gnome shell favorites

Nautilus being named "Files" bugs me. Here's how it looks when my cursor hovers over Nautilus' icon on the Dash, in the GNOME Shell Overview (shots taken from Debian Wheezy):

Here, I've got Nautilus running, but "Files" is the name that appears on the top panel:

And if I search for Nautilus in the Overview, the "Files" icon is shown:

With dconf-editor, you can open ​org.gnome.shell and look at the "favorite-apps" key. That key lists the .desktop files for the GNOME Shell "Favorites" that you see on the Dash in Overview mode.

The .desktop files are in the /usr/share/applications directory. Nautilus and PCManFM show the names of these files according to the value for "Name=" within each file (SpaceFM shows the actual file names, though). The names of the applications as seen in the Dash Overview, as well as on the Dash bar itself, are also taken from that line in each corresponding .desktop file.

So... Here, Nautilus was called "Files."

In /user/share/applications/nautilus.desktop, I changed Name=Files to Name=Nautilus.

I used the keystroke Alt+F2 to bring up the "Run" dialogue, typed r, pressed Enter. That reloaded the desktop, and now Nautilus is Nautilus. :)

window maker menus

A tip about menus in Window Maker, from the Window Maker Guided Tour:

"Menus can be forced to remain open on the workspace by left-clicking the titlebar. This creates a close button on the titlebar."


For example, here's my root menu, with the close button showing:

You can force a submenu to remain open:

And you can move menus and submenus around on the desktop, keeping certain ones open for your convenience:

Another tip:

"The keyboard can be used to open and move through some of the menus. For instance, the root menu can be opened using F12 (default setting). The Up and Down arrow keys can then be used to navigate through the menu or the Left and Right arrow keys to jump between parent menus and submenus. Hitting the Enter key executes the selected item. the Escape key closes the menu or stops menu traversal."


For more info, see http://windowmaker.org/guidedtour/menu.html

random wallpaper script for nitrogen

Tested this in Openbox in Kubuntu 12.04. Create the following script, substituting your preferred directory path for [wallpapers-directory], save the file, and make the file executable:

#! /bin/bash
WALLPAPERS="[wallpapers-directory]"
ALIST=( `ls -w1 $WALLPAPERS` )
RANGE=${#ALIST[@]}
let "number = $RANDOM % $RANGE"
nitrogen --set-centered --save $WALLPAPERS/${ALIST[$number]}

I saved the file as /home/steve/wallpaper-script-nitrogen and added that command to ~/.config/openbox/autostart. I also added a “random wallpaper” entry in the Openbox menu (using the same command) so that I can switch to a random wallpaper on demand.

See man nitrogen and nitrogen --help for more info on options to use with the nitrogen command in the above script. This script should also work fine using feh instead of nitrogen. Thanks to "uname" for providing this in post #26, here in the CrunchBang forums.

international hoop

Article: NBA needs to pull stars from USA Basketball, which is showcasing only Duke's coach

I agree with that article in that it would be better at this point if basketball in the Olympics and the Worlds was an under-22 thing. The rest of the world has gotten better, but they really can't compete when the U.S. teams get serious about it.

Unfortunately, Wojnarowski turned the article into a Coach K hate-fest, which is ridiculous. I'm no Duke fan, but Krzyzewski's a great coach, he's done a great job with the U.S. team, and he's earned the right to be there.

This isn't about Coach K, it's about competition. Same thing I'm always saying about major college football programs scheduling cupcakes. It ain't no fun if the other team has no chance of winning. Why even play the game?

I don't know if "under-22" will make the tournaments more competitive, but it's worth a try. The Worlds were boring this year. They tried to act like Spain was gonna give the U.S. a tough time, and then Spain got upset and didn't even medal, and Team USA blew everybody out. That's a gold medal that you can barely be proud of. Waste of time.

another controversy crushed

The Linux world has been in an uproar about systemd. People are acting like it's such an awful thing. Some are advocating a boycott of all distros that use systemd, or even a move to BSD distros. The whole thing has become a huge concern for many people.

Debian will be moving to systemd with the next release (Jessie). It's incredible to me that some people are saying that they're gonna move away from even Debian because of all this. I figure that the Debian devs know what they're doing. They certainly know a lot more about all this than I'll ever know.

So does Linus Torvalds, of course... and, alas, Torvalds doesn't seem concerned. Interview: Torvalds says he has no strong opinions on systemd

"I don't personally mind systemd, and in fact my main desktop and laptop both run it."

So much for that controversy. Next?