Manish‘s tweet about Gnome shell being usable resulted in this impromptu conversation and comparison. I know all three are in development – but this how it looks currently. Gnome-shell looks way too cluttered, Unity’s icons seem to be too big while Launchpad seems to have gotten the right balance.
I spend quite a lot of time on Super User( my rep is a testament to that I guess 
) – both on the site as well as the mindblowingly awesome chat (if you haven’t been here, you *must* drop by).
Today a user dropped by and asked a very nice question - which went like -
I have some files that have some text in the notes fields(the tab where you put notes in the properties dialog box)… so can I output those texts with using the ls command.
This is a pretty good tip. The default style irritates me to no end. Check out the full post, there are some great tips, especially if you’re new to Nautilus like me.
Ever since some distros started their attempt to become more “user-friendly” and gaining the nice looks, some default features got changed.
In this case, it’s the location bar. Instead of it they got some buttons that shows the location and let you navigate through the directories! So, if you’re using one of these distros and want to pop up the location bar, all you have to do is to hit Ctrl+L. However, if you’re like me and like to have it always there, each time you fire it up, you canchange the default value of it in gconf-editor, or alternatively use this following command in the terminal
gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/start_with_location_bar --type bool 1
Here are our key findings:
GNOME has a rhythm – there is a measurable increase in activity before release time, and after the annual GNOME conference GUADEC
- While over 70% of GNOME developers identify themselves as volunteers, over 70% of the commits to the GNOME releases are made by paid contributors
- Red Hat are the biggest contributor to the GNOME project and its core dependencies. Red Hat employees have made almost 17% of all commits we measured, and 11 of the top 20 GNOME committers of all time are current or past Red Hat employees. Novell and Collabora are also on the podium.
- A number of top company contributors are consultancy/services companies specialising in the GNOME platform – Collabora, CodeThink, Openismus, Lanedo and Fluendo are in the top 20 companies. As many of these companies grew initially through work on Maemo, this is a sign of the success of Nokia’s strategy around the GNOME stack.
Company Commits Percentage Volunteer 101823 23.45 Unknown 73558 16.94 Red Hat 70790 16.30 Novell 45349 10.44 Collabora 21684 4.99 Intel 11160 2.57 Fluendo 10218 2.35 Lanedo 10090 2.32 Independent 8922 2.05 Sun 8862 2.04 Nokia 6183 1.42
via Safe as Milk » Blog Archive » GNOME Census.
Notice a missing company ?
openSUSE 11.3 is based on Linux kernel 2.6.34 and has KDE Software Compilation 4.4.4 as the default desktop environment. A GNOME version is also available and it uses GNOME 2.30.1. In terms of the default applications, it comes with Thunderbird 3.0.5, Firefox 3.6.4 and OpenOffice 3.2.1 to name a few. openSUSE 11.3 also gives the user the choice of using Btrfs during installation.
You can view the complete changelog here or read the release note. A screenshot tour of openSUSE 11.3 have also been put up.
via openSUSE 11.3 Released – Download Now.
My favourite distro gets an update.
A quickie:
I wanted to change the default application from Banshee/Totem for my media files to VLC ( since I didn’t have proprietary codecs installed, and VLC does). Searched all of YaST/Settings and couldn’t find where to change the default application.
Seems like lot of openSUSE Gnome users don’t like the new Gnome panel, which is radically different interface from the traditional Menu bar with Applications/Places/System entries. Personally I prefer the new style, perhaps because I’m used to the openSUSE Kickoff panel, and I really dig the search feature
Saw this question on SuperUser :
How can I add menu items to the Gnome “Applications” menu from the command line?
Yet another SuperUser Q
Seems Canonical will set limits to those who can order free CD’s via Shipit.
The discs will still be made available to Local Community team members and Ubuntu contributors. And new Ubuntu users will be able to request a CD. But you need to create an account and sign in to request that CD. In other words, Canonical will be tracking you and will only send you a free CD the first time you ask for one.
FOSS.IN is dawning upon us, check out the FOSS.in speaker guide.
Some tips on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
The openSUSE Project is pleased to announce the release of openSUSE 11.2. openSUSE 11.2 includes new versions of GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice.org, Firefox, the Linux kernel, and many, many more updates and improvements. In 11.2 you’ll find more than 1,000 open source desktop applications. openSUSE also includes a full suite of server software and a rich selection of open source development tools.
Something about Microsoft patenting sudo
Here it is, patent number7617530. Thanks, USPTO, for giving Microsoft, which is already a monopoly, a monopoly on something that’s been in use since 1980 and wasn’t invented by Microsoft. Here’s Wikipedia’s description of sudo, which you can meaningfully compare to Microsoft’s description of its “invention”.
MPlayer Now Supports Most HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Codecs.
The latest MPlayer code in their SVN trunk now supports most HD-DVD and Blu-ray codecs. Earlier this year we talked about possible Blu-ray support for FFmpeg and developers becoming more interested after we interviewed the FFmpeg developers and there ended up being an outpouring of support by our readers offering up Blu-ray drives and other forms of help. The latest MPlayer code in their Subversion repository now supports most Blu-ray and HD-DVD codecs.
Free and Open Source Screencasting Software Applications for Linux
If you are using Linux and are looking for a screencasting tool that would suit you needs, then here are some of most widely used free and open source screencasting software applications that you should check out.
I was catching up on some feeds yesterday, and this piece of news caught my eye -Amarok 2.1 released. Being a long time Amarok fan ( heck Amarok itself was catalyst to make me use my SUSE 10.0 use full) time – I read the article with great interest.
Amarok 2 users would know that Amarok 2 series is a shadow of its old Amarok 1.4(“Amarok Classic” self) – and quite a few people still prefer Amarok classic to Amarok 2 – primararily because of Amarok’s missing support for visualizations, equalizer amongst others. I don’t use equalizers – and as for visualization – well don’t use that either.
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