gHacks technology news » icons

The different ways to execute a Linux application

Jack Wallen — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:37:21 +0000

I remember, way back, when I first started using Linux either was either in full-on command line only Linux or I was using Fvwm95. Executing commands in command line meant I had to know the name of the command. And when I was in the Fvwm95 desktop, if there wasn’t a menu entry for an application the only other way I could start up an application was to open up the command line and hope I could find the exact command to run. Typically this meant scrolling through the contents of /usr/bin with the command ls -l | less. And in today’s Linux (or at least in my main machine) there are approximately 2004 commands within /usr/bin. That could mean a lot of searching.

Fortunately Linux has grown up quite a bit so it’s not that difficult to start an application. In fact, I would argue that starting an application in Linux is easier than it is in Windows. How can I say that? Well, why don’t we examine the various ways you can start an application within Linux and you can make the judgment yourself.

Command line

We’ll start with the more challenging first. Not that the command line is difficult, but it’s not nearly as easy as finding a menu entry and selecting it.

If you’ve been following me enough you probably have read an instance where I have mentioned global commands. A global command is a command that is located within your users’ $PATH. NOTE: You can learn more about this in my article “Adding directories to your $PATH“. To find out what directories are in your $PATH issue the command echo $PATH. What you see printed out at your prompt are all of the directories which contain commands you can run from anywhere on your system. There may be times when you do not install an application within your path. For those applications you have to enter the explicit path to the executable command. Let me explain…

Say you install the beta version of Firefox (for testing purposes) in the /opt directory. So now you will have a directory /opt/firefox and within that directory is the executable command firefox. Since /opt isn’t in your $PATH, if you execute only firefox what will start up is the default firefox on your system. In order to start up Firefox installed in /opt you will have to execute the command /opt/firefox/firefox.

Now let’s say you are looking for the apt command to add a gpg key but you’re not sure of the name. You are sure, however, of two things: It is in /usr/bin and it has the string “key” in the command. You could issue this command to find all matching commands:

ls /usr/bin/*key*

which will list all commands in /usr/bin that contain the word “key”. In that listing you will see apt-key. You now know the name of the command.

GUI

There are two main (and universal) ways to start up an application in Linux. The first, and easiest, is to look through your main menu for that command’s entry. Once you find that command you simply select it to open up the application. One of the issues that is not a universal truth in Linux is menu layout. All Linux desktops lay out their menus differently. But for the most part they hold true to some similarities (Primarily the grouping of applications into submenus like “Office”, “Networking”, “Graphics”, “Games”, etc.)

The next universal method of starting up an application is to open up your desktops’ file manager, navigate to the directory that contains the executable, and double click on the executable. This is much like it is in Windows. Most often you will be navigating to /usr/bin to find these executables.

NOTE: If a command requires a terminal to run you can not run it in this method. The only commands you can start up this way are graphical commands.

Run prompt

Figure 1

In some desktops you will have a “Run prompt” within your Start menu. In GNOME and KDE you can open up this dialog by pressing Alt-F2. In my favorite distribution, Elive Compiz, I set this to the Windows Key+F1. Figure 1 shows the Run Dialog in Elive. As you can see I want to start the game Torus Trooper. I start to type “torus” and the first matching entry pops up which I can click on to start up the application.

Final thoughts

Of course this is Linux so there are many more ways you can find to start up an application. You can create keyboard shortcuts for just about anything or, in some desktops, you can create desktop Icons. In some desktops you can create specific shelves for applications or add mini launchers. But, in general, the methods outlined above will get you through the day in Linux.

Tags: executables, icons, Linux, menus, run dialog, starting applications

Find perfect icons with Iconfinder

Daniel Pataki — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:22:07 +0000

Martin wrote an article in May about IconLook, a website where you can search for icons. I recently found another one, simply called Iconfinder, and as you would expect it enables you to find icons as well. During my testing I found that Iconfinder has more large icons in the 128×128 range. It also seems that IconFinder has less numbers by number, but what they do have extremely relevant and high quality.

Iconfinder is easier to use because it let’s you view License details and tags without going to a new page, and lets you download the icon as well without switching pages (this is rare). IconLook also has some good options, for example you can select sizes before performing the search, narrowing your search instantly. Iconfinder has the same functionality, but you can narrow only after your initial search.

Overall I like both sites, perhaps the best practice is to use both. Since neither will provide pages and pages of results, you can easily scan through both sites and find the best icon for you. If you know any other icon finding sites I’d appreciate you sharing, I’m always in need of some good icons!

Tags: desktop icon, desktop icons, icon search, icon search engine, icons, search

Automatic Windows Thumbnail Image Generator

Martin — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 19:38:23 +0000

Image icons in Windows look all the same and the only way to distinguish or sort them is by using folders or file names. Xentient Thumbnails introduces a third possibility by providing an automatic windows thumbnail image generator for all images on the system.

The system works by assigning thumbnail icons to every image in the active folder which are then available independently of the view mode that the user has selected for the folder. When I read about the thumbnail image generator I had fears that it would slow down the system but this is apparently not the case since the application only becomes active when a user opens a folder that contains images.

Image icons are stored in a thumbnail cache that is set to keep 2000 thumbnail images with a size of 31 Megabytes. The size of the image icons cache can be changed, the maximum is 10000 thumbnails with a size of 156 Megabytes.

The cache can be cleared or disabled in the settings as well. They also contain the option to disable thumbnail generation. The settings can be accessed from the Windows Control Panel which is a bit unusual.

The program can be uninstalled easily which will also clear the icon cache leaving no traces of the application on the system. The application is compatible with Windows 98, ME, 2000 and Windows XP and supports the most popular image formats (JPG, JPE, JPEG, JP2, J2K, GIF, PNG, BMP, WBMP, EMF, WMF, PCX, PBM, PGM, PNM, PPM, RAS, TIF, TIFF, and TGA.)

Tags: icons, image icons, thumbnail image, thumbnail software, thumbnails, Windows

Change All Windows System Icons At Once

Martin — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:45:22 +0000

Are you bored of the system icons that Windows ships with? If you like to change the default Windows theme to a custom one you also might like to change the icons that ship with Windows with different icon sets that look more professional or match the theme that you have selected.

Icon Tweaker can change all Windows system icons at once. It ships with several icon sets that change most (if not all) of the default Windows system icons from My Computer to Printers and Folders. The default installation of Icon Tweaker comes with 11 icon sets that can be applied instantly to Windows. Changes do take effect immediately after hitting the apply button.

But don’t worry, there is always the chance to revert the changes back to the original settings in case that new icon theme did not fit perfectly after all.

New icon sets can be loaded into the application, a search on the Internet reveals several locations that contain icon sets that can be downloaded, for example the selection at Skinbase or Crystal XP. I’m not that sure about system compatibility though. Icon Tweaker runs fine on Windows XP Service Pack 3 but it’s difficulty to tell because the author’s homepage is not available currently.

Tags: computer icons, icon sets, icon tweaker, icons, software, Windows

Pimp your MSN Messenger with HiYo

Martin — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:06:24 +0000

I’m not using Instant Messengers and also do not use the Web 2.0 equivalent in the form of Twitter and comparable services. That’s something that stuck with me since I began using the Internet in the early 90’s and I never changed my stance on the subject. Instant Messengers are nevertheless highly popular and Everton came up with a nice addition for MSN Messenger.

One of the reasons why I never bothered to use Instant Messengers was the “spammy” connotation of them. There have been many services on the Internet that offered add-ons, smileys and other gimmicks for Instant Messengers that turned out to infect the user’s computer with malicious software or use the information entered by the user to spam him into oblivion.

HiYo seems to be different. The add-on for MSN Messenger comes without adware, spyware and other malicious software. It adds a new toolbar to the compose window that provides access to new content that can be added to posts like images and animations.

HiYo is loaded with tons of free animated Emoticons
Send the most hilarious Audibles to your friends on MSN Messenger
Find any Emoticon, Wink, Animation, Sound Effect, Audible or Nudge easily
Send HiYo’s crazy Winks to move and shake your buddy’s conversation window
Replace your old Display Pictures with cool animated slideshows

One interesting aspect is that content gets suggested by HiYo which is great for the flow of conversation because it does not usually take ages to find the right image for the current situation.

Tags: emoticons, hiyo, icons, instant messenger, msn, msn messenger, smileys

Create Icons from Images

Martin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 07:55:28 +0000

I reviewed the icon editor IcoFx about a month ago which offered the function to create an icon from an image that would be loaded into the software. It offered some benefits like different sizes and a configurable color range which made it one of the best tools for that purpose.

Shell City mentioned the online script Bradicon today which is a stripped down version of the function in IcoFx. If IcoFx would be a commercial product then Bradicon could be its free version. It basically accepts an image and creates an icon from that image.

The icon will be provided in ico format as a download after the creation has finished. The icons that I tested were provided in 48×48 format only but it should not be a problem to resize them manually. The website contains no information about the supported image formats, I was able to upload png and jpg images without difficulties.

Bradicon is a nice alternative to IcoFx or similar products especially if you have to work in an environment where you are not allowed to download and install any additional software.

Tags: create icons, icon editor, icons, image to icon

Customize your Vista Desktop

joshua — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:10:26 +0000

You can do a lot more the simply changing your background and Screensaver in Windows Vista. Unfortunately you’ll need some 3rd party applications to do it. Microsoft decided nearly a decade ago that to protect their brand’s image all Windows themes must be signed by Microsoft.

Since then all of 9 themes have been given the official signature; Luna, Silver, Olive, Classic XP, Royale, Royale Noir , Zune (modified Royale Noir), Aero and Classic Vista.

It’s not really a great selection and probably more the once you’ve wished you could give your desktop a nice new look. Luckily there is a way to get free 3rd party themes in Vista (and XP), although you’ll need to patch your system using a free tool called Vista Glazz. Once you’ve downloaded it’s as simple starting it up and pushing a button. You’ll need a reboot and then you should be able to install new themes.

For other changes you can use Vista Visual Master which is a great little application and can change icons, the boot screen and a number of other elements.

The best place to find Vista skins is of course on Deviant Art where you’ll find just about everything graphic related, although it may take you some time to sift through it all to find something you like. Icons, themes, Screensavers, wallpapers, screenshots… it’s all here.

For wallpaper images I suggest Social Wallpapering as maybe the best online resource for high resolution desktop images. It also has a voting system which is a good way to keep the standard of images high. Desktopography is a showcase of some of the greatest Photoshop artists and has an annual gallery, some of the images here are amazing, well worth checking out. You can find a few more at Customize.org which also has some good archives of images.

For icons I would again recommend Deviant Art although you can get plenty more at VistaIcons, Jm Art Studio and this list of 50 places to get free icons.

If you know of any other good resources sound off in the comments below.

Tags: desktop, icons, skins, themes, vista, Windows

Icon Search Engine

Martin — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:48:37 +0000

If you do not like to create your own icons with a program like IcoFX Icon Editor you can use the Icon Look search engine instead which provides an easy to use interface and search. The main interface consists of a search form and three links in the footer. The search results are quickly displayed after entering a search term and hitting enter or clicking on the Look button.

By default icons of all supported sizes (12×12 16×16 22×22 32×32 48×48 64×64 128×128) are selected and displayed in the search results. Each size can be unchecked so that only those icons are displayed that have the desired size. Many icons are available in several sizes.

A click on an icon loads a detailed profile page of that icon displaying it in all available sizes. The license and the website of the developer is listed on that page as well.

Iconlook offers two additional search options. The first is the random search which displays random icons on the result page. The second is a tag cloud which is huge and kinda confusing.

Still if you are looking for icons you will definitely find a great selection at Iconlook.

Tags: create icons, graphics, icons, images, system

IcoFx Icon Editor

Martin — Sat, 17 May 2008 14:33:15 +0000

I usually do not care that much about the icons on my computer. Sometimes however I encounter an icon that looks so ugly or misplaced that I have to change it. One possibility would be to use an icon editor like IcoFx to create a new icon, makes only sense if you are somewhat talented in graphic design.

IcoFx could be the icon editor of choice then for you. It can create Icons for Windows 98 to Windows Vista and Macintosh OS X computers and provides functions to convert icons from Mac to Windows (and Windows to Mac) and to extract icons from 32-bit exe and dll files. One great feature is the ability to add, change or delete icons in executables which means that you could permanently change icons of explorer.exe for instance.

The interface looks clean, crisp and is very responsive to user input. The most gorgeous feature in my opinion is the ability to create icons from images. Just select an image on your hard drive and select the color depths and size of the icon that you want to create in the first step and use the advanced import settings to pick a specific part of the image, change the resolution and transparency.

The icon will then be created and can be saved in the usual icon formats. Colors range from 2 colors to True Color + Alpha Channels which equals 1-bit to 32-bit. Supported resolutions are 16×16, 24×24, 32×32, 48×48, 256×256 and custom resolutions.

Different sizes can be created and merged by dragging and dropping them into one icon window which has the effect that several sizes are supported in the icon file that will be created.

Tags: extract icons, icofx, icon editor, icons, software, Windows

High Quality Visual Styles, Wallpapers and Icons

Martin — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:45:56 +0000

Studio Twenty Eight is the homepage of designer Javier Ocasio who is offering his services and also some of his visual styles, wallpapers and icons on that site. Each category contains a list of free downloads. You naturally can’t expect to find hundreds of different wallpapers, styles or icons on the website but you do find high quality downloads on that website. Some have been created in collaboration with other artists but most by Javier alone.

Most of the downloads link to Javier’s page at Deviant Art where they can be downloaded. Wallpapers are usually available in different sizes. The visual styles can be downloaded in MS style or Windowblinds format. You do need a patched uxtheme.dll to use visual styles on your computer. I did explain the procedure in the article linked above. The icons are icon packs that can be simply used. They are available for Windows and Mac.

Javier explains exactly how users can apply the new visual styles, wallpapers and icons to their system. He links to various free programs that make it easier to change the icons or visual themes. Javier is also offering skins on his website for various applications like Winamp to match the visual styles for the system.

It was funny to realize that Javier actually created the Thallos visual style that I’m using on my system currently. It’s an amazing style.

Tags: icons, styles, themes, visual themes, wallpapers, windows styles, windows themes

Pixelformer Advanced Icon Editor

Martin — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:09:32 +0000

I have to admit that I’m not much of a designer and that I have to rely on friends and people I pay to deliver designs for my websites. I mainly use image editors to reduce the size of images or merge them but that’s it. I discovered Pixelformer a few days ago, it’s an icon editor and I have used some icon editors in the past. This one looks amazing, that’s the first thought that I had.

I know that design is not everything that counts and that functionality should be more important – are you listening Microsoft ? – but it really blows every other icon editor away when it comes to looks. Pixelformer can load high resolution images without difficulties, I remember some icon editors that would only accept images of a certain dimension. The memory footprint of Pixelformer is tiny, it uses less than 3 Megabytes after startup.

What I really like is the fact that it is possible to import icons from the computer. If you pick a file that contains more than one icon, explorer.exe, for instance then you get to choose the icon that you want to load. While the icons can be loaded from executables, system files and images they can only be imported as image files with the ico file type as the obvious choice here. Three other file types are available.

Pixelformer is an easy to use stunning looking icon editor that comes with enough functionality to make most professional icon creators happy.

Tags: create icons, icon editor, icons, pixelformer, software, Windows

Create Textless Desktop Icons and Shortcuts with Enhanced Context Menu

Martin — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:29:37 +0000

That’s probably the longest title that I’ve ever selected for an article here at Ghacks. A default Windows desktop contains several icons that have special “abilities” which stand in contrast to the shortcuts that users can create. If you take the Internet Explorer icon for example you notice that a right-click opens up a menu with lots of options like opening the Internet Options or starting Internet Explorer.

I’m going to show you how you can create such icons and shortcuts by yourself. I’m using an icon as an example that will have options to load all installed browsers on the system. You do need the software SCCU [via Neowin Forum] for that. Four default icons are shown when the tool is started for the first time, they are Computer, Control Panel, My Documents and Network Places. It is possible to edit the options of those items or create a new one.

Select File > New to create a new icon and click on the New button next to Class Name. Make sure you pick something unique, I did pick Browser for this example. Clicking on Accept should display Browser in the left pane, click Finished to finish this process. Now begins the fun part of the process.

It is possible to change the icon for that newly created icon by clicking on the folder symbol next to Class Icon.

A click on the Class Type tab lets you choose the location and type of the icon. Possible locations are Desktop, My Computer, Control Panel, Entire Network, Network Places and No Namespace. There are five types of icon available for you to choose from, they are: Icon, Folder, Shortcut, Shell Object and Existing Folder. My decision was to place a textless icon on the Desktop.

The final tab called Menu Item lets you drag and drop shortcuts and files to it which are then added to the context menu of the Browser icon. The form fields will be filled out automatically when a file or shortcut is dropped in the menu. The first dropped file or shortcut will the default left-click action for that icon.

I have added three browser to the right-click menu of the icon. All that is left to do is to click on the Class > Merge option in the menu which immediately creates the file on the desktop. If you can’t see it refresh your desktop.

That was just a pretty basic example but it used all the important elements to create textless icons with an enhanced context menu. You should save the new icon finally, otherwise it will be saved in untitled.ini. This file is important in case you want to delete the icon again from the location that you placed it in because a normal delete operation is not working.

Tags: icons, shortcuts, software, textless icons, Windows, windows tips

Quality icons from VistaICO

Daniel Pataki — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:49:51 +0000

VistaICO is a site that offers only a few icons, but the ones they do have are very high quality. The site looks a bit like an adsense site, the navigation is a bit weird, but you can find all the icons in the download section, and some cool wallpapers too.

They only offer 5 full packs, but these are full of great icons, all very well made and beautiful. They also have some specific icons like document icons, audio icons, script icons and so on. Wallpapers also only fill two pages but they capture the Vista-like feel very well.

They also offer a handy png to ico converter which may come in handy for the casual icon designer. All in all this is not a huge site, but what they do have is great, I have added it to my ever-growing collection.

Tags: icons, vista, wallpaper, Windows

Extract Icons from Applications

Martin — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:09:04 +0000

The question on how to keep an icon from a previous application came up in my article about Imagine, a nice fast image viewer and a reader suggested the Nirsoft software Icons Extract to grab the icon from the old program and put it in a place where you can use it for the new application as well.

Icons Extract offers a very sophisticated way to extract icons from files. You can either scan files, folders or processes that you want to scan for icons. If you know where the icon that you want is located you simply point Icon Extract to that folder or file and the icon will be displayed.

Once the icons are displayed you can save them to your hard drive in ICO and CUR format so that you can change the application’s icon to the one that you just extracted. Four filter can be used to narrow down results. You can search for icons and cursors or only one of them and can specify a specific image size and color depth.

I performed a test scan of my Program Files folder which revealed roughly 6000 icons after scanning the entire folders for some minutes. To save one or more icons select them and click on the save button on top.

Tags: extract icons, icons, nirsoft, windows software

Free icons and symbols resource

Tobey — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 10:00:51 +0000

Icons overall are very special in a certain way because a good icon or symbol must display some kind of information in usually a very tiny space. Therefore it’s not so easy to create an icon that would express something in form of a comprehensible symbol and it can consume some time to make or find a specific symbol or icon.

IconLet.com looks like an average search engine too simple to be even interesting in any way but its simple interface only supports the clarity of this service. It lets you search for icons. But that’s not all. You can choose whether you want to search for png or gif image types.

IconLet also provides an Advanced search where you can choose icon resolutions from a long list of standard sizes and the license under which you want the symbol to be found. Only free/GNU/CC licenses are supported (so that you don’t have to worry about the rights so much).

When you finally click that search button you get the results in order ranging from the smallest resolution to the largest instead of some mess. Finally, if you’re not looking for anything specific, it’s also possible to only browse all available icons from the archive in accordance with their size (10×10 – 176×88), file format and license. Though, the archive isn’t that big yet so that you can get “No results found” from time to time, especially when you don’t manage to describe what you’re looking for properly.

Tags: download icons, download symbols, icon resource, iconlet, icons, symbols

Change Folder Icons with ease

Martin — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 05:18:46 +0000

Folders in Windows look all the same which serves the purpose of being able to recognize them immediately. While this might be nice for novice computer users advanced users might want to change the appearance of some of the folders to make them stick out from the rest.

It would be for instance possible to give all folders containing media files a distinctive icon, all work folders another one and all software folders a third. The software Folderico can change the folder icon of any folder in Windows XP and Windows 2000. This can be done by right-clicking a folder and selecting Folderico from the menu.

A set if icon suggestions will be shown and the icon the user chooses will be assigned immediately. The user has the choice to change the folder icons that are displayed when right-clicking a file in the options. Five icon sets are preinstalled including Windows XP, Windows Vista and Crystal Clear icons.

Folderico has an option to import icon libraries in icl format to add even more folder icons to the software. One great feature of Folderico is the permanency of the change. Even if you change a folder on an USB drive or network drive and disconnect that drive the changed folder icon will still be visible because of the way the icons are saved.

If you would connect the USB device to a friends computer it would still show the changed folders. If you are unhappy with the icon of a folder that you have selected for it you can simply swap it to another one or reset it which would change it to the default icon of Windows again.

Read More:

Folderico

Tags: folder icons, folderico, icons, software, Windows

Hide all icons on your desktop

Martin — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 18:40:33 +0000

I bet that you have many icons on your desktop. I do and I’m sure that the majority of users will have many icons on their desktop as well. It is convenient to have them there to be able to quickstart the programs right from the desktop. Some icons might be there because you forgot to disable the option to remove the icon on the desktop while installing the program.

I also dislike the fact that I have so many icons on my desktop, it destroys the background image that I have selected for example. One way to get rid of the icons temporarily is to use the program Icon Hider. Icon hider sits in your system tray and is able to temporarily remove all the icons on your desktop. This can be useful for aesthetic reasons, for screenshots and screencasting.

Iconhider has some additional functions that might be not that useful, judge for yourself. You may start the screensaver immediately, minimize all applications. You can use shortcuts to remove all icons, the shortcut to remove all icons is CTRL+ALT+H, the shortcut to make them appear again is CTRL+ALT+S.

Tags: desktop, freeware, icon-hider, icons, remove, Windows

Icons for windows and mac

Martin — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 10:13:50 +0000

I found an interesting section at interfacelift.com which lets you icon packages for windows and macintosh. You find more than 90 pages each with 10 icon packages for macintosh and 24 pages with 10 icon packages each for microsoft windows. Downloads are free of course and icons look great. The site opens a popup with advertisment as well, if that annoys you use a popup blocker.

[tags]icon, windows, macintosh, interface, graphic[/tags]

Tags: icons, mac icons, windows icons

gHacks technology news » icons

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