GTK hack (mac-menubar)

I hacked my GTK to have a mac-menu applet that places the menu bar on the main gnome panel like Mac OS X (I did this for two reasons: I find it easier, as I used OS X before Ubuntu and not Windows; and I want as little as possible resembling windows on my Ubuntu installation ;P). You can follow the guide yourself if you want. Be very careful and don't miss a step (unless you know what you're doing) as it could mean fucking Gnome up ('scuse my french ;P). I used apt-build; you could try compiling it yourself without such an automated tool, but don't say I didn't warn you (E: Corrupt dependencies; please install lib-with-100-dependencies etc....) I used apt-build cause even though it compiles the thing, not install from binary, it's incredibly automated and easy to use. (although i wouldn't reccomend hacking your gtk for the average joe computer user..) and BTW as of time of writing, this hack won't work with OpenOffice.org apps and Firefox/Thunderbird. (as in, the apps will still work, just with the menu bars in the same place as usual).

OK I couldn't resist uploading a screenshot (yeh yeh, taking ur bandwidth :P lol):















Do you notice that the menu bar is at the top like OS X? Pretty cool, huh? ;)

Mac4Lin: ditched

A few days ago I decided I didn't want all the leopard-lookalike stuff on my linux box, just a nice ubuntu look. The main reasons were: (1) that it created gtk errors for EVERY app, and (2) it also used a hell of alot of RAM. I also thought, 'why would I want to make Gnome look like a propietary GUI?'. What I ended up doing is just having preset icons/themes and stuff, then hacking it a little. Right now I have Human icons, Clearlooks window border (with default blue color), and Glossy controls. I hacked icons like the rhythmbox tray icon (I actually got that icon of gnome-look) and the computer icon (I bodged that together in GIMP). Here is an overview of my desktop, grey-propietary-leopard-look free (I got the wallpaper from interfaceLIFT):

Stable web browser for GNU/Linux

Firefox is the web browser that comes on nearly all GNU/Linux distros, and often is the sole one (i.e. there is no other preinstalled web browser). But the truth is, firefox under GNU/Linux is still very buggy, and I reckon it should be considered a beta. But GNU/Linux users: don't dispair! There are two other web browsers that aren't so buggy (and alot more if you use google 8-0); namely Epiphany and Konqueror. Konqueror comes with KDE as part of the package, so if you use KDE and haven't tried out Konqueror for web browsing, give it a go. I can tell you it's one of the best out there. For GNOME users, try out epiphany (most users will have to download and install the package as it doesn't come with many (if not any) GNOME distros). Epiphany is very stable, but it's not nearly as feature rich as Firefox. Use epiphany if you want a good, stable web browser that doesn't crash all too often (in fact I am typing this under epiphany right now ;D), but isn't too feature rich either. Both Epiphany and Konqueror run on either platform (GNOME or KDE) but generally, Konqueror will run better on KDE and Epiphany will run better on GNOME (that goes for lot's of other apps too). For Xfce/Fluxbox/[insert obscure desktop environment here] users, you probably know what you're doing! ;)

Embedded terminal

This is my handy terminal, embedded in the GNOME desktop. I did this using devilspie.

Leopard look-alike

I've got the Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard look on my gnome desktop pretty good now, as you can see. The main drawback is that I don't have a good enough graphics card for compiz, and consequently can't use Avant Window Navigator to emulate a dock.

KDE vs. GNOME

KDE vs. GNOME. That is the question. I run konqueror under gnome, and it just rocks so much that I'm beginning to see that the only real reason that I use GNOME and not KDE is not being bothered to install it. That's silly really, as there's a .deb package available in the Ubuntu repositories that you can install by just running sudo apt-get install kde. The thing is, to try it out I'd have to install it onto my system, cause I admit that I don't have enough RAM to run a full-blown desktop environment like kde or gnome inside a virtual machine. Ah well. I'll stick with gnome for the time being, although I'd very much like to try out Xfce or fluxbox, as I have a relatively low-end low-ram machine. I'll keep you posted though!