Showing posts with label Gnome 3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gnome 3. Show all posts

25 January 2014

544. rehash: making gnome 3 usable on debian

This post is meant to help a specific person leaving ubuntu's unity for debian's gnome. He finds unity easier to use then stock debian gnome 3.

While I agree that gnome 3 without any modifications isn't very good, by installing the right set of extensions you can make it very usable.
I'll be showing Jessie/gnome 3.8 in all the screenshots below. Setting up gnome 3.4 is pretty much the same though.

I've made a few similar posts before:
 http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/debian-testing-64-wheezy-installing.html
http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/gnome-34-frippery-extensions-in-debian.html
http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/367-some-post-install-steps-on-debian.html
http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/435-briefly-frippery-extensions-for.html


What I don't like about Stock Gnome 3:
For a first time user there's no obvious first action when greeted by a gnome 3/shell desktop
 

1. Everything opens as full screen and 2. you can't resize the windows (look at the top right corner of the title bar of the program). The feeling is claustrophobic.

The menu for each program is located on the top panel. This is only the case for programs which are specifically written for gnome 3 though, like gedit, nautilus, epiphany etc.

Power Off -- there's no way of choosing between hibernate, power off, restart, suspend etc.




Fixing gnome 3:

1. First hit the terminal

I think gnome-tweak-tool is installed by default these days, but by all means do
sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

Next, get the frippery extensions for your version of debian/gnome: Wheezy:
cd ~
wget http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/gnome-shell-frippery-0.4.1.tgz
tar xvf gnome-shell-frippery-0.4.1.tgz

Jessie:
cd ~
wget http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/gnome-shell-frippery-0.6.3.tgz
tar xvf gnome-shell-frippery-0.6.3.tgz

Now, log out and log in again in gnome (alt+f2, r didn't work for me).



2. Tweak Tools
Then move your mouse to the top left 'activities' corner and open Tweak Tools:


Go to Shell and change 'Arrangement of buttons on the titlebar' from 'Close Only' to 'All'.
Now you can close and resize applications the 'normal' way
Note how the titlebar changes to include both minimize and close buttons.

Next turn off dynamic workspaces and pick a reasonable number of virtual desktops (e.g. 4-6).
You won't see any visible changes just yet, but that'll come.


Now it's time to activate the frippery extensions. Go to Shell Extensions:
Activate the extensions one by one.

Note how there's an application menu in the top left corner now:

 Note the bottom panel:

Note the location of the clock:

Note the 'favourites' group of icons:



And note the appearance of a shutdown menu item:



Other changes
Other changes that I've made to my desktop are

* installing the faenza icon set: link here
It comes with it's own installation script.

* installing conky
conky is in the debian repos.  Here's my /etc/conky/conky.conf:
background no
own_window yes
own_window_type normal
own_window_argb_visual true
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes


alignment top_right
background yes
border_width 1
cpu_avg_samples 2
default_color white
default_outline_color white
default_shade_color white
default_graph_size 20 200
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
draw_outline no
draw_shades no
use_xft yes
xftfont DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12
gap_x 20
gap_y 60
minimum_size 5 5
net_avg_samples 2
no_buffers yes
out_to_console no
out_to_stderr no
extra_newline no
own_window_class Conky
own_window_transparent yes
stippled_borders 0
update_interval 1.0
uppercase no
use_spacer none
show_graph_scale no

TEXT
${exec lsb_release -ds}
${execi 5 acpi|gawk '{print $3,$4}'}
${addr eth0}/${addr wlan0}
$hr
${color grey}Uptime:$color $uptime
CPU:$alignc $cpu%
$alignc$color ${cpugraph 10,200 ffff00 ff0000 -t}  
RAM:$alignc $mem/$memmax 
$alignc$color ${memgraph 10,200 ffff00 ff0000 -t}
I/O:$alignc $diskio_read/$diskio_write
$alignc$color ${diskiograph 10,200 ffff00 ff0000 -t}
${color grey}Frequency (in GHz):$color
        ${freq_g 1}, ${freq_g freq_g2}
${color grey}Temperature:
$color CPU: ${acpitemp}°C
$hr
${color grey}File systems:$alignr $color/ ${fs_used /}/${fs_size /}
$alignr /home $color${fs_used /home}/${fs_size /home}
${color grey}Networking:
${color grey}eth0 ${color red} ${upspeed eth0}/${color green} ${downspeed eth0} ${color grey}
${color grey} ${upspeedgraph eth0 10,100 ffff00 ff0000 -t} ${color grey} ${downspeedgraph eth0 10,100 0000ff 00ff00 -t} ${color grey}
${color grey}wlan0 ${color red} ${upspeed wlan0}/${color green} ${downspeed wlan0} ${color grey}
${color grey} ${upspeedgraph wlan0 10,100 ffff00 ff0000 } ${color grey} ${downspeedgraph wlan0 10,100 0000ff 00ff00 } ${color grey}
$hr
${color grey}Name                       CPU%   MEM%
${color} ${top name 1} ${top cpu 1} ${top mem 1}
${color} ${top name 2} ${top cpu 2} ${top mem 2}
${color} ${top name 3} ${top cpu 3} ${top mem 3}
$hr
${color}City            Ping $alignr Time  
$font${color}Google $alignr${execi 60 ping -c 1 google.com -n|grep icmp_seq|sed 's/=/\t/g'|gawk '{print $10,$11}'}       $alignr${tztime America/Los_Angeles %a %H:%M}
$font${color}Melbourne   $alignr${tztime Australia/Melbourne %a %H:%M}

18 November 2013

530. Briefly: Adding a new entry to Default applications in Gnome 3. Example using Firefox

I'm tired of google chrome/chromium -- for some reason more and more websites are rendering incorrectly in it. Part of the reason is because I refuse to allow just any website to set cookies, but that can't explain all instances (e.g. I'm having major issues with any elsevier journals). I'm also tired of google in general, especially after having spent some time with google plus.
Anyway, I recently showed how to install firefox: http://verahill.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/528-briefly-setting-up-64-bit-pre-built.html

I'll show here to set it as a selectable application in the System Settings/Details

At the beginning the following selections are available:

The key to adding a new 'Default Application' is simply making sure that it appears in the MIME file type associations. And one way to do that is to create a .desktop file and use update-desktop-database to read it:

sudo cp /usr/share/applications/iceweasel.desktop /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop
sudo sed -i 's/Iceweasel/Firefox/g' /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop
sudo sed -i 's/Exec=iceweasel/Exec=firefox25/g' /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop
sudo sed -i 's/Icon=iceweasel/Icon=firefox/g' /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop
sudo update-desktop-database

Once that's done we get the following:
 You can then set up a shortcut launcher, e.g.
(you could of course just have it execute the command directly, but what's the challenge in that?)

02 July 2013

471. Debian Jessie -- gnome-shell bug

Update 3/7/2013:
there are now *gnome-bluetooth packages (3.8.1-2) in the jessie repos now. While I haven't looked closer at them, I presume that they fix this issue.

(on a different note: dist-upgrade currently removes gnome...)

Original post:
I've used debian testing since early 2011, and I've only had a few minor issues during that time.

However, sometimes things happen that reminds you that the Testing release is not meant for mission critical work (and makes me happy that I only use Jessie on my laptop, which I mainly use at home).

So...

Last night I did upgrade and dist-upgrade, which installed the following packages according to /var/log/apt/history:
Start-Date: 2013-07-01  22:03:17
Commandline: apt-get dist-upgrade
Install: p11-kit:amd64 (0.18.3-2, automatic), libgnome-bluetooth11:amd64 (3.8.1-1, automatic), libgcr-base-3-1:amd64 (3.8.2-3, automatic), libtasn1-6:amd64 (3.3-1, automatic), libgcr-ui-3-1:amd64 (3.8.2-3, automatic)
Upgrade: libnm-gtk0:amd64 (0.9.8.2-1, 0.9.8.2-1+b1), libgcr-3-1:amd64 (3.4.1-3, 3.8.2-3), gir1.2-gcr-3:amd64 (3.4.1-3, 3.8.2-3), network-manager-gnome:amd64 (0.9.8.2-1, 0.9.8.2-1+b1), gnome-keyring:amd64 (3.4.1-5, 3.8.2-2), gcr:amd64 (3.4.1-3, 3.8.2-3), gnome-bluetooth:amd64 (3.4.2-1, 3.8.1-1), gir1.2-gnomebluetooth-1.0:amd64 (3.4.2-1, 3.8.1-1), gir1.2-gck-1:amd64 (3.4.1-3, 3.8.2-3)
End-Date: 2013-07-01  22:03:29

Now what happens when I log in to gnome via gdm3 I get an empty desktop with no menus, no hot-spots or anything else indicating that things worked out. Alt+F2 doesn't work either, and conky doesn't start.

The only thing that does work is
* my keyboard shortcuts (I've mapped ctrl+shift+Down arrow to chromium)
* guake (which starts with gnome)

ps aux|grep gnome-shell
returns nothing, which might be a clue.

Looking at the debian forums the closest post seems to be (although erroneously labelled -- gdm3 DOES start): http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=105393&p=504077&hilit=gnome+shell#p504077

That in turn led to this bug report: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=712861

My gnome-shell version is 3.4.2-8,

I don't understand how gnome-bluetooth causes this, especially given that I've disabled bluetooth in rcconf, but whatever it takes...

I tried applying the patch but it failed:
mkdir ~/tmp
cd ~/tmp
wget "http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=66;filename=GnomeBluetooth.patch;att=1;bug=712861" -O blue.patch
sed -i 's_js/ui/status/bluetooth.js_/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/status/bluetooth.js_g' blue.patch
sudo patch -p0 < blue.patch

Instead, I ended up making the changes to /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/status/bluetooth.js by hand (remember that you can always use the ttys using ctrl+Fx):
  6 const Gio = imports.gi.Gio;
  7 const GnomeBluetoothApplet = imports.gi.GnomeBluetoothApplet;
  8 const GnomeBluetooth = imports.gi.GnomeBluetooth;
  9 const Gtk = imports.gi.Gtk;

and then delete the Applet part in GnomeBluetoothApplet so that it reads
 38         this._killswitch.connect('toggled', Lang.bind(this, function() {
 39             let current_state = this._applet.killswitch_state;
 40             if (current_state != GnomeBluetooth.KillswitchState.HARD_BLOCKED &&
 41                 current_state != GnomeBluetooth.KillswitchState.NO_ADAPTER) {
 42                 this._applet.killswitch_state = this._killswitch.state ?
 43                     GnomeBluetooth.KillswitchState.UNBLOCKED:
 44                     GnomeBluetooth.KillswitchState.SOFT_BLOCKED;
 45             } else
 46                 this._killswitch.setToggleState(false);

Then do it again:
 96     _updateKillswitch: function() {
 97         let current_state = this._applet.killswitch_state;
 98         let on = current_state == GnomeBluetooth.KillswitchState.UNBLOCKED;
 99         let has_adapter = current_state != GnomeBluetooth.KillswitchState.NO_ADAPTER;
100         let can_toggle = current_state != GnomeBluetooth.KillswitchState.NO_ADAPTER &&
101                          current_state != GnomeBluetooth.KillswitchState.HARD_BLOCKED;
102 



At this point I rebooted and everything was back to normal (you can try simply doing 'sudo service gdm3 restart' instead of rebooting).
Anyway, done.

14 June 2013

451. Seahorse plugins on gnome 3.4 -- PGP encrypting/decrypting in nautilus

Once upon a time it was possible to de/encrypt in gedit, and life was good. Then GNOME 3 came along, and the seahorse plugin for edit disappeared. (presumably you might be able to write a script to use with the External Tools gedit plugin).

It re-emerged as a plugin for Nautilus instead.

I'm showing version 3.4.0 since I'm on GNOME 3.4, and who knows what API has broken in between this and 3.8...anyway, look at https://git.gnome.org/browse/seahorse-nautilus/ for different versions.

There are probably more build dependencies than the ones I'm listing.

sudo apt-get install libcryptui-dev libnautilus-extension-dev libgpgme11-dev checkinstall autoconf automake checkinstall
wget https://git.gnome.org/browse/seahorse-nautilus/snapshot/seahorse-nautilus-3.4.0.tar.gz
tar xvf seahorse-nautilus-3.4.0.tar.gz 
cd seahorse-nautilus-3.4.0/
./autogen.sh
GnuPG Version: gpg (GnuPG) 1.4.12 GPGME Version: 1.2.0 Notification Support: yes Now type `make' to compile seahorse-nautilus
sudo checkinstall --fstrans=no
- Maintainer: [ root@beryllium ] 1 - Summary: [ seahorse-nautilus 3.4.0 ] 2 - Name: [ seahorse-nautilus ] 3 - Version: [ 3.4.0 ] 4 - Release: [ 1 ] 5 - License: [ GPL ] 6 - Group: [ checkinstall ] 7 - Architecture: [ amd64 ] 8 - Source location: [ seahorse-nautilus-3.4.0 ] 9 - Alternate source location: [ ] 10 - Requires: [ ] 11 - Provides: [ seahorse-nautilus ] 12 - Conflicts: [ ] 13 - Replaces: [ ]

Encrypting:
Open nautilus, select a text file and right click:




Decrypting:
Simple:

Although in my case I had kde-full installed, which pulled in kgpg:

If you're having other issues with decrypting, check that the mime associations are correct:

xdg-mime query filetype plaintext.file.pgp 
application/pgp-encrypted

30 April 2013

402. Very briefly: what I forgot about gnome 3...a short rant

Update 30 May 2013: frippery extensions are out now for gnome 3.8. Phew! http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/index.html

Original post:
After an initial bout of swearing, and the odd persistent nuisance, I took to gnome 3/gnome-shell pretty well -- I use it every day and it works well for me. It hasn't changed the way I work and it's prettier than gnome 2, so it's alright.

In other words: whenever I've read posts about how awful gnome 3 is and how the poster is going to switch to KDE/XFCE/LXDE/Xmonad I've considered it as whiny hyperbole. After all, even I had got used to gnome 3.

Sure, things like

* people like Allan Day and Jon McCann saying things like this and this
* feature deprecation in everything from gnome-screenshot to nautilus -- gnome-screenshot is now unusable without patching.
* incessant renaming* of 'gnome' applications

all sure don't help in convincing anyone that using gnome is a sane long-term strategy. But gnome 3 has worked ok for me.

*[open Image Viewer in gnome. Click on About in Help. Any indication that the program is called eye-of-gnome and that the package is called eog? Epiphany is now web. Palimpsest brings up disk utility but there's no package with that name anymore]

Or so I thought. What I had forgotten about was all the gnome shell extensions that I had installed to make gnome 3 usable.

This was driven home to me when Arch linux upgraded to gnome 3.8 -- facing the usual unusable default interface of gnome 3 I quickly set to rectify it by going to http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/index.html and downlo...wait...no extensions for gnome 3.8? http://extensions.gnome.org didn't yield much either. There were a handful of extensions, but it was missing one of the most important ones -- the bottom panel.

For the moment I'm stuck with vanilla gnome 3 -- and I don't like it a bit.

I haven't actually used gnome 3 -- I've been using gnome 2 with a gnome-shell engine. And that's why I've been happy...

20 October 2012

261. Disable tracker-miner-fs

Looking at my ~/.local/share/tracker folder I've got 1.5 Gb wasting away. Also, tracker has a way of eating up CPU cycles,. Given that I never do any desktop searches -- I use either 'locate' or 'find' in the terminal and they do exactly what I need -- I don't see much point in allowing tracker to run.

1. If you're in a gui you can run tracker-preferences  and disable the indexing of all folders.

2. To delete existing tracker logs you need to do
tracker-control -r

This kills all running tracker processes and removes the databases.

3. Finally, edit /etc/xdg/autostart/tracker-miner-fs.desktop and tracker-store.desktop and change

X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

to

X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false

10 July 2012

204. GNOME 3: prevent shotwell from taking over storage devices with photos

I occasionally move pictures off my phone and the CF card of my camera. It annoys me a little bit that shotwell  gets to open and import my photos uninvited.

It also annoys me that a 5 seconds search through the preferences of nautilus and shotwell doesn't offer a solution, but I suppose when we really think about it is a GNOME issue.

Well, it's easy to sort it out: start the gnome system settings, go to details, and select Removable Media.

Post-script:
A lot of functionality is disabled, shifted around or removed completely in the core gnome apps because select devs consider it 'confusing', not obvious or difficult to locate (fixing the sentence to make it grammatically coherent would make it unreadable and clunky -- you know what I mean). Yet somehow the System Settings/Details as a dumping ground for some rather odd stuff has survived since Gnome 3.0.

Again, I like gnome. But gnome will probably do a whole lot better taking criticism from it's loyal users than catering to imaginary mobile device users, hypothetical ex-windows/osx users or basing design decisions on classroom-appropriated theory.

22 May 2012

161. Compiling Me-TV 1.4 on debian testing/wheezy

Quite some time ago me-tv crapped out on me (it's working again as of 9 Jan 2013). While good things came out of it (set up vlc with dvb -- and the image quality is much better for some reason) me-tv does the whole EPG thing really well -- and VLC doesn't really.

[Edit: note that me-tv isn't actively developed anymore: https://answers.launchpad.net/me-tv/+question/216266.]

This 'guide' will put your metv in your home directory and won't interfere with the debian package version. --prefix is your friend, always.

me-tv 1.3.7-2 


Anyway, here's how to compile me-tv v 1.4.0.9

Start here
sudo apt-get install gnome-common libglibmm-2.4-dev libxml++2.6-dev libgtkmm-2.4-dev libgconfmm-2.6-dev libunique-dev libvlc-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev libsqlite3-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev

You'll probably need more than what I've shown above -- intltool, automake etc. But those packages were the ones that were missing on my particular system. As always, if a package is missing, do
aptitude search package|grep dev
and chances are that you find what you're looking for

Continuing...
mkdir ~/tmp
cd ~/tmp
wget https://launchpad.net/me-tv/1.4/1.4.0/+download/me-tv-1.4.0.9.tar.gz
tar xvf me-tv-1.4.0.9.tar.gz
cd me-tv-1.4.0.9/
./autogen.sh --prefix=/home/${USER}/.metv-1.4.0.9


Configure summary:
        Source code location .......: .
        Compiler ...................: gcc
        Compiler flags .............:  -O0 -g
        Enable compile warnings ....: minimum
        Enable more warnings .......: yes
        Extra Compiler Warnings ....: -g -O2 -Wall -Wno-unused  -Wextra -Wcast-align -Wcast-qual -Wcomment -Wformat -Wimplicit -Wmissing-braces -Wpacked -Wparentheses -Wpointer-arith -Wreturn-type -Wsequence-point -Wstrict-aliasing -Wstrict-aliasing=2 -Wswitch-default -Wundef
        Debug support ..............: yes
        Installing into prefix .....: /home/me/.metv-1.4.0.9
Type make to build Me TV 1.4.0.9

Now type `make' to compile Me TV


Who am I to argue with that?
make
make install 

Add ~/.metv-1.4.0.9/bin/ to your PATH
echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/home/${USER}/.metv-1.4.0.9/bin'>>~/.bashrc

(important that you use ' and not " )

Done.



Toubleshooting:

If you get
2012-05-22 17:55:00: Me TV Server 1.4.0.9 started
2012-05-22 17:55:00: An unhandled exception was generated
2012-05-22 17:55:00: Error: The Me TV database version does not match the Me TV server version.

then you may shed a tear and
rm /home/${USER}/.local/share/me-tv/me-tv.db








20 December 2011

35. Fixing: gnome alt+f2 broken, returns command not found -- debian testing current bug, description and solution

22/12/2011
An explanation and solution is here: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=198&t=67502&p=510197#p512994

SOLUTION
--------------
My version of the solution above is a follows:

1. First, locate the file to edit

locate utils.js | grep misc

which returns

/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/misc/util.js

2. Next, confirm that argc is present (this is what's causing the problems)

cat /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/misc/util.js | grep argc

which returns

        let [success, argc, argv] = GLib.shell_parse_argv(command_line);
    let success, argc, argv;
        [success, argc, argv] = GLib.shell_parse_argv(command_line);

There are more elegant ways of doing this, but this is how I roll.

3. Edit /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/misc/util.js as root

sudo vim /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/misc/util.js (you can of course use gedit, nano, emacs etc.)

search for argc and remove all instances of of it, so that
[success, argc, argv] turns into to  [success, argv]
etc.

Once you've removed all argc, save and then hit alt+f2 in gnome, type r and enter to restart the shell. Then hit alt+f2 and type e.g. gedit to test it

It now works!

Reading through bug reports it seems it won't be fixed in Debian -- instead we'll have to wait until gnome 3.2 rolls out. Or just follow the instructions above.

-------------------------------
THE OLD POST
20/12/2011

(Current version of gnome-shell is 3.0.2-8+b1)


Hitting alt+f2 to start e.g. gedit or another program used to be straightforward.

During the past week it hasn't worked properly though -- instead the entry of any command has returned a 'command not found'. If you instead of simply typing in gedit type in /usr/bin/gedit, chances are the computer will experience an odd sort of freeze -- the top bar will be unresponsive, the black entry box will remain, the screen will be shaded, but gedit won't open. You will, however, be able to continue using your computer, but it'll be a dark experience.

Symptomatic descriptions of the bug and experiences are available here:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=719675
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bug/816762


05 December 2011

22. gnome-shell/GNOME3 -- acceptance

So after the turmoil of being thrown into a new desktop metaphor, I've finally reached a stage where I'd feel less at home in Gnome 2.3 than 3.0. Truth be told, the new gnome is both pretty and quite responsive. Key to making Gnome 3 usable is, however, that enough shell extensions are installed that it works similar to the old gnome. The application centric desktop may work for casual users (email/browser), but not for traditional linux/unix applications where different parts of a work flow is handled by different applications (e.g. latex -- scripting/composition in one application, compilation by another, inspection in a third; or gnuplot -- data preparation, gnuplot scripting, visualisation of output file).

But once all the shell extensions are installed, it's back to business as usual.

Even Linus seems to be coming around to Gnome 3 after mumbling about defecting to xfce4: https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts

So far I've only had one unresolved problem - an 'old' desktop with a radeon 5400 hd card won't run gnome-shell on debian testing. No acceleration. Oh well. At least all my other computers are reasonably happy so far.

26 November 2011

21. Current Bug -- gnome applications unresponsive to keyboard input

UPDATE 02/02/2012:
It seems like whatever the problem was, it's gone now. An up-to-date testing system with ibus runs smoothly.

26/11/2011
For some reason, after updating today I'm having a hard time entering input in various gnome applications, whereas non-gnome applications work fine.
E.g. I can't type certain letters, and in general it's difficult to provide any inpurt, in gnome-terminal and gnome-session-properties. lxterm and guake work completely normal though.

No sure what is causing this, but it's happening on my Thinkpad SL410 as well as on my Optiplex 910. The only thing they have in common is the operating system (up-to-date debian testing 64 bit).

Don't know enough about it to file a bug report.

Edit: the problem is present in Evolution as well. Still present as of 28/11/2011. Problem exists on a home-built six-core AMD with 1 GB graphics card.

Edit 2: It sounds a bit like this, which was reported in June (!).
 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=631116
It seems to be related to iBus/SCIM


Edit 3: Evolution is also affected, as is gEdit. Turning off iBus 'solves' the problem. Now, why does it affect the standard gnome applications, but not other packages?

At any rate, this bug has given me the incentive to leave gnome-terminal for guake, and to give alpine and thunderbird a try instead of evolution.

I tried
sudo apt-get install ibus-gtk3
sudo apt-get autoremove ibus-gtk

iBus still works. But unfortunately evolution is still way too slow to be useful.

22 November 2011

19. Gnome3/gnome-shell -- 11 days later

So, I stuck it out. The new gnome-shell is fairly functional for me, finally.
The lack of system indicator applets was solved by using conky to overlay information on the desktop.
Frippery's gnome-shell extensions also make the experience less frustrating.

However, it still feels like everything I've done have been finding /work-arounds/ rather than /customisation/. In the end the whole idea of an application-centric desktop is unsuitable for me -- I would expect this to be true for the majority of established linux users.


Edit (25/11/2011):The screengrab shows what my heavily modified desktop looks like.

10 November 2011

18. Gnome 3/Gnome-shell -- first impressions. Rant.

Debian testing has now transitioned to gnome-shell/gnome3. It's...different...from gnome 2.32, so be warned. While I'm as frustrated as anyone else who feels that they are being forced to move to a new desktop metaphor for no good reason, I'm trying to keep an open mind. The lack of a bottom panel is pissing me off and disorienting me enormously though. I also would like all my panel applets back - I used to have a good overview over how my computer hardware was doing, and now I have no clue anymore.

<RANT>
Essentially, at this point it seems like gnome-shell is fine for people who do their work in a specific application - like a browser, word processor etc. It absolutely blows if you're using your COMPUTER. I edit code in gedit, render figures in the terminal, inspect them using evince, include them in documents using LaTeX etc. Suddenly I feel I have no overview what's going on. The lack of a bottom panel showing me which applications are open on a specific virtual desktop is very confusing. Using alt+tab to check before I switch is a great time-waster.

For those who haven't used gnome-shell -- yes, you can still have windows side-by-side. You just can't see if you're hiding a window behind another one.

Seriously. I don't see why I can't customise my desktop anymore. Gnome has always (I do realise that this isn't entirely true - functionality is being removed and re-added all the time in most desktop environments) been a bit more restrictive than KDE in terms of granular control and I do understand that this is on purpose -- it's a design philosophy. I guess I just violently disagree with it.

Finally, even though I can't put my finger on WHY, I feel that I suddenly have a tiny screen. It's 23 inches. It's huge. It's made for having lots of windows open side-by-side.

I admit that I'm as resistant to change as anyone, but since I use my computer as part of my work, I need a damned good reason for changing. Few people can afford a few weeks downtime in productivity while learning the ropes if they feel that the change isn't justified.

I'll stick with gnome for a while longer. You can't bitch if you don't give it a chance. But I'll spend those weeks looking closer at the alternatives - XFCE, LXDE, KDE etc.

The point here -- and which was seen with the defections to OSX caused by Windows Vista -- is that if people are forced to learn a new way of working, they might as well explore ALL the options.

Prediction: I'll either stay with gnome-shell (which will hopefully improve as functionality and control is returned), or move to xmonad (another extreme)

I obviously appreciate the fact that I'm using a free and open source collection of software - in theory no-one is forcing me to keep on using GNOME. Nor was I forced to upgrade. In reality, it's not so easy.

Given that gnome 3/gnome-shell is more than just an iterative update, I think it would've have made sense to allow for the installation of gnome 2.32 and gnome3 side-by-side. After all, there's nothing preventing you from running KDE, gnome, xfce and lxde side-by-side. Sure, uptake would be slower - but 'forcing' people to move from one version to another isn't really a good idea either. The way it is now you have no easy way of reverting back to 'normal' if you accidentally, or misguidedly, upgrade to gnome3.

Oh well, ranting is easy. A better use of my time would probably have been to learn how to write gnome-shell-extensions to provide the functionality which I feel is missing.
</RANT>

<How to deal with it>
So, there are a few things which can be done to make the transitions a bit easier to handle -  do an online search for gnome-shell-extensions and download the ones which you think will help. For me, I've got the following installed and active:
Bottom Panel
windowNavigator
Gajim IM integration
Alternative Status Menu
Shut Down Menu
User Themes
Break Dynamic Workspaces
Panel Favorites
Weather
Applications Menu
Move Clock
Auto Move Windows

Make sure that you get the right version of the extension for your version of gnome-shell (gnome-shell --version; currently it's on 3.0.2) since extensions for 3.2 won't necessarily work with 3.0.2 (e.g. the bottom panel extension).

You will also want to install the gnome-tweak-tool and explore what it does. At least you can choose your preferred icon theme, set nautilus to handle the desktop space, bring back maximize/minimize buttons etc.

You may also want to add keyboard shortcuts to the most commonly used application since it's a PITA having to go back to the Activities every time you open e.g. a terminal, nautilus or gedit  instance. I've mapped terminal to ctral+shift+up, google chrome to ctrl+shift+down, nautilus to ctrl+shift+left and gedit to ctrl+shift+right.


If you find that you can't run gnome-shell but only use the fallback mode, check that you haven't got 'compiz --replace' in your start-up programs (gnome-session-properties)