Screenlets

Maximum PC has an informative article about customizing the Linux desktop. It’s a great resource for people who have seen people talking about things like Compiz and Emerald and wondered what they were talking about.

One topic the article covered was desktop widgets. For GNOME, it recommends Screenlets, which is available in the standard Ubuntu repositories. This means you can download it by simply opening a terminal and typing in  sudo apt-get install screenlets.

Screenlets comes with a variety of preloaded widgets, and the handy Get More Screenlets button. Since I don’t have a widescreen monitor and want to have some room for my Pidgin buddy list on the side, my widget desires are pretty simple. I went with the obligatory weather widget, a simple calendar, and a Vista-like CPU meter I downloaded from GNOME-Look. Here’s a screenshot:

Several Ubuntu Themes

My readomatic directed me to a post by Anurag Arora, in which he gives detailed instructions on how to install several Ubuntu themes by Francois Vogelweith. Since Mr. Vogelweith himself writes in French, these English-language instructions are invaluable.

There is one spot in the instructions which might confuse the unwary, though. In the line

sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0×1781bd45c4c3275a34bb6aec6e871c4a881574de

you need two hyphens before the words “recv” and “keyserver” (first occurrence). This isn’t necessarily obvious when reading the small font the line is written in.

These themes are well worth the effort of adding the extra repository. The files are large, but that’s because they contain a lot of extras you often don’t get in a theme download. For example, each theme comes with its own set of icons (though they’re mostly similar except for the colors). They also come with matching desktop backgrounds and GDM (login screen) themes.

I tried a few of these themes before settling on Balanzan (screenshot below):

Balanzan fits in well with the standard Ubuntu color scheme. That means if you don’t like the icons that come with the theme, it will work well with the default Human icons as well. I haven’t had that problem, but I can tell that the alternate icons may not fit everyone’s taste.

Two of the other themes, Bamboo Zen and Aquadreams, look like they would make good themes for Linux Mint if I ever get around to messing around with the new version (Linux Mint 7 Gloria).

Google Chrome, Chromium, and Linux

Apparently, Google has released a developer preview version of Chrome. Though I’m not a developer, this is good news to me. I’ve been spending more time in Windows lately working on school projects, and Chrome 2.0 has become my default browser in Windows. My favorite features of 2.0 are:

• Tabs in the window border. This feature (a duplicate of Apple’s Windows versions of Safari) saves a lot of screen space.
• Incognito browsing. In Chrome, instead of having to clear private data to maintain your privacy and anonymity, you can open an “incognito” window. Basically, when you browse in an incognito window, all history and cookies associated with that window disappear when you close it.
• The download fucntionality. In Chrome, instead of dealing with dialog boxes when you download files, an arrow appears to direct your attention to a download bar at the bottom of the window. In the download bar, each downloaded file has its own button with an arrow to the right. Clicking on the arrow gives you the option to open the file. One drawback of this feature is that Chrome automatically saves files, rather than giving you the option to open them without permanently saving them. However, the visual slickness of this feature makes up for that minor drawback.

Thus, I am encouraged by Google’s new attempts to make a Linux version of Chrome. While you can download Crossover Chromium, the open-source core of Chrome, Chromium has a few issues. Though it has the first and third of my favorite Chrome features, it runs slow on Ubuntu on my machine (the download arrow creeps down the screen), and it sometimes flickers in and out in a strobe-like pattern that might induce seizures if I had such medical conditions.