Nautilus-Actions: Adding New Functions to Nautilus Right-Click Menu has Never been this Easy!

Gnome desktop didn't used to like this simple you know. Apparently it used to come with a huge list of features and configuration options which were cleaned up about 80-90% when the made the switch to the Gnome 2+ back in the day (around 2000-2001 I think).

These days it's pretty much simple and it has been heavily criticized by many + by myself too (apparently someone called Linus Torvalds was one of them :)). Although I wrote that post few months ago but apparently, the disappointment came from the experiences that I had in the past few years (since I decided to stick-with GNU/Linux).

But the point is that, at lest in the recent years it seems that the developers has come up with their own versions of little "solutions" in order to fix some of those "missing" features in Gnome desktop (ahh, the power of Open-Source software :D).

Anyhow, if you're just like me having a continuous "hate and love" relationship with the Nautilus file manager and trying to find a way out of that too simple right-click menu and thinking if there's a way that you can add functions of your own to that with ease?... well my friend, you sure can do that!.

There is apparently an application called "Nautilus-Actions" which is I think A Nautilus script (they are like "addo-ons" which expands the features of Nautilus via their API).

And I gotta say folks, after playing it with like 5-10 minutes, seriously if you know your way around GNU/Linux commands (trust me, I know very very little about 'em commands, still learning just like you) then this is one heck of an application that can totally change how Nautilus behave!.

Main features...

Hi!, my name is "awesome" ;-)...

*. Add/remove new menus to the Nautilus file manager right click menu.

*. Add/remove the appropriate commands.

*. Use Mimetypes:

For instance, say that you wanted the command "Mplayer" to be displayed once you right click on a multimedia file extension ".mkv", then you can use this feature to associate the command for that file-type only.

*. Include/Exclude folders:

Say that you wanted the menu to only display once you right-click in a certain location in Nautilus, then this is the feature that you can use for that.

*. Display the menu on selected objects or on empty spaces (or them both).

*. Import/Export pre-configured scripts.

These are very little of its features. But I'll give you an example which would help to understand it much easier (I was addressing the newbies only, for the underdogs: respect!, respect! :) ).

Lets install it...

You can install the "Nautilus-Actions" app in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command.

sudo apt-get install nautilus-actions

Now once installed you should be able to launch it via the main desktop menu or by using the below command after pressing "Alt" + "F2" keys on your keyboard.

nautilus-actions-config-tool

You can obtain a huge list of pre-configured scripts from this page if you like too. 

But how to add a program "shortcut" of your own?

Well, although I totally don't want to, but let's say that I wanted to launch the "Totem" media player using nautilus right-click menu. Okay then, after launching the app you should see a window similar to the first screenshot.

1. Under the "Action" tab: in the sub heading "Nautilus item" you'll see two check-mark boxes. The first one is enabled by default which makes sure that the new menu item will only appear when you select something in Natilus and right-click on it.

But if you want the menu-item to be displayed only when you right-click on an empty space, then remove the check-mark on the first one and add a check-mark on the second one that says "Display item in location context Menu".

If you put a check mark on that which says: "Display item in the toolbar", then it'll also appear in your Nautilus tool-bar too!...

2. Now, you'll see another  sub heading called "Context-label". Now as shown below, just replace the text in that box with "Open Totem" (you can add any name here since this is just the display name that'll be shown in the new menu).

3. Under "Tooltip" (above screenshot): type whatever the text you want (which is optional) and obviously it'll show a nice tooltip description about that menu-item.

4. Under "Icon": you can choose an icon to be displayed with the menu. But for performance issues, I humbly advice you to try not to use icons.

Associating the menu with the actual command...

5. Now, click on the next tab called "Command". Under the sub-heading "path" just enter the below command (since we're trying to Totem player) and leave other options alone.

totem

As mentioned above, you can use other tabs to set things such as making the menu-item visible in a certain location, etc ... but if you're totally new to this, then both the "Action" and "Command" tabs are the ones that we need.

6. Now just click on its menu and go to: "File" -> "Save" and close the application (this is important, otherwise in my case, Nautilus failed to update the settings).

7. To make these changes apply to Nautilus we have to restart it.

For that use the below command (beware: before running make sure you have closed or completed any processes related to Nautilus such as file-copy, etc otherwise they'll be terminated!).

nautilus -q

That's it! and below is a screenshot of my Nautilus after adding both Totem and Gedit (Gnome's text editor) to the right-click menu.

Not just Totem, as long as you know the appropriate command name of the application that you want to add, you can add any application to the Nautilus file manager's right-click menu + you can even add other advanced features such as "refresh" command for instance as well.

But how the heck can I find actual command for a given program?

Well, for knowing the actual command-name of the installed applications, as long as they show-up in your main desktop Menu, there's a simple trick that we can use.

In the recent years, Gnome came with a separate application called "alacarte" which lets us easily add/remove applications in the main application menu. Not only that, by using this app we can easily figure-out the name and the actual command associated with it which helps to launch the program itself too.

So, just put the below command in after pressing "Alt" + "F2".

alacarte

Now, from its main window, navigate to any sub-menu and locate your program, and then simply double click on the icon (I just double clicked the "Ubuntu Software Center" icon) which should reveal the "properties" of the application.

See that selected text, yup, that's the secret formula :P...

Now under the sub heading "Command", the text in that field is the location + the command of that application that you just double clicked. For instance, if we want to manually launch the Ubuntu software center, then we should use the command...

/usr/bin/software-center %u 

OR

software-center %u

Since "/user/bin" actually the location which will be recognized automatically by Ubuntu (or in GNU/Linux in general), most of the time, you can ignore the "/usr/bin" part.

Wraping-up...

So if you want to easily customize the Nautilus file management utility's menu (for fun and adding some efficiency, hopefully :D), then first figure-out its "actual command" and then open the awesome Nautilus-Actions utility and after filling the other fields, under the command section, simply copy and paste, make your changes and you're good to go.

Well, that's about it. If you have questions just ask. Enjoy it :).

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How to Install LightDM in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal?

Canonical said that if they get rid of GDM (gnome display manager) and install something a bit "light-weight" would certainly help to speed up the booting times in Ubuntu Linux. First I thought "ya, like it's gonna make a difference" but it turns out to be that I was quite wrong (damn it!).

Starting with the Ubuntu 11.10 alpha releases, Canonical did replace GDM with another lightweight log-in manager called LightDM and according to some testers, LgihtDM has actually being able to cut out few seconds of booting times in Ubuntu thus significantly speeding things up!. Although LightDM is certainly not the only reason for this sudden "boost" but it has certainly helped, it seems.

So I thought giving it a go in my Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal Laptop and how did it went?, well, not so good.

But to remind you that both lightDM and Ubuntu "integration" is at the beta stage at this moment thus bugs and compatible issues will have to be tolerated and even if you successfully installed LightDM in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal there are no guaranteed results.

The "beauty" lightdm!...

So if at this moment you should not try to install this if you want the best possible stability out of your current Ubuntu OS. Anyhow, I dunno whether it's for the good or the worse :P but before installing and replacing GDM with LightDM and later realizing that it doesn't work at all thus all of a sudden you have an Ubuntu OS that's stuck at the log-in screen... there is actually a way that we can "test" LightDM, like running it in a Virtual environment before actually replacing the GDM.


So let's begin the installation. 

There is a PPA available for this, so the installation is pretty straight forward. Just open your Terminal and enter the below commands.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:lightdm-team/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install lightdm lightdm-greeter-example-gtk

Now to the near end of the installation you'll be asked by a window that says to choose either "gdm" (the current one) or the "lightdm". Don't choose lightdm, yet. Make sure you've selected "gdm" (just for now :D) and press enter.

Just make sure you've chosen "gdm", just for now :)...

How to test it?

I actually grab most of these information from this Ubuntu Wiki page (it kinda destroyed my perception of being an "expert" didn't it?, shi*) and it says that to test lightdm before applying it, to use the below command.

lightdm --test-mode

But my 11.04 Natty gave me an error saying that an Xserver module called "Xephyr" is missing. So before "testing" it in the somewhat "virtual" mode, you too might want to install that "Xephyr". To do that, open your Terminal and enter the below commands.

sudo apt-get install xserver-xephyr

Now enter the above command and it should open up a new window and will run lightdm in it. Although you can click on the options such as users, etc on the window (as you were running it for real) but it's just a "virtual" environment thus you can't log-in or do anything at all.

But the thing is that, if you see a perfectly running lightdm (with a GTK theme, working menus, without any screen flickers, you know nothing "unusual") then you're good to go.

Even if you don't see a GTK theme but an ugly looking theme, still lightdm will run just fine. But after you put this command if nothing happened or even if it did open a new window and then gave few blinks and just crashed (like in my case, that's why I don't have a screen shot of that window), then that's what's going to happen if we actually replace it with GDM.

Update: According to Craig's comment below, he actually have found out that after installing a GTK-Greeter theme by using the below command should solve this "flickering and crashing" issue. 

Although I haven't tested it (I removed lightdm ... gonna wait till 11.10 hits the streets) but it's worth trying. 

sudo apt-get install lightdm-gtk-greeter

So if you see any on those, then please go no further and wait a little longer until they introduce a stable version. But they also update this PPA quite often so you'd probably have a much improved version by the time you read this post, hopefully. 

But after running it in the "test-mode" if it ran perfectly well for you, then you can safely enable it for real by entering the below command in your terminal window and choosing "lightdm" this time instead of "gdm". Otherwise, as said, it's at its beta stage right now, thus we should better wait (not by choice, in my case :/).

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm

If however this works really well in your computer (lucky Geek!) then you can install several themes for Lightdm that uses GTK, Webkit or Qt as the "engine" to make thing look much more beautiful as well :D. To install them use the below commands.

sudo apt-get install lightdm-engine-webkit

sudo apt-get install lightdm-engine-gtk

sudo apt-get install lightdm-greeter-example-qt

Good luck!.

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Creating a Cheap "Unity Desktop Replica" Out of Gnome Classic (Yikes!)

I used to think that I'm a bit of a moderately experienced GNU/Linux user rather than an absolute beginner who's starting to learn it from scratch. But after seeing few things, I'm re-considering my identity (shi* ;-)). Okay, Okay, let's forget about the usual boring, bragging... and let me start this right-away.  

Now here's the thing... I kinda like the Unity desktop apart from all those criticism against it . But that's not to say it's perfect nor I love it (I was one of the dudes who heavily criticized it, still do)... But from all the good things about it, perhaps it will never be my primary desktop because of the fundamental, scary philosophical belief that it carries.

But for those of you who love Unity desktop ... the issue as many has pointed out is, it, like Gnome 3 needs a lot of your GPU resources because it uses the 3D, advanced composting manager, the Comipz. The issue at the moment is not so much because of the resource actually... it's due to the unstable Compiz customizations done to it, I think.

Anyhow, you can still use the Unity 2D module but that's written in Qt-toolkit and for some reason I'm always a bit skeptical about Qt (maybe I'm a freak after all, oh you think Gayan? :/).

So after like 4 months of the initial 11.04 Natty release... two days ago I thought, "hmm, I wonder if there's a way to make Gnome classic looks like Unity, by any chance..." I'm pretty sure many already knows how to achieve this and it took my dull bran like 1.5 Hours to figure it out and finally I came up with the below one :/.

Except for the Dash-Search bar, missing :/... but a much better one is achieved at the end of the post...

Below one is how it looks like when a Window is maximized.

The "launcher" is hidden which is revealed when you move your mouse to the left side as with Unity...

How the heck did you do it?

Now remember, I did this without using any third-party software what-so-ever (except for a small Gnome applet). This was build using the Gnome classic desktop that Ubuntu 11.04 gives you.


Things that has to be done

1. As you all know, Unity desktop module displays the application menu using the Unity dash (thanks Apple). So we gotta figure out a way to do that.

2. And also when you maximize an application window, the borders (title bar) is automatically removed and the Buttons are also moved into the Unity dash.

3. Then there's the Unity application launcher that does not change its location and Ubuntu will not let you do that since according to themselves, if they do then the OS would be going against the design goals, so they say.

But personally for the 16:9 wide screens... unlike with the bottom-dock like in Mac OSX, this left app-launcher is a bad move.

These are the most prominent things that make the difference between Gnome classic and Unity desktop concerning the GUI of course. So if you're ready, then let's dress-up the ex-Gnome and make her look like the new Unity girly ;-).

Now I assume that you're already logged into the Gnome classic desktop. 

1. Remove the menu-bar - Just right-click on the top Gnome panel and from the menu choose "Remove from panel".

If you've filled it with app-shortcuts, then you may need to remove them to make some space for the "application menu-bar".

2. Now let's replace that "vacuum" with a Unity desktop "icon" type thingie called the classic menu-bar-icon which is very useful since it lets you easily launch apps (it's basically a simplified version of the menu that we just removed but doesn't take much room since it display itself as an icon).

Again right-click on the top panel and from the menu choose: "Add to Panel". Now scroll down until you see an applet called "Main Menu". Select it and click on the add button. Now you should see a small Unity icon on the top panel, move it to the left-edge of the panel.

3. Adding the Title-bar Buttons to the panel - By default, once we maximize a window Unity displays the title-bar button (maximize, restore, close) on its top panel. Luckily with Gnome, there is a separate applet that does exactly that!.

It's called "Gnome Window Applets". You can install it easily in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal using the below commands in your Terminal window.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tsbarnes/misc

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install gnome-window-applets

After installing, log-out and log-in again to complete the integration.

After that, as usual, again right-click on the top panel and choose "Add to Panel..." and again scroll down until you see the applet called "Window Buttons" and click on the add button.

Depending on your current theme (It supports all the official Ubuntu themes), you can change between a lot of different button-themes. To access the preference, just maximize a window and you'll see another "three-buttons" on the top panel. Right click on it and choose "preference" and make you selections.

Now also move this buttons-applet next to the above mentioned "menu-bar icon" to the left. To make things a bit neat, you can also add a separator applet if you like. To do that, again open the applet adding window and chose "Separator" then move it between the "Menu-bar icon" and the "Buttons-applet".

Add another separator right next to the buttons applet and after you've done all that, the panel look something like in the below screenshot. Again this is not necessary.. but it looks good.  

4. Removing Title-bars for Maximized Window (This is a bit tricky, not really :P) -

When you maximize a window in Unity desktop, it removes the title-bar from the windows and only displays the buttons. How can we do that?. Simple, for that we'll be using the Gconf-editor (advanced Gnome desktop settings manager).

Press "Alt" + "F2" keys and enter the below command.

gconf-editor

Now from the new window that you get, from your left, navigate to : "Applications" -> "Metacity" -> "General".

To your right side, look for an option called "show_maximized_titlebars" (as in below screenshot) and remove the check mark.

That's it. From now on, whenever you maximize a window, the title-bars will be automatically hidden and should look exactly like below (which is a bit closer to what the Unity does).

Getting a bit closer...

6. Adding the "Unity application menu-bar" -

As said, Unity displays all the selected apps menu in its top panel. How can we to this in Gnome?. Thankfully, Ubuntu does have it implemented universally thus a Gnome classic applet is installed into 11.04 by default. It's called "Indicator Applet App Menu".

To add this to your top panel, again right click on the panel and choose "Add to Panel..." and from the list scroll down until you see "Indicator Applet App Menu" and click on the "add" button.

After that, you should see the default menu for whatever the application that you use (well the ones that supports Ubuntu's new menu-protocol), their menus now should be displaying in the top panel just like in Unity.

This is not 100% perfect, since when not maximized, the button are hidden in Unity (so as here but)... but with this applet, it leaves a "space" as you can see (between menu-icon and the app-menu-bar) if you know a way around this, I'm more than willing to hear it :D. Other than that, everything looks a lot like Unity.

7. The Application launcher - 

Ah yes, the launcher. Well in the first screenshot at the beginning the of the post, i have something a bit similar to that. All I did was took the already existing bottom panel in Gnome and changed the width/height (made it transparent, etc) and added few shorts of my own. But that has few limitations.

For instance, with the application launcher in Unity, we can switch between multiple windows of the same app, it has notifications, etc but with the Gnome classic, you can't do that.

But luckily, you can get almost all those features by simply installing an application dock such as Avant Window Navigator which I also did and then after adding apps, etc it looked like the below one. If you do this, then delete the bottom Gnome panel as well.

Final Desktop with third-party application dock: Note the "Grey three buttons" - As a fix to that ugly space for the window-buttons applet, I used its settings so it'll always display the button which makes it looks good actually :)

Current issues ?

*. Well, when you haven't chosen any apps, the Unity panel does not show any menu in its dash, but this one does display a menu that is drawn from the Nautilus. The reason is simple. By default Nautilus is the one that handles the desktop (both Unity and Gnome classic).

So Ubuntu developers have disabled it somehow (I don't know how to do that). But I do like that menu since it allow me to do things without right-clicking on the desktop (changing the background, create a folder, access computer, etc) on the bright side :D.

It's kinda cute ;-)...

*. The only other thing is that as said the applet-window does take the "space" for its button even when the windows aren't maximized so the "application-menu-bar" and the "Menu-Icon" have a gap but for that, as said, you can make the applet always show the buttons...


Benefits ?

*. Well, when you use the Gnome classic (without no effects), then we don't have Compiz running. So we have a cheap Unity desktop (somewhat) running with less system resources.

*. Both the Gnome left panel and the Avant Window Navigator (or whatever your choice is) do let you changes a lot of settings by default and most importantly you can change their locations!.

So if you have a netbook with 16:9 screen aspect ratio, then you might do really well by moving that app-dock to your bottom. But with Unity this is not possible. But with this "thing" you can do whatever the heck you want it it! + you can even add shorcuts to the top panel which is also prohibited in Unity as well.

Some of the settings (transparency, etc) in AWN type docks are only available if you have enabled compositing in Metacity although it won't be as bad as Compiz, but after enabling compositing effects, remember it require a little more of your GPU nonetheless.

I like the Gnome panel to replace it with other third-party docks although it do lack few options as said before, at least it needs even lower system resources. But the issue with it is,  window switcher applet does not work well after changing the size and transparency, etc. Otherwise, it's just perfect for me. Does anyone know a batter window switching applet for Gnome panels??..

Final desktop with Gnome panel: I removed the window-switcher applet since it doesn't integrate well with the transparency and changed size...

As said, if you have any suggestions and perhaps a way to fix those "current issues", you're more than welcomed here... What do you think ? ...

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How to Make the Ubuntu Unity Desktop run Faster?

Unlike in the past, these days almost all the GNU/Linux distributions that pack both Gnome (GTK written) and the Qt/KDE require us to have at least 512MB of RAM by default. Although with the introduction of the Gnome 3, distributions like Fedora 16 for instance now requires you to have about 640MB of RAM or else it even refuse to get installed as well.

This "RAM" jump is actually due to the fact of using much more GPU for drawing the GUI by these desktop. Although it's certainly not the only reason since the Kernel and other applications in general get more heavier as well. Anyhow concerning Ubuntu, with the introduction of the Unity desktop module which uses the Compiz compositing manager by default thus it needs more resources than usual.

So in an attempt to make the Unity desktop run faster disabling the Compiz completely is the mots sensible thing but unfortunately we cannot do that since Unity 3D is a plug-in for Compiz.

But there are few things that we can do. For instance...

*. Use the Unity 2D (Qt written) desktop interface instead -

Update: Starting with 11.10 version, now Ubuntu ships the Unity 2D by default, so you don't have to install it manually anymore.

I know it doesn't sound appealing and when considering the fact that the 2D version does not have all the features of the default 3D GUI ... but this is the single most important thing if you're really concerned about reducing system resources.

*. Get rid of unnecessary start-up applications -

By default Ubuntu (including the Gnome Classic desktop) loads few apps during the start-up process of the desktop that are not required to some users.

So click on the icon next to your user name in the Unity panel and from the menu choose: "System Settings" -> "Personal" -> "Startup Applications" as shown in the below screeshots.

1

2

3

This should bring you a new window that lets you enable/disable start-up applications as shown above. But remember, you should not disable all of these apps since some are necessary to let your desktop function properly.

I've written about this in the past concerning the Gnome desktop ... but it still applies to the Unity as well. So go ahead and read that post if you need more information.

But for most of us, things like Bluetooth manager, Evolution alarm notify, Gnome login-sound, personal file sharing (if you don't have any networked environment), Print queue applet (if you don't use a printer at all), Remote desktop, Ubuntu One and Visual assistance are few of the apps that can be disabled safely. But I humbly advice you to read that post.

*. Install Preload -

This is actually an excellent utility that runs in the background as a system service and act very similar to the Microsoft app pre-fetch. What this does is simple. Say that you usually use 10 main apps. But from that 10, there are 3 applications that are the most prominent.

Lets say that the parts of the applications are scattered all over your HDD which makes them loading a time consuming task for the OS. What the "Preload" does is simple, it makes an index of those most used 3 apps thus accessing them in the future is made easy for the GNU/Linux operating system since now it doesn't have to look all over the HDD... it just reads the index and finds their locations faster than ever which result in a faster application loading times!.

This of course is a very simple analogy and I'm pretty sure the actual scenario is much more complicated.

You can install preload in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal by using the below command.

sudo apt-get install preload

Not just for Unity desktop actually, this will help to decrease loading times of any app under GNU/Linux in General. You don't have to tweak or anything, after installing it'll run in the background and will take care of everything automatically for you.

But remember "preload" also loads portions of your mostly used apps during the system boot-up process which could result in a slightly slower booting times (what! :/) but this for most of us will be almost unnoticeable + when considering the enhanced app loading times, in my experience this is more than forgivable :D.

*. "Lower" your Compiz Effects -

Compiz... weird by default ;-)...

Although if you have a powerful GPU then having Compiz with a lot of cool effects enabled by default may not be a big deal. But if you care about making Unity as speedy as possible then you may want to do some manual editing and lower some of the Compiz effects which require significant amount of GPU power. As said this alone should speed-up things quite significantly.

*. Create a Swap partition -

I'm pretty sure you've already done this and have a dedicated partition for your Swap space. But I'm a bit of a freak (bit of a ?, really? :P) and I don't like having partition after partition in my HDD because it gives me headaches.

So I don't have separate swap partition. As a result every time I install Ubuntu Linux I tell the setup wizard to install it without a swap partition. Now this is fine as long as you have 3GB or more RAM on your PC/Laptop (ahh to be rich ;-) ).

But I'm pretty sure many of us don't have that amount of RAM thus even if you have like 1GB and like me don't have a separate swap partition and use Ubuntu without a one, thet seriously create one!.

This is a highly recommended procedure and the only reason that I skip this while installing is that we cannot create a virtual swap space using the installation wizard. But after the installation is completed you can easily add a virtual swap space in Ubuntu which is again, highly recommended + it'll help heavily to make your entire operating system more stable as well.

*. Clean your apt-get Cache -

apt-get is one of the most powerful command-line apps out there that lets you do almost anything under the sun when it comes to dealing with application installations, uninstallations, downloads, etc.

Before installing the applications, apt-get cache them in your HDD (a backup of the downloaded packages). Now one certainly don't need this cache (unless you want to re-install the packages without re-downloading them) + if forgotten for a while then the cache folder can get really big (talking about Gigabytes here). So it's always best to clear this cache.

Don't worry, clearing the cache won't remove the installed apps... so no worries dudes :D. To do this open your GNU/Linux Terminal and enter the below command.

sudo apt-get clean

Make sure to do this from time to time.

*. Remove packages that are no-longer necessary -

This is another big headache for the GNU/Linux users. This is caused by "dependencies". As the name suggest, say that you were installing a package called "A". But to install it Ubuntu may say that it has to download 10 other small packages, these are the "dependencies".

So after installing "A" and after playing with it for a while  (not talking about ex-girlfriends here :/) you got bored and decided to remove it.

But what could happen most likely is that although the app "A" will be removed but the other 10 apps (called dependencies) may not all be removed due to various reasons.

But again using our excellent apt-get, we can safely remove, unwanted dependencies using a single command. This will again help you to cleanup your HDD space + app registry entries which makes your operating system a pain in the *$s to use.

So again open your Terminal and enter the below commands.

sudo apt-get autoremove

*. Clean your Gconf registry entries -

Just like MS Windows Registry, GNU/Linux also has its own way of storing app related information which vary depending on the desktop environment. Unity and Gnome classic use a such "app-registry" called "Gconf configuration system".

So the more apps that you install and remove, as the time goes, some of their "portions" may be left inside of this registry entries thus slowing down your desktop or the OS in general.

Luckily we have an excellent tool called Gconf-Cleaner, a GUI that automatically scans this database and remove these app entries. So within seconds it can remove tens of hundred of registry entries in Unity which should help to enhance the speed.

So use that app and do a bit of a software registry/database cleaning in Ubuntu. Although other than not letting me backup my current database before cleaning ... I did not encounter any issues with it... but use it at your own risk.

*. Update your Web Browser - 

This is another critical thing. These days most of us spend our time with a web browser rather than any other application. But in general all these web browser do consume a lot of system resources (RAM especially). There could be many reasons. One is that it has to!.

Say that you've opened like 20 tabs.. oh well then, you should be willing to sacrifice some system resources mate! :D. But a web browser could also be using unnecessary amount of system resource due to a software bug.

So keeping an updated web browser will not only make it a secure one but also should help to fix those memory leaks which helps you to preserve the system resources as well. 

*. Try to avoid using Ubuntu Software Center -

Although we're being warned by Canonical that with the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 version there won't be the "synaptic" (the GUI front-end for the apt-get command-line tool) installed by default. But you should be able to install it via their repositories in the future nonetheless.

The point is... as I've said before, the reason I said to avoid USC is not because it uses a lot of RAM but most of the time it requires a lot of CPU usage which make the Ubuntu OS in general a bit unstable (for instance, if you have both Firefox and USC opened at the same time, you're asking for trouble).

"Oi!, at least I'm pretty!" ... yeah right :P

This is because USC heavily depends on using a lot of online source to fetch those pretty icons and other details of packages, user reviews, screenshots, etc (so it's more like a web browser actually) thus it needs a lot of CPU usage when comparing with Synaptic.

So I'm not saying you to not to use it (I know you won't :P) but try not to keep it open for a longer periods at least. But if you have a fast processor and RAM, etc... then this may not be a big deal but unnecessary usage of system could easily drain your Laptop's batter life on the darker side as well :).

*. Remove unnecessary applets -

Since the Unity panel is the application menu bar Canonical's decision not to let users add applets like with Gnome classic panels makes sense. But as a workaround the geeks have come up with another type of applets that runs in your notification area.

Unlike with the old panel applets, these applets do consume a bit more memory since to display at the notification area these applets have to be loaded into the memory where the "old fashioned" applets are just shortcut-icons and require a very little of your RAM, in comparison of course. 

So if you have installed third party applets that you no longer use, then uninstall them or removing the currently running ones should help.

*. Try to limit your Workspace Usage -

Workspace are like virtual desktops in GNU/Linux. The more you use them (more than 1 I mean) the more system resource you're gonna be needing. + With Compiz enabled, every time you click on your "workspace icon" in the Unity application launcher, it uses fancy effects which again needs a bit of a your system resource in general.

So try to limit them to a singe workspace if you can. But because of the way Unity desktop is designed ("doing a single task at once", according to Mark Shuttleworth's own words) for dealing with multiple apps you may have to use the workspace switcher a bit often, but as said, this also needs more system resource in general. So try to limit that.

*. Make Thunar the default file management utility -

By default Unity (both 3D and 2D) use Nautilus as the file management utility. Although Nautilus is already highly simplified still if you're looking for a more lighter version (loads fast, etc) then I highly recommend Thunar which is the Xfce desktop's file manager.

First install Thunar and then follow these official Ubuntu steps to replace Nautilus completely. I personally like Thunar a lot because unlike with Nautilus, newer versions of Thunar even displays a drop-list of information (size, created date, type) for files that you move your mouse hover. This is not possible with Gnome Nautilus since they think that implementing such thing means complexity and scare away the user >:(. 

And also with Thunar you can even edit Tags of audio files directly from the properties window which is also not possible with Nautilus!. If you want multimedia file (both audio and video) thumbnail generating in Thunar, then install the Parole multimedia player as well.

These area actually a handful of things that I could think of helping make Ubuntu Unity desktop runs a bit faster but if you have suggestions and "complaints" :P, then please throw some comments.

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How to Make Metacity the Default Compositing Window Manager in Ubuntu?

It doesn't matter what operating system that you're using (whether its GNU/Linux, MS Windows, Mac OSX, Solaris and Mars - there isn't one by that name, yet :P) the Window manager is one of the core programs of all operating systems.


What is a window manager?

Don't be angry, I know most know about this already but for all the beginners :)... a window manager is the application that literally "draws" all of those  maximize/close/minimize buttons, title bars, panels... or all the graphical user interfaces of all programs (which are usually called "windows", these days).

So I think that anyone can see the importance of a Window manager by now. Although when it comes to GNU/Linux we have several window managers because unlike many other operating system, GNU/Linux is "scattered".

You know, the Kernel (the software of the OS that deal directly with your hardware) is developed separately and the desktops and lot other apps are developed somewhere else, unlike with MS Windows or Mac OSX where the entire OS is built by the same developers which has both good and bad aspects (story for another day eh ;-)).

For instance, the Qt/KDE desktop uses a window manager for creating its application GUI called Kwin. The Gnome desktop (2.x versions) uses one called Metacity. The X Windows system (which is the core and oldest of all "window drawing" apps for GNU/Linux) uses the Xfmw and the now famous (thanks mainly to Ubuntu actually) the "Compiz" (which is actually a dedicated 3D compositing manager) are just a few to mention.


The good old days ;-)...

The old days there weren't much 3D. In fact there wasn't any at all. So all these window managers, not that long ago were only capable of drawing 2D graphical user interfaces until recently the GPU devices became rather powerful and finally had the ability to draw 3D, complex GUIs.

So, most of those above mentioned WM were "patched" by the developers to enable the support for 3D rendering in GUIs which were only 2D in the recent past. With this trend, the WM received a lot of new features in general. One main one is called "compositing".

Although I won't be going into technical details... compositing in general is a must have (in both 2D and especially 3D) for enabling advanced features such as adding drop shadows, 3D effects, transparency, etc.

Some WM succeeded (such as the Kwin for instance) with this trend but some others like the Metacity wasn't that prominent.

Anyhow after sometime, the Gnome developers did some heavy coding into the Metacity concerning the upcoming Gnome 3 desktop (its already here, but you know in those days) for the future of 3D compositing and they called it Mutter.

So, even though Mutter is based on Metacity and Clutter... they're both separate projects. Thus the original Metacity WM that comes with the Ubuntu 11.04 (and below versions + with classic Gnome desktop) is still the old, 2d friendly WM that does not have the ability to create 3D GUIs. It's still a 2D window manager. 

Anyhow, remember it may not be the most highly advanced WM when you make it the default compositing manager. And unlike with Compiz there aren't a lot of effects integrated into Metacity's compositing "engine" (no 3D effects to begin with) thus don't hope for a lot of effects.

But things like adding a drop shadow and adding transparency, etc are available and on the bright side, it won't take a lot of system resources when comparing with the other WM such as Compiz for instance.

Wait a second here Gayan!. If I cannot have any of those nerdy 3D effects then what do I get after enabling this "compositing" thing?

Well, um... okay, have a look at the below two screenshots.

The first one is a screenshot of Nautilus without any Metacity compositing but the second one was taken after the enabling it. Although there isn't much to talk about but you can see the second one has a nice drop shadow, faster minimizing effects (bit similar to the Compiz ones), etc ... for a start :).

Without...

After enabling... well, better than nothing :/...

And as mentioned, when the Metacity compositing is enabled, the application launcher of Unity 2D will have that transparency effect as well.

Anyhow, you can easily make Metacity the default compositing manger Ubuntu 11.04 Natty narwhal by following the below procedure. But remember, first you have to make sure that the desktop that you run is using the Metacity instead of any other WM that you have installed.

1. Open your GNU/Linux Terminal and enter the below command (yep, we're using the Gnome's setting manager).

gconf-editor

2. Now this should open a Window similar to the below one. From the left side go to: "apps" - "Metacity" -> "General".

3. Now from the options that you'll get to your right scroll-down until you see a setting called "compositing_manager" which is disabled by default. All you gotta do to make Metacity the default Compositing Window manager is to click on the "check-box".

Then you should see a disappearance of the windows of your desktop (don't panic :D), wait for few seconds, if everything went well, then you should see all of your opened windows + this time they'll have some cool shadows, etc.

Now not just enabling compositing but as you can see, there are some other options that you can set such as...

*. Enable/Disable workarounds ("patches" for those "old" and troublesome apps to work with Metacity).

*. Audo raise delay.

*. Enable/disable titlebar display once maximized.

*. Reduce resources - A pretty helpful one from the bunch actually. It'll skip some of those heavy effects to save some of those CPU/GPU/RAM or system resources iof your poor PC/Laptop ;-) in general thus making the desktop much faster.

These are just a few to mention. But as you can see, in general, you can use this window to configure a lot of settings related to Metacity window manager.

That's it. Now we're done. Enjoy!.

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The Importance of Running Applications Using Command-Line Interface in GNU/Linux

These days you certainly don't have to rely on the GNU/Linux command-line interface that much even though it's the foundation of the entire operating system. This is because nowadays we have powerful GUI tools written in various toolkits such as GTK+/Qt, etc which makes the life of a someone who's even new to GNU/Linux much more "comfortable" without a doubt.

But quite ironically, many users, beside all those excellent package manager GUIs, etc still prefer to use the command-line when it comes to installing applications because unlike with a GUI where you have to go to the menu and open it then search and click on the "apply" button, etc... with a command-line tool (which is the "engine" these GUIs use anyway) all you gotta do is just copy and paste the command in to your Terminal and hit the "enter" key... the rest will be taken care of :D... especially with Debian based distributions such as Ubuntu for instance.

And the command-line, also known as the "Shell" (which is also known as "Terminal", which is again, another emulation of the original "command line interface" in a GUI environment such as in your Gnome/KDE desktop) is the way how operating systems used to get "orders" from the users since at that time there weren't any graphical user interfaces available thus the shell or the command-line was THE interface it self.

So it is a or "the" most powerful tool, especially in GNU/Linux OS to this day and perhaps always will be as long as the hackers have the authority.  

The "shell emulator" for the Gnome desktop... known as the Gnome Terminal...

Anyway because of its this powerful nature, did you know that you can actually use the command-line also as a way of fixing certain types of application related errors?. Of course not all the errors since some are "caused" by coding errors where there's nothing we as users can do about it but...

This is certainly not something new and is something that anyone like me who's got a decent knowledge of GNU/Linux knows that, concerning software (since the command line is the heart of GNU/Linux and its adaptation is in a much higher scale than I can image...) apart from installing, you can use the command line as a way of fixing certain errors that won't let you run the newly installed programs otherwise!.

For instance (this is just a singe example as I've seen this over and over again) sometime ago in my Ubuntu Laptop (11.04) I installed a software called NTFS-Config. Now I used the "apt-get" command to installed it but after the installation was over I closed the Terminal window and clicked on the icon on the menu to launch it. I waited for few seconds but nothing happened. Then I clicked on the icon again, but still nada, nothing happened.

So I realized the application  have failed to run ("oh Gayan, what an insight that is" :P).

The point is, the application didn't give me any errors or messages of any kind which would help me at lest to understand what was happening. Since I've been using (like many others) command line quite efficiently to getting fixed certain things in apps in the past, I opened the Terminal window and put the command that should launched the "ntfs-config" utility to see what information it can throw at me.

The same thing happened, it failed to launch but, unlike with the above method, this time I was able to see an "output" by the application which was "hidden" while it was running without using the command-line. Below is a portion of the error.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/ntfs-config", line 102, in <module>
    main(args, opts)
  File "/usr/bin/ntfs-config", line 75, in main
    app = NtfsConfig()
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/NtfsConfig/NtfsConfig.py", line 56, in __init__
    os.mkdir(HAL_CONFIG_DIR)
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/hal/fdi/policy' 

Now as you can see, although the whole "text" would get anyone a bit confused and I certainly have no idea what the heck that is all about, yet one line (in bold text) got my attention.

It basically says that "ntfs-config" cannot find a folder in "/etc/hal/fdi/policy" directory path. So I checked and realised that there isn't any folder by that name in that path!. So all I did was manually created the folders it said, "missing".

That's all I did and the next thing I did was reopened it via the standard menu and clicking on the icon and guess what?, this time it worked!.

So all I'm trying to say to all those who are new and learning GNU/Linux from scratch (I'm an average dude... trust me :D) haven't happened to know this yet... whenever an application fails to start after a successful installation, just run it using your command line.

Remember :- this obviously won't be able to fix all the errors since some are only fixable via accessing the original programming codes... in that case there's nothing anyone can do unless the original developers fix it.

But other small issues like the above mentioned one, etc, whenever something like that happens, try running that app in your Terminal because even if you can't figure it out and fix it, still most of the time, command line will at least be able to give some "feedback" to you which should help to finding a way to fix it. Again not all the time but heck, it might save you few "angry faces" :D. Good luck.

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