GNOME desktop right-click menu

Contrary to popular belief, it isn't impossible to edit the desktop's right-click menu in GNOME. Here, I've added some frequently used apps to mine in Ubuntu Lucid:

To do this, I went to Synaptic and added nautilus-actions. The Nautilus Actions Configuration Tool shows up in the main menu under System > Preferences. Here's the main window:

To add an entry to the desktop's right-click menu, first click on the "Define a new action" button, or use File > New action. On the Action tab, put check marks in the "Display item in selection context menu" and "Display item in location context menu" boxes. Next, type something in for the Context label. You can also browse for an icon for the action on this tab.


On the Command tab, you can add a Profile label, and indicate the command to be used.

On the Advanced conditions tab, add a scheme called "x-nautilus-desktop." I think it needs to be the only scheme selected.

Go to Edit > Preferences > Runtime preferences tab to configure the ordering of the items:

At this point, you can save your changes. You may or may not have to restart GNOME. Use the same procedure to add more entries to the right-click menu.

I haven't found a way to add GNOME's main menu to the desktop's right-click menu, but I found something very close. I went to Synaptic and added gnome-main-menu, then used the command /usr/lib/gnome-main-menu/application-browser in the Nautilus Actions Configuration tool to add an entry for the Application Browser, which looks like this:

That's a pretty good tool, although not quite as good as GNOME's main menu, in my opinion.

mepis 11

Screen shot from Mepis 11 live DVD, demo session.

scientific

Screen shot from the Scientific Linux 6.0 live DVD:

This is GNOME 2.28.6, but it comes with KDE 4.3.4 and IceWM 1.2.37. The default web browser is Firefox 3.6.14. Hoping to add the system to my multi-boot set-up soon!

gulag

I recently finished the book Gulag: A History, by Anne Applebaum, about the system of concentration camps in the Soviet Union. The camps were spread all over the Soviet Union, and held political and criminal prisoners -- often under appalling conditions. The story made me think hard about Nazi Germany, slavery in the Americas, and other terrible things that humans have done to each other over the years. The book, published in 2003, was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

the future, the present

Little boys, watching the high school varsity baseball game at Del Norte H.S. in Albuquerque. These kids were taking a break from their work-out on the track -- note the baton in the hands of the boy in the middle.

The Del Norte Knights' dugout:

Our flag, flying high on a windy Albuquerque afternoon:

#!

Landor's review of Debian-based CrunchBang 10 r20110207, which features the Openbox window manager:

http://landorsplace.wordpress.com/2011/04/18/it-doesnt-go-snap-crackle-pop-it-goes-crunchbang/

Sounds like a distro I might be trying out soon!

waiting for mepis

It's been about two months since Debian Squeeze was moved to "stable," but Mepis-lovers are still waiting for the final release of the Stable-based Mepis 11.

Mepis 11 is now in its RC2 phase, after slowly going through three "betas." I figure that there might be an RC3, but folks over at the Mepis forums seem quite happy with the current release candidate, so hopefully it won't be long now.

I never did install Mepis 8.5; I decided to skip it entirely and wait for Mepis 11, so I've still got Mepis 8 running here, using KDE 3.5 and sometimes Xfce 4.4 there. A Mepis fan since the 3.4 days, I can always count on developer Warren Woodford's solid, polished releases, and I'm really looking forward to this one; it'll be my first look at Woodford's work with KDE4.