 and 5

Because these steps are so simple, there is no need for a screenshot. What you will take care of in Step 4 is to select your time zone. In Step 5 you will select which desktop you want to install. Your choices for desktop are: KDE, GNOME, or Other. If you select Other you will have to install a desktop later on.

Step 6 and 7

Figure 4

The next window (see Figure 4) requires you to select your partitioning. Unless you have a need to use LVM (Logical Volume Management), select Partition Based and click Next. Depending upon the type of partition mode you select, the next window will vary. Most likely you will use Partition Based, so you will only have to select the hard drive you want to use and then click Next.

Step 8

Figure 5

The next step will list what OpenSuSE will be installed upon (see Figure 5) and give you a couple of options. The first option is to have the /home directory placed on a separate partition. This is a good setup if you know there is a chance that you might relocate or share out your /home directory. The second option is if you want to reconsider using LVM and to encrypt your home directory.

Make your choices and click Next.

Step 9

Figure 6

Now it’s time to create a user for your OpenSuSE system (see Figure 6). The only option that might seem different is the ability to use your user password as the system administrator password. If you are of the paranoid mind you most likely will skip this option. Click Next to continue on.

Step 10, 11, 12, 13

Figure 7

The final steps of the installation are all either summary windows or progress windows (see Figure 7 as an example). These do not require user intervention.

The results

Figure 8

Finally the system will be installed and you will have a brand new OpenSuSE Linux desktop system (see Figure 8). You will find that OpenSuSE has tweaked the GNOME desktop to look and feel a bit differently than the standard GNOME desktop. This is more in-line with the Enterprise desktops you will see with SLED and RHEL.

Congratulations, you are the proud owner of an OpenSuSE Linux desktop. I have a feeling you will enjoy a long, happy life together.

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One would think that an easy task. It actually is, once you know how it is done.  And in this article I am going to show you two different ways of making the connection to your Samba server. You will need to have a working knowledge of how the Samba server is set up as well as a username/password configured on the Samba server. There are also a few steps to take on the desktop for one certain method of connection.

The two methods I will describe are: Using GNOME’s Connect To Server dialog and the command line. The latter will be used to show you how to set up auto mounting for Samba.

The graphical method

Figure 1

If you take a look at the GNOME Places menu you will see an entry labeled “Connect to server…”. This is what you want to use in order to connect to your Samba server. When you click on that a new window will open. From the Service type drop-down select “Windows share” (see Figure 1).

When you select that entry some of the configuration options will change. As you can see (in Figure 1), I have entered the necessary options to connect to a Samba server on my internal network. You will want to replace the information so it reflects your needs. The only tricky bit of information might be the Folder entry. If you are connecting to the root directory on the share you will not need to enter anything there. Say, for instance, you share is /media/samba/user. If you want to connect to that directory leave the Folder entry blank. Say, however, you want to connect directly to a sub-folder within that share – you can enter that folder here. This, of course, isn’t needed because you can always traverse the sub-directories with simple navigation. You can also choose to add a bookmark instantly, from in this window.

Figure 2

Once you have all of the information entered click Connect and you will be greeted with a new window that requires you to enter a password. Also, if you do not supply a Domain name in the previous window, you will be required to enter it here.

You can also set this up to remember your password either until you logout or until, well, forever. Once you have entered the password/domain click the Connect button and a new Nautilus window will open inside of your Samba Share.

Using the command line

Now we’re going to use the command line to accomplish a similar goal. The biggest difference is that we are going to actually mount the Samba share into another directory, very much the same way we would mount a second hard drive.

There are a few pieces to put together before we actually take care of the mounting. First let’s create a directory that the Samba share will be mounted to. So from the terminal window issue the following command:

sudo mkdir /media/samba

Now let’s make sure our users can read/write to this directory with the command:

sudo chmod -R u+rw /media/samba

Okay now let’s make sure we can see the Samba shares from the command line. We’ll do that with the smbclient command like so:

smbclient -L //SAMBA_SERVER_ADDRESS

Where SAMBA_SERVER_ADDRESS is the actual IP address of the Samba server.

Figure 3

You will be prompted for your username and password. If you get an error it could be that the usernames don’t match on each end. If that’s the case you could add the -U switch to the command like so:

smbclient –user=jlwallen -L  //SAMBA_SERVER_ADDRESS

You should see output similar to that shown in Figure 3.

Now it’s time to try to mount the Samba share to the /media/samba directory. To do this issue the command:

sudo mount -t cifs //SAMBA_SERVER_ADDRESS/SHARE -o username=USERNAME /media/samba/

Where:

• SAMBA_SERVER_ADDRESS is the IP address of the Samba server.
• SHARE is the share name.
• USERNAME is the username to connect with.

If that works you can now make this an automated mount by adding the following line to your /etc/fstab file:

//SAMBA_SERVER_ADDRESS/SHARE     /media/samba    cifs  credentials=/etc/samba/user.cred 0 0

Where SAMBA_SERVER_ADDRESS is the IP address of the Samba server and SHARE is the share name.

Notice the user.cred file. This is one last thing we need to create. With your text editor create this file and place into it:

username=USER

password=PASSWORD

Where USER is the username to log in with and PASSWORD is the password to use for authentication. The final step is the give this new file the proper permissions with the command:

sudo chmod 600 /etc/samba/user.cred

You can ensure this works by issuing the command mount -a which should mount your Samba share.

Final thoughts

You should now have an auto-mounting Samba share – or the ability to easily connect your GNOME desktop to a Samba share. Samba is a very powerful tool that not only can share files with Windows machines, but with Linux machines as well.

Related posts

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The Gormet Recipe Manager is one such tool that comes very, very close to hitting this nail on the  head. And although this tool has features my wife will never use (such as regular expression searching), I think it might be one that needs a real cool to kick the tires. But from a geek stand-point, the software is pretty good. In this tuturial you will see how GRM is installed and how you can add recipes from supported web site formats.

Features

The Gourmet Recipe Manager offers the following features:

• Searching and sorting.
• Easy to use GUI
• Simple recipe editing.
• Importing and exporting.
• Recipe rating.
• Shopping list creator/organizer.

Gormet can also import the following formats:

• Mealmaster files
• Rich Text Format
• Plain Text
• Recipe Web Pages
• Gourmet XML files

What more do you need in a recipe manager? Now let’s take a look at the simple installation.

Installation

As you can probably gues, the installation is the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure):

1. Open your Add/Remove Software utility.
2. Search for “gourmet”.
3. Mark Gourmet Recipe Manager for installation.
4. Click Apply.

Watch the installation magic happen.

Once installed, you will find the menu entry in the Accessories sub-menu of the Applications menu. Let’s fire this baby up.

Using GRM

Figure 1

Obviously the first thing you will want to do is add a recipe. This is quite simple. From the main window (see Figure 1) click on the File menu and select New. Don’t expect any sort of wizard here. What you will find is a single window that allows you to input all of the information for your recipe that you need.  Of note during recipe input is that the Instructions and the Notes are free-form. You can do some formatting, but nothing really detailed.

Figure 2

You will find adding recipe ingredients allows you to go into quite a bit of detail. Instead of just adding text to a list of ingredients, the input has a bit of intelligence. Say, for example, if you are adding Flour. When you enter Flour as your ingredient you will notice the Ingredient key will modify to allow you to select from specific types of flour from a drop down list (see Figure 2).

Once you have completed your recipe make sure you click the Save button or the recipe will not be added to the database.

And finally, when your recipe is completed you can open it back up from the main window and click the Shop button where you can view and print out the items you need to purchase.

Importing recipe from web site

Let’s take a look at how you import recipes from a web site. The best place to grab recipes from is the RecipeZaar. I will warn you though, there is some formatting that needs to be done with these recipes. However, once you get the hang of it, this site can really be a boon too chefs.

Figure 3

To import a recipe from a web site go to the File menu (on the main window) and select Import From Webpage. A small window will open where you will enter the URL to the recipe you want to import. On the RecipeZaar site you will want to go to the actual page of the recipe you want to import and copy that full URL. Once you have done this click OK to import the page. When the import is complete you will have a new window that resembles Figure 3. Here’s the trick to this – on a site like RecipeZaar an imported recipe will include a bunch of items you do not need. So go through each imported recipe and delete the items like:

• My Page
• My Cookbooks
• My Account

etc.

Figure 4

You’ll see exactly what I mean. But in order to delete the items you need to click the “Reveal hidden text” button to show you the text you are not seeing. Figure 4 shows revealed text (that is also highlighted for deletion).

Once you have all of the unecessary text deleted (anything in red can not be deleted) click the OK and finalize the recipe by selecting an image to go along with the recipe.

Don’t worry though, if a recipe is a jumbled mess, or you know something is wrong, you can change this by clicking the Edit Descrption button when viewing the recipe.

Final thoughts

It’s not perfect, but Gormet Recipe Manager has a lot of promise. If this tool can actually make my wife’s job easier, then I have certainly found a winner.

Related posts

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And the best thing is that GNOME Do is just as easy to use as it is to install. And in this tutorial you will learn just that: Installing and using GNOME Do.

Installation

Installing GNOME Do is simple:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software application.
2. Search for “gnome do” (no quotes).
3. Mark the selection for installation.
4. Click Apply.

That’s it. After the installation is complete you will find GNOME Do in the Accessories sub-menu of the Applications menu.

Configuring GNOME Do

One of the first things you will want to do (outside of just randomly attempting things with GNOME Do) is to configure GNOME Do. When you start up GNOME Do you will be surprised to see nothing happened. Before you think something is wrong, take a look at your Notification Area. You should see the GNOME Do icon (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

The GNOME Do icon (in the example above) is the first icon to the left edge of the Notification area (Directly to the right of the vertical double dotted lines). You can open GNOME Do by either single clicking that icon or by clicking the default key combination for opening GNOME Do. The default combination is <Super>Space Bar. If you’re not sure what the “Super” key is – it’s the Windows key on most keyboards.

Figure 2

When you open up GNOME Do a simple window will appear in the center of your screen (see Figure 2). From that window you will want to click the small drop down in the upper right corner to open up the GNOME Do  menu. From this menu select Preferences.

When the Preferences window opens there are three things you should take care of:

• From the General tab select “Start GNOME Do at login”.
• From the Keyboard tab configure the shortcut you want to use to call up the application.
• From the Plugins tab add any plugins you might want included in your GNOME Do setup. You will definitely want to enable the Files and Folders plugin as well as the Locate plugin.

How to use GNOME Do

Using GNOME Do is simple, once you get the hang of it. Here’s how it works.

1. Enter the key combination to bring up the GNOME Do window.
2. Type the text for whatever it is you want to start or find.
3. When the item you are searching for is found, hit the Enter key.

Let’s examine how to find a document on your machine and then open it with OpenOffice. The document will be called ghacks.png. To find and open this file follow these steps:

1. 

   Figure 3

   Open up GNOME Do by hitting <Super>Space.

2. Type “locate” (no quotes).
3. Hit the Tab button.
4. Type “ghacks.png”.
5. Hit Enter.
6. When the new GNOME Do window opens, click the down arrow on your keyboard until you see the specific file name and click Enter (see Figure 3).

The file will open in the default application for that file type.

Final thoughts

Of course there is so much more you can do with GNOME Do. In upcoming article we will talk about using GNOME Do with Twitter, Web Browsers, Google, and more.

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To really push the limits of transparency you will need to have Compiz working. For more information on Compiz check out my articles: “Enabling the Cube in Compiz” and “Configuring the appearance of the Compiz Cube“. You might also want to check out my article “Add Emerald for slick window decorations” to get the full effect of transparent titlebars and window decorations. As well you can check out my article “Avant Window Navigator: OS X-like dock on Linux desktop” if you’re wanting to mimic my personal desktop.

The big picture

Figure 1

I thought I would start out by showing you the desktop I am working with so you can decide if this is something you want to achieve. Figure 1 shows the end result of the configurations (Click on the image to see the full-size version).

The tools to will use

In order to get the transparency you see in the image the following configuration tools will be used:

Compiz Settings

Panel properties

The following themes will be used:

GNOME: Dust Sand

Avant Window Navigator: Glass 3D

Emerald: Gabriel

Wallpaper: Awesome Wallpapers Ubuntu Charcoal

I am going to assume you know how to install the various themes and wallpaper used, so I won’t go over those topics.

Configurations

Figure 2

The first thing to take care of happens to be the easiest – the GNOME panel. You will notice I removed the bottom panel on my desktop and replaced it with the Avant Window Navigator. So the only GNOME panel to deal with is the upper panel. To set the transparency on this right click an empty spot in the panel and select “Properties”. When the Properties window opens (see Figure 2) click on the “Background” tab and do the following:

• Check the Solid Color radio button.
• Slide the Style bar to the left until it is as transparent as you like.
• Click Close.

Your panel should now be transparent.

Compiz

Figure 3

Now that your panel is transparent you don’t want to ruin the over all look by having solid menus and/or drop downs. So let’s take care of these pieces.  The first thing to do is open up the Compiz Settings tool. You will find this in the Preferences sub-menu of the System menu.  When the settings window is open you will want to click on the Opacity Brightness and Saturation section (see Figure 3).

What you need to do is add new Window specific settings. When you click the New button a small window will open where you add the type of “window” you want to set transparency for. When the window opens you want to add the following line to get Menus, Drop down windows, and popups set for transparency:

(type=Menu) || (type=PopupMenu) || (type=DropDownMenu)

Once you have that entered, set the transparency level to 67 (to match what you see in this article) or to whatever level you desire.

And that’s it. You should now have full-on transparency on your desktop.

Final thoughts

Of course you can take this farther. You can even set application windows as transparent as you like. The only problem with that is you need to be able to clearly see your work.

Related posts

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In this article I am going to show you how to edit/manage your GNOME menus. This tasks in the GNOME desktop is actually much easier than it is in E17, plus you have the added bonus of actually being able to edit the “Main” menus. This article will illustrate this task with the help of Ubuntu 9.04 and GNOME 2.26.1.

The GNOME menus

In the GNOME desktop there are three menus: Applications, Places, and System. Only two of these menus can be “officially” edited: Applications and System. By “officially” I mean with the built in menu editing tool. The Places menu can be edited very easily as well, and only requires the use of the Nautilus file manager.

With that said, let’s edit some menus.

Places

Since the Places menu is the easiest to edit, we’ll start with that. In order to do this you need to open up the Nautilus file manager. When you are in this application you will notice a Bookmarks menu. That is the key. Click on that menu and take a look at the list of bookmarks. Now go to the Places menu and click on that. Do you see a similarity? You should, because they are the same. When you add a book mark to the Nautilus file manager it automatically adds itself to the Places menu.

Figure 1

To add a bookmark to Nautilus you just need to navigate to the directory you want to add and then click the Bookmarks menu and select Add Bookmark. You can also edit the bookmarks by select Edit Bookmarks from the Bookmarks menu in Nautilus. When you select that a new window will open (see Figure 1) where you can manage your bookmarks. The “Jump To” button, when clicked, takes you (in Nautilus) to whatever bookmark you have selected.

Applications and System menus

Figure 2

Both of these menus are edited with a handy tool called Alacarte. You access this tool by right clicking the menu area (upper left) in GNOME and selecting “Edit Menus”. When you do this the menu editor will open (see Figure 2).

This menu editor is quite simple to use. Let’s create a new menu entry. The entry we will create will be an entry to open the Firefox browser automatically to the Ghacks website. To do this click on the Internet menu (in the left pane) and then click the New Item button (in the right pane). A new window will open where you will enter the following information:

• Type: Application
• Name: Ghacks
• Command: firefox http://www.ghacks.net
• Comment: Ghacks

The icon should be picked up based on the Command you enter. Since it is an URL the web-mime icon will automatically appear. Enter the above information and click OK. The menu entry will automatically appear in your menu.

From this same window you can:

• Reorder your menu entries.
• Show or hide menu entries.
• Add sub menus.
• Delete menu entries.
• Add separators.

Final thoughts

The GNOME desktop has one of the easiest to manage menu systems of any desktop (Linux or not). Give these tools a try and you will find you can make your GNOME menus into exactly what you need for your desktop.

Related posts

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In this article I am going to show you how to set custom keyboard shortcuts in GNOME and then show how you can get creative with them. The GNOME release I am using is 2.26.1 and the Ubuntu release is 9.04.

Creating shortcuts

Figure 1

Creating shortcuts in GNOME is quite simple. You will notice in the Preferences sub-menu of the System menu there is an entry for Keyboard Shortcuts. Click on that to open up the Keyboard Shortcuts manager (see Figure 1). As you can see there are a number of keyboard shortcuts already created for you. This is not only a good place to create new

Figure 2

shortcuts but to find out what shortcuts are already enabled on the system. You might even find some of the keyboard shortcuts you want to use are disabled by default. You can enable them and give them new shortcuts. For example, the Expo key (which displays all desktops side by side – see Figure 2) is listed with the Mod4+E shortcut. What is the Mod4 key? It’s the Window’s key which is usually referred to as the “Super” key. So I reassigned that shortcut to work properly.

Add a new shortcut

Now it’s time to see just how shortcuts are created. As I mentioned earlier, creating shortcuts really is quite simple.

Figure 3

Once you have the Keyboard Shortcuts window open you will see the Add key at the bottom of the window. If you click on that a new, small window will open (see Figure 3). In this new window you only need to add two pieces of information:

Name: This is the name of the shortcut.

Command: This is the command you want to run when you hit the keyboard shortcut.

Figure 4

After you fill out this information click Apply and you will see the shortcut is listed as disabled (see Figure 4). The reason the shortcut is listed as disabled is because an actual shortcut has yet to be defined. Now we have to define the shortcut. To do this click on the Disabled section associated with your shortcut. In figure 4 I have created a shortcut to open up the Claws Mail email client. Now I want to assign the shortcut combination of the Alt Key + “c” to start the application. To do this I will click on the “Disabled” entry which will change and say “New shortcut…”. When you see this change hit the keyboard combination you want to use and it will then be assigned. You know it worked if the shortcut is now listed in conjunction with new shortcut.

Be creative

Don’t think you just have to be limited to opening up standard applications with this feature. For example: I use the Nano editor a LOT. But to use the Nano editor I have to open up a console window and then enter the nano command to start up the editor. Instead I create a shortcut that will automatically open up the gnome-terminal with the Nano editor running. To do this I will create a shortcut with the following information:

Name: Nano

Command: gnome-terminal -e nano

Assign this the Ctrl-N combination and when you hit that keyboard shortcut you will have the gnome-terminal console opened immediately to the Nano editor.

You can also, for example, open a browser window to a specific site. Say, for instance, you want to have one keyboard shortcut to open Firefox to ghacks.net and one shortcut to open Firefox to Slashdot. You can do this by adding shortcuts with the following information:

For Ghacks

Name: Firefox Ghacks

Command: firefox http://www.ghacks.net

For Slashdot

Name: Firefox Slashdot

Command: firefox http://www.slashdot.org

Final thoughts

Creating keyboard shortcuts can make your desktop life so much easier. Have you used creative shortcuts to make your desktop life easier? If so, share them.

Related posts

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In this article I am going to show you how to configure:

• Skydome: The background image shown when your cube zooms out.
• Cube caps: The images on the top and bottom of your cube.
• Deformation and Reflection: Is your cube a sphere or a cylinder? Do you have a reflection of your cube or not?

When you have these options configured, you will have a seriously cool desktop.

Skydome and Cube caps

Figure 1

To begin your configuration you need to open up the CompizConfig Settings Manager. If you are using GNOME you will see this in the Preferences sub menu of the System menu. Once this opens click on the Desktop Cube entry. In this configuration you want to click on the Appearance tab (see Figure 1).

The first thing you need to do is make sure the Enable Desktop Cube is checked. With that out of the way take a look at the Appearance tab. You will see both Cube Caps and Skydome here. Oddly enough, you will only configure the Skydome here.

To configure your Skydome first click the check box to enable the Skydome. Now click on the folder icon to the right of the Skydome text area. This is where you will locate the image for your Skydome. You can use either .jpg or .png files for this.

Once you have this complete click the Back button at the bottom left.

Now if you want to better see your Skydome click on the Rotate Cube configuration and then adjust the Zoom option. The Zoom option zooms out of the Cube so as you rotate the Cube it is smaller. I keep mine at .6525. Click the Back button when you are done.

Figure 2

Now to configure the Cube Caps. To do this click on the “Cube Reflection and Deformation” option. In this section expand the Appearance section of the Cube Caps section (see Figure 2). Here you will do the same thing you did with Skydome. Make sure you configure both the top and bottom Cube Caps.

Within this same section click on the Deformation tab. In this section click the Deformation drop down and select which type of Deformation you want. NOTE: The Sphere deformation does take a bit more resources than the Cylinder. If you have the power go for the Sphere, otherwise either None or the Cynlinder.

You can also enable Reflection which will reflect your cube either on the bottom or the top. To enable this click on the Reflection tab and then check the Enable box. After you have enabled it you can then customize it how ever you like.

Results

Figure 3

Figure 3 shows the results of these configurations. Obviously your results will vary depending upon what and how you configure these options.

Final thoughts

I am a big fan of Compiz. Although it doesn’t directly help you to be a better, more efficient worker, it will allow you to create an impressive working environment on your PC. Show off how powerful the Linux desktop can be by configuring the Compiz Cube.

UPDATE: Below are the images used in this tutorial:

Skydome image

Wallpaper image

Related posts

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• Windows Desktop Alternative BumpTop (3)
• Walk-through installation of OpenSuSE 11.2 (0)
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Now I will preface this article by saying the developer has ceased development of Wallpapoz (he did so in 2008.) Even though it is no longer in development, Wallpapoz still works just fine. And I am sure at some point some one will pick up development of the application. But until then, Wallpapoz is a cool app that helps make your desktop even better.

Getting and installing

Most likely Wallpapoz is in your distributions’ repository, so installation is accomplished as simply as issuing a command like:

yum install wallpapoz

or

sudo apt-get install wallpapoz

There might be dependency issues which will be dictated by which release you are using. If apt-get or yum do not pick up the dependencies you might have to install them manually like so:

sudo apt-get install python-gnome2 python-imaging python-gtk2

or

yum install python-gnome2 python-imaging python-gtk2

You probably won’t have to resolve those dependencies manually, but it’s nice to know how just in case.

Once Wallpapoz is installed you are ready to fire it up.

Running and configuring

To start up Wallpapoz you can click on the GNOME Applications menu and then the Accessories sub-menu. Inside of the Accessories sub-menu you will find the Wallpapoz entry. Click on that to start up the application.

Figure 1

When you start up Wallpapoz you should find the interface fairly straight forward. Figure 1 shows a very clean, user-friendly GUI that allows you to configure wallpaper for four workspaces.

The first thing you will want to do is select a workspace and then either click the Add Files button (to add single or multiple files) or click the Add Directory button (to add a directory of images.)

When you click either the Add Files or Add Directory button a Select File window will open. Navigate to the loctation of your image files and select the wallpaper(s) you want to use. You can select multiple files by clicking and holding the Ctrl key as you select the file.

After you have added the files you can then configure some options. To do this click the Preferences button. There are four options to configure:

• Change desktop wallpaper after a pre-configured time.
• Pick wallpaper in random order.
• Change desktop wallpaper when changing workspace.
• Style (Scaled, Centered, Fill Screen, Zoom, Tiled)

Once you have made your preference changes click the OK button to get rid of that window. Now click the Save button and then click the Restart button to restart the daemon (to ensure the changes take effect.)

Now your wallpaper should start changing per your configuration.

Possible gotchas

Although I haven’t found report of this happening elsewhere I have discovered that when using Compiz with Wallpapoz can cause issue with the workspaces. If you rename workspaces in Wallpapoz, when using Compiz, your Wallpapoz configuration file can be corrupted. This file is in ~/.wallpapoz/wallpapoz.xml. If this happens you can issue the command:

rm -rf ~/.wallpapoz

to delete that file and start fresh.

Final thoughts

Wallpapoz is not perfect, but it can add a nice feature to your GNOME desktop that would require some handy scripting to do otherwise. Give Wallpapoz a try. If you like it, and you’re a developer, consider forking the application (or just request permission to take over development) so this tool can continue growing.

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All of this comes in a tiny panel applet that is simple to install and simple to use. How easy is Deskbar to install and use? Let’s find out…

Getting and installing

The Deskbar applet will be found in your distributions’ repositories most likely. So all you will have to do is either fire up your Add/Remove software utility or a terminal window. If you opt for the GUI tool you will install like so:

1. Open up the Add/Remove software utility (such as Synaptic or gpk-application).
2. Search for “deskbar-applet” (no quotes).
3. Select the resulting deskbar-applet entry.
4. Click Apply to install.

If you opt for the command line you can open up a terminal window and enter a command such as:

apt-get install deskbar-applet

or

yum install deskbar-applet

You will see no visible sign that Deskbar has been installed because you hav to add it to your panel.

Adding Deskbar to your panel

Figure 1

If you right click your GNOME panel a menu will open contining the entry “Add To Panel”. Selecting that menu entry will open up the Add To Panel window where you will select the Deskbar entry and click the Add button. When the Deskbar applet is added you will see the icon as shown in Figure 1 (the panel icon on the far right.)

Configuring Deskbar

There isn’t too many options to configure with Deskbar. The most important options will be to enable the various plugins you want to use as well as add your Twitter username/password (should you want to use Deskbar to post to Twitter.) To do this right click the Deskbar icon and select Preferences from the menu.

Figure 2

From the Preferences window you will see three tabs and a few buttons (see Figure 2). The first thing you will want to do is scroll through the list of Extensions and decide if you want to enable or disable any of them. To enable an Extension just click the checkbox so the checkmark appears. To disable an Extension click the checkbox so the checkmark disappears.

You can also move an Extension up or down the list so that a particular extension gets priority for searching or action. And finally you can configure an extension by selecting it and click the More button. For example, in order to configure your username/password for Twitter you will need to select the Twitter extension and press the More button. In this new window you will enter the credentials for your Twitter account. The More button only appears on Extensions that have configurable options.

Using Deskbar

Figure 3

This is where it gets simple. Say I want to search my machine for the sting “linux”. Click on the Desbar icon and the text area will open up for you to enter your search. As you enter your search string the Deskbar window will expand to reveal various options (see Figure 3.)

As you can see there are a number of options available:

• I can execute a command
• Search for “linux” with Beagle
• Lookup “linux” in my dictionary
• Post “linux” on Twitter.

Depending upon what Extensions I have enabled there will be more or less entries.

Final thoughts

Deskbar will quickly become your best friend on your GNOME desktop. Making use of this handy app will help to make your desktop life much more effient and simpler. My only hopes is that other desktops (such as Enlightenment) will follow suit and create simillar apps.

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From within the GNOME Appearance Preferences window most all customizations can be taken care of. Everything from theme, controls, window borders, pointer, and special effects can be configured here. So let’s dig into this and find out just how these customizations are handled.

Opening the preferences window

The first thing you need to do is to open up the preferences window. You will find this in the Preferences sub-menu of the System menu in the top panel of the GNOME desktop. In that sub-menu click on the Appearance entry to open up the window.

The main preferences window

Figure 1

When you open the Appearance Preferences window (see Figure 1) you will notice the various themes installed. You can quickly choose from one theme or another to quickly change the overall look of your desktop. But the customization shouldn’t end there.

One button you shoudln’t over look is the Customize button. When you click this button a new window will open that allows you to make more granular changes to the various themes. Within the Customization window (see Figure 2) You can change colors, window borders, controls, icons, and the pointer.

Figure 2

The most drastic change you can make is under the Controls tab. This change effects the look and feel of what is inside the window borders. Some of these changes are subtle, but some are fairly drastic. Think of the Controls tab as a way to fine-tune each particular theme. But it doesn’t have to end there. Once you fine-tune your theme you can take it further by clicking on the Colors tab and editing the colors of the theme.

There are four colors you can customize here:

Windows: This is pretty much the background of all of your windows.

Input boxes: Such as the background color of selectable lists.

Selected Items: The color that indicates an item that has been selected.

Tool tips: The background color of tool tips.

One of my favorite personalizations is the Window Border. Linux desktops have always been fond of having artistic window borders. From different shapes, to transparencies, to shades, and much more – you can really make your desktop yours within this tab. By default Ubuntu 9.04 ships with fifteen different window borders. There aren’t any really “out there” selections. Scroll through the selections and find one you like.

Fonts

The next step would be to adjust the fonts to your liking. This should be pretty straight-forward. If you’re looking to add more fonts to your Ubuntu system just place all of the fonts you want to use in a ~/.fonts directory and you should be good to go.

Interface

This tab allows you to configure if menus and toolbars will have Icons, text, or both. You can also configure GNOME to allow editable shortcut keys. The latter feature is really nice. With this selected you can then go back to a window menu (such as the File menu), select an entry, and assign a new shortcut by simply pressing the desired shortcut (while the entry is still highlighted.) You should see the shortcut entry change in front of your eyes.

Visual Effects

This setting will depend on if you have the video card to support the effects. If you are not sure try the Normal setting. If your card does not support the effects you will know right away.

Final Thoughts

Although the look of your machine doesn’t effect how it works, it can effect (in very indirect ways) your productivity. GNOME is a very configurable desktop, it just helps to know where all the different configuration options are.

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In modern GNOME desktops (I am using 2.24.3) setting up autostart applications is much easier than it once was. In early releases you would have had to write a script to tell GNOME to launch a specific app once the desktop was loaded. Now, like nearly every aspect of the Linux desktop experience, there is “an app for that”.

To create an autostart application you need to visit the System menu in the top panel of the GNOME desktop. In that menu you will find the Preferences sub menu. Within the Preferences sub menu you will see the Personal menu which is where the Sessions tool. The Sessions tool is where you add applications for auto start.

GNOME Sessions Window

Once in the Sessions window (see the image to the left) you will want to click the Add button. When the new window opens for adding the application you won’t find a list of applications to choose from…you actually have to fill out the necessary information manually. What you have to fill out is simple:

Name: This doesn’t effect the actual startup of the application, but it does help you locate your new application in the long list of startup applications.

Command: This is the actual command the new application uses to execute. The application should be in your PATH, if not use the full path to the executable (i.e. /usr/bin/firefox instead of just firefox).

Comment: This will be the descriptive text underneath the name of the startup program.

Startup Application

As you can see (in the image to the right) the configuration is quite simple. Once you have your application configured, click the Save button and your start up application is ready to start up the next time you log in.

Faster Route

If you do not want to take the time to create a new start up application entry or you’re not sure what the commands are for the applications you want to auto start, there is an easier way.

If you click on the Options tab from the Sessions window you will notice a button labeled “Remember Currently Running Application”. What this allows you to do is to open up the application you want to autostart and click this button. When you do this an entry for that application will be automatically created in the Sessions window.

WARNING: There is a bug haunting GNOME >= 2.24.1 that doesn’t allow the “Remember Currently Running Applications” feature to work. If you are working within a GNOME earlier than 2.24.1 you shouldn’t have any problem. Anything later than 2.24.1 this will not work. The GNOME development team is aware of the problem and is working to fix it.

Final Thougths

If you are like me there are certain applications that might as well start up as soon as the desktop is loaded. And fortunately the Linux desktop allows for such features.

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The Tomboy feature set includes:

• Notebook Creation: Keep notes organized in notebooks.
• Quick Access: Open Tomboy quickly from the panel icon.
• Table of Contents: All notes are arranged in order of creation.
• Search: Search all of your notes.
• Formatting: Format text, even add bullets and indenting.
• Synchronize your notes: Either with a local file, ssh, or on a WebDAV-enabled server.
• Plugins: Add plugins to Tomboy to extend its functionality.

Getting and Installing

The quickest way to install Tomboy is to open up the Add/Remove Software utility, do a search for Tomboy, select the results, and click Apply. Once Tomboy is installed there is one other piece of software you will need to install, and that is mono-addins. If you do not install this final app Tomboy will install but will not run.

Tomboy Applet

Once you have Tomboy installed log out and log back in and you will see the applet living in the GNOME Panel (in the Notification Area as shown in the image to the left.) The applet is the yellow “note” with the pencil. If you left click on that you will see a small menu appear with three option entries at the top and, below the separator, a list of the newest notes.

Left click menu.

If you know you are going to be a power-user you might want to first create a few notebooks in order to keep the mass of notes you will generate organized.

To create a new notebook just click on the Notebooks submenu and select New Notebook. Once you have a notebook created you can go to the Notebooks menu and click the Create Note entry for whichever notebook you want to create a note for.

Synchronize Your Notes

This is my favorite feature of Tomboy. I tend to use ssh to handle the sync details. In order to sync with ssh you have to install sshfs on your system. To do this open up the Add/Remove Software utility, do a search for sshfs, select Fuze-Filesystem, and apply the changes.

SSH Sync options

Once you have installed that you might want to either kill tomboy or log out and log in. If you do not do this Tomboy will not be able to find sshfs. Once you are ready right click the Tomboy applet, select Preferences, go to the Synchronization tab, select SSH from the dropdown, and fill out the necessary information.

One of the nicest aspects of Tomboy is the ability to sync your notes from one machine to another. You can set up synchronization from the Preferences window (accessed from the right click on the Tomboy applet.)

Once you hit Save you will be asked for the remote user password.

In the Folder Path, if both local and remote machines have Tomboy installed, you might select ~/.tomboy if you want to use the same directory on each machine. You will also have to set up both machines for ssh syncing (if you plan on using ssh).

Using WebDAV is the easiest, but it will require a WebDAV server setup.

Final Thoughts

I try very hard to keep myself organized. Tomboy is one of the many tools I use to accomplish a semblance of organization. I am fairly confident once you try Tomboy you will find it one of those tools you can’t go without.

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In this article I am going to list some of the handier shortcuts for the GNOME desktop. So get your fingers stretched and ready…

Windows

The following short cuts will focus primarily on open windows.

Alt-tab: This combination cycles through the currently open windows. This is handy when you have a lot of windows open and you constantly are moving from one to another.

Ctrl-alt-d: This combination minimizes all open windows to the far corners of the screen. To get them back just hit the combination again.

Shift-alt-up arrow: (requires Compiz) This combination takes all open windows, shrinks them, and organizes them on the screen so you can see all open applications. You can then use the arrow keys to highlight the window you want. Release the keys and the highlighted window will have focus.

Alt-F9: Minimizes the focused window.

Ctrl-Alt-s: Shade window. To unshade window hit the same combination.

Desktop

The following combinations effect the desktop.

Ctrl-Alt-Backspace: This combination will restart X Windows (this logs you out).

Ctrl-Alt-l: This combination will lock the screen. You will need your user password to unlock the screen.

Alt-F2: This combination opens the “run” dialog. From here you can enter a command to run (similar to the “cmd” Windows command).

Alt-F1: This combination opens the main menu.

Print Screen: This key will take a screenshot of the whole desktop.

Alt-Print Screen: This combination will take a screenshot of a single window.

Ctrl-Alt-left arrow: This combination will move one desktop to the left.

Ctrl-Alt-right arrow: This combination will move one desktop to the right.

Ctrl-Alt-down arrow: Show all desktops on one screen. Because there are more desktops than will fit across your screen (even in this small size), you use the left and right arrow keys to move one way or the other.

There you have it. Some of the handiest GNOME keyboard shortcuts. But don’t think you’re limited to the default. Creating your own keyboard shortcuts is simple. Go to the System menu and click on the Preferences entry. From within this new sub menu click on the Personal menu where you will find the Keyboard Shortcuts entry. Click on that to open up the Keyboard Shortcuts window. From this window you can edit the existing keyboard short cuts, but you can not create new ones.

Final Thoughts

If you have never been a big user of keyboard short cuts you should give it a try. Once you realize how efficient you computing can become you will never look back. I will say that I miss the older style gconf-editor where you could create a multitude of keyboard shortcuts in GNOME. With GNOME 2.24 it seems you are limited to the keyboard shortcuts listed in the keyboard-shortcuts tool.

Tags: GNOME, keyboard, keyboard shortcuts, Linux

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In this article I am going to introduce you to the system-config-network tool that ships with the Fedora distribution. The specifics of my particular installation are:

• Fedora 10
• GNOME 2.24.3

Generally speaking networking in Linux is a no brainer. Especially when your machine receives its IP address via DHCP, it’s almost always just “plug and play”.? There are, of course, times when you have to configure your machine manually to use a static IP address. For this the system-config-network tool comes in very handy.

Starting the Tool

From the GNOME desktop go to the System menu and click on the Administration sub-menu. From there click on the Network entry (not the Network Device Control) to start up the tool. You will need the root password to start (and use) this tool.

system-config-network

As you can see (in the image to the left) the tool has a very user-friendly interface.? there are four main sections:

• Devices: This lists the devices associated with physical hardware on your machine.
• Hardware: this lists the actual networking hardware on your machine.
• DNS: The hostname and DNS servers needed for your network.
• Hosts: This allows you to add entries to the hostname routing table (/etc/hosts).

Configuring a New Device

Device Type

The first thing you need to do is to click the New button to begin the device setup wizard.

You will have six different types of devices to choose from. Most likely you will be configuring an Ethernet or a Wireless connection.

Once you have selected the type click the Forward button.

Let’s configure an Ethernet connection.

Which Hardware?

If your particular network card isn’t listed then most likely drivers haven’t been installed on your machine. Fortunately Linux has reached a point where most network cards are supported.

Select the card you want to configure and click the Forward button to continue on with your network configuration.

Network Settings

The next step is to actually configure the settings for your hardware. In this example a Static IP address is to be configured.

Enter in all of the relavent information for your network configuration.

Once you have completed this configuration click the Forward button to move on. The next screen only serves to review the information you have configured. Once you have reached that window, if the information is correct, click Apply to complete the setup of your network device.

You are probably asking yourself “Where is the DNS configuration?” Good question. The answer is simple. From the main window click on the DNS tab to reveal the location of DNS information for your network. Most likely it’s not there yet. On that tab you can edit the hostname of the machine and the primary, secondary, and tertiary DNS addresses. You will notice a lack of a Save button on this tab. In order to save this information you have to go to the File menu and click the Save entry.

Activate Your Interface

Go back to the main window and click on the Devices tab. Now select the interface you want to activate and click the Activate button to start the device. If you do not have access to the Activate button that means you have to go back to the devices tab, select the hardware you want to be able to activate, and click the Edit button.What you need to do is to click the “Allow All Users To Enable and Disable The Device” entry. Now save the changes (File | Save) and go back to Activate the device.

Your network device should now be up and running!

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In this article I will show you the bits and pieces that make up the GNOME panel. From there you will have a solid understanding of how to work with the GNOME panel.

“Start” Menu

Applications Menu

You will notice, right away, that there is not just one Panel menu but three. This is done to keep the menu from getting out of hand and to keep it well organized.

The menu has been split into three smaller menus:

Applications: This is where you can launch all of the user applications installed on your machine.

Places: This menu contains shortcuts to removeable media as well as networked locations and Nautilus bookmarks. NOTE: Nautilus is the GNOME file manager.

System: This menu contains desktop preference tools as well as administrative tools. From within this menu you can also log out of GNOME, lock the screen, and launch the “About GNOME” window.

Launchers

Add Application Launcher

The Launchers on the panel are small application icons that allow you to launch an application with a single click. You add new launchers by right clicking an empty space on the panel and selecting Add To Panel. A new window will open where you can select to add either an Application Launcher or a Custom Application Launcher. Choose to add an Application Launcher if the application in question is already within the GNOME Applications menu. If the application is not in the Applications menu you will select Custom Application Launcher.

You can move launchers around be right clicking the launcher and selecting Move. Once you have selected Move you just drag the launcher to where you want to move it. If the launcher is locked to the panel you will have to de-select that option from the right-click menu of the launcher.

Winlist

Winlist

The Winlist is a simple Panel element that holds all of the minimized windows you have running. When you minimize a window you can get that window back by simply clicking on the Winlist entry for that window on the panel.

Notification Area

Notification Area

Most people call this the “system tray”. The true name of this feature is the Notification Area. The name is fitting because this area holds small applets that notify you of various actions or offer you information about your system or even the time. The Notification Area also lets you know when updates are available for your system.

Panel Properties

If you want to alter the look of your panel you can do so by right clicking the panel (in an empty spot) and selecting the Properties entry in the menu. Here you can configure the color, size, transparency, the autohide, and the location of your panel.

Final Thoughts

The GNOME Panel is one of the easiest desktop panels to use. You will find it very flexible, stable, and user-friendly.

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How many times have you had far too many applications up on your desktop and you found that wading through the windows added too much extra time to your work load? Being an IT professional or a power-user keeping your desktop organized can keep your work efficient and your desktop clean. But how is it used? Let’s find out.

What it does

The pager effectively creates multiple instances of your desktop that give you more work spaces to use. So instead of having a single screen to use you can configure your desktop for multiple desktops. This makes organizing your work very simple. Say, for instance, you want to have one desktop for writing, one desktop for on line work, one desktop for graphics, and one desktop for administrative tasks. This is not only possible but simple. And this allows you to have far more applications open without them getting in the way of one another (or having so many windows minimized to your panel that you can not tell which application is which.) Of course moving back and fourth between desktops will depend upon which desktop you are using. Let’s examine how each works.

GNOME

GNOME Pager

The GNOME pager resides in the Panel. By default it will appear in the bottom panel on your desktop. In the image to the left you can see the Pager in the left side. This pager has the default four desktops that all GNOME desktops will have upon installation. To switch from one desktop to another you can either click the desired desktop with the mouse or you can hit the key combination Ctrl-Alt-arrow (Where arrow is either the left or right arrow key.) So if you want to move from desktop 1 to desktop 2 you would hit the Ctrl-Alt-right arrow key. If you want to move from desktop 4 to desktop 1 you would hold the Ctrl-Alt keys and then tap the left arrow key three times.

To configure this pager you could right click anywhere on the pager and select Preferences. Within the Preferences you can define how many desktops you want and you can rename your desktops (to help you organize your work.)

KDE

KDE Pager

The KDE pagers functions in just the same way as the GNOME pager. The biggest difference is the aesthetic layout of the pager on the KDE Panel. Switching from one desktop to another in KDE is a bit different than in GNOME.

KDE Pager in Action

To switch from one desktop to another requires a different key combination. To move around from one desktop to another click and hold the Ctrl key and then tap the Tab key until you are on the correct desktop. When you are on the correct desktop, release both keys and you will be on that desktop. You can see (in the image to the right) this in action. You can also simply click on the desktop you want to go to in the pager and you will be zapped to that desktop.

If you right click the pager you can access the Pager Settings menu where you can configure the number of rows to display on the Panel and what to display (Names or numbers of desktops).

Final Thoughts

I could continue on with practially every desktop in the Linux operating system because each has its own version or implementation of the pager. But by showing GNOME and KDE you get to understand the fundamentals of this very handy tool. Using the pager can keep your work organized and your desktop clean.

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So where do you take control of runaway process and/or frozen applications? Does Linux have a system monitor the Windows system monitor? Yes. There are a number of ways. Since this is a “Get to know Linux” article, I will show the easiest (read: GUI) method of achieving this goal. Later I will focus another article on a command line method.

GNOME

Gnome System Monitor

When using the GNOME desktop the GNOME System Monitor is the tool you use to control processes and applications. You will find that in the System Tools entry of the Application menu. GNOME system Monitor will be labeled “System Monitor”.

As you can see, in the image to the left, there are four tabs within this application. The most important tab you will use is the Processes tab. When you click on that tab you will see every process running on your system. Some of these processes the standard user can not kill (they require root privileges.)

To kill an application (or process) scroll through the list, select the target application, and click the End Process button. You will get a confirmation window asking if you are sure you want to end the process. Confirm this and the process will end.

Instead of having to scroll through a long list of processes, if you know the application is sucking up a lot of your CPU you can click on the %CPU column until the arrow is pointing up (at which point the most CPU intensive application will be listed on top.)

KDE

KDE System Monitor

The KDE desktop has a very similar application for ending processes. This utility works in the same way that the GNOME System Monitor works. Locate the application or process, select the listing, and click the Kill Process button.

Like the GNOME version you can click the CPU % column to bring the CPU-intensive applications to the top.

The KDE version of this tool also allows you to filter the processes by All, System, User, Own, and Programs only. This helps you to locate your problem child quicker. You can also do a search for a process or application with this tool. Simply enter the name of your application in the text area and the entries will update automatically.

Final Thoughts

Controlling rogue applications or processes is just as easy in Linux as it is in Windows. With outstanding graphical utilities, you can ensure your system doesn’t have applications eating up your memory or your CPU cycles.

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For most old-school Linux users, creating archive consisted of dropping to the command line and issue a command like tar cfz directory.tgz directory (where directory is the name of the directory to archirve). But new users fear the command line. So, thanks to GNOME, there is an easier way to achieve this.

The folder right click menu.

If you open up the Nautilus File Manger and right click on a folder you will see the menu shown in the image to the left.

By clicking the “Create Archive” entry a new window will appear that allows you to configure the archive you want to create. This new window allows you to configure the type of compression, the location and name of the archive, and (if you have encryption enabled), add encryption and split into volumes.

Configure your archive

Once you have configured your archive click the Create button and the archive will automatically be placed in the Location you chose.

Take note of the file extension. This extension will determine if the archive is compressed or not. There are eight possible options to choose from. If you want compression I would suggest going with either the .tgz or the tar.bz2 extensions.

Final Thoughts

If you’ve ever wanted simple and fast archiving, GNOME has just the tool for you. This method of archiving folders can not be topped for ease of use.

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The gnome-terminal comes pre-installed with any GNOME desktop installation, so if you’re running GNOME you won’t have to do any further installation. You might, however, want to undertake some configuration changes. We’ll examine some of those options here.

Default gnome-terminal Window

When you start up the gnome-terminal you will be greeted by the default profile with a single tab open.

The default features you will notice immediately are the menu bar and the scroll bar. Outside of the bash prompt, the menu bar will be where you take care of most of your gnome-terminal business. Let’s examine what you will find in each menu entry:

File: In this menu entry you can open/close a new tab, open/close a new terminal, and/or create a new profile.

Edit: In this menu entry you can copy/paste, edit your profiles, and/or configure keyboard shortcuts.

View: In this menu entry you can configure gnome-terminal to show/hide the menubar, and/or the scrollbar or you can zoom in or out.

Terminal: In this menu entry you can change your profile, change your window title, set character encoding, reset your terminal, and/or reset and clear your terminal.

Tabs: In this menu entry you can cycle through your open tabs and/or detach a tab (so it is its own window).

Help: In this menu entry you can open up the GNOME Help system to learn about gnome-terminal and you can open the “about gnome-terminal” window.

That’s it for the tabs.

As I mentioned, the gnome-terminal is fairly configurable. You can make this terminal as minimal as you like. You can remove the scrollbar and the menubar if you like. To do this click on the View menu and de-select both the scrollbar and the menubar. What that leaves you with is nothing more than a terminal prompt in a window. Or does it? If you right click anywhere in the gnome-terminal window a menu will appear. From that menu you can select to, once again, show the menubar. Once the menubar is back you can then select to show the scrollbar.

Profiles

One of the nicest aspects of the gnome-terminal is that you can create profiles. Each profile can reflect, say, a different job. Say you want to have a root user profile. This can make for an easy way to instantly know you are using the root user (so you don’t commit any command-line fouls that could damage your system). To create a new profile click on File and then select New Profile.  What you will see is a small window asking you to name the new profile and base the new profile on a pre-existing profile.

Once the new profile is named the main Profile editor window will appear where you can really tweak your profile. There are six tabs within the Profile editor:

General: Configure the general options such as name, font, show menubar, terminal bell.

Title and Command: Give this profile an initial title and run custom commands (such as automatically listing directory contents when a profile is opened.)

Colors: Foreground and background colors.

Background: Configure a background image or window transparency.

Scrolling: Place the scroll bar and define how far back it will scroll.

Compatibility: Configure the backspace and delete keys.

Final thoughts

I have used many terminals in my day, but the gnome-terminal is one of the finest. Not only is it very compatible, it is useful and user-friendly. If you use the GNOME desktop (or an alternative desktop), make sure you get to know gnome-terminal for all your command line goodness.

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