TOPIC: MATE
Customising Nautilus (or Files) in Ubuntu GNOME 13.04
12th September 2013The changes made to Nautilus, otherwise known as Files, in GNOME Shell 3.6 were contentious and the response of the Linux Mint was to create their own variant called Nemo from the previous version of the application. On the Cinnamon or MATE desktop environments, the then latest version of GNOME's file manager would have looked like a fish out of water without its application menu in the top panel on the GNOME Shell desktop. It is possible to make a few modifications that help Nautilus to look more at home on those Linux Mint desktops, and I have collected them here because they are useful for GNOME Shell users too. Here they are in turn.
Adding Application Menu entries to Location Options Menu
The Location Options menu is what you get on clicking the button with the cog icon on the right-hand side of the application's location bar. Using Gsettings, it is possible to make that menu include the sort of entries that are in the application menu in the GNOME Shell panel at the top of the screen. These include an entry for closing the whole application, as well as setting its preferences (or options). Running the following command does just that (if it does not work as it should, try changing the single and double quotes to those understood by a command shell):
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides '@a{sv} {"Gtk/ShellShowsAppMenu": <int32 0>}'
Adding in the Remove App Menu GNOME Shell extension will clean up the GNOME Shell a little by removing the application menu altogether. If, for some reason, you wish to restore the default behaviour, then the following command does the required reset:
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides '@a{sv} {}'
Stopping Hiding of the Application Title Bar When Maximised
By default, GNOME Shell can hide the application title bars of GNOME applications such as Nautilus on window maximisation and this is Nautilus now works by default. Changing the behaviour so that the title bar is kept on maximised windows can be as simple as adding in the ignore_request_hide_titlebar extension. The trouble with GNOME Shell extensions is that they can stop working when a new version of GNOME Shell is used, so there's another option: editing metacity-theme-3.xml but /usr/share/themes/Adwaita/metacity-1. The file can be opened using superuser privileges using the following command:
gksudo gedit /usr/share/themes/Adwaita/metacity-1/metacity-theme-3.xml
With the file open, it is a matter of replacing instances of ' has_title="false" ' with ' has_title="true" ', saving it and reloading GNOME Shell. This may persevere across different versions of GNOME Shell, should the extension not do so.
Disabling Recursive Search
This discovery is what led me to bundle these customisations in an entry on here in the first place. In Nemo and older versions of Nautilus, just typing with the application open would lead you down a list towards the file that you wanted. This behaviour was replaced by an automatic recursive search from GNOME Shell 3.6 where the search functionality was extended beyond the folder that was open in the file manager to its subdirectories. To change that to subsetting within the open folder or directory, you need to install a patch version of Nautilus using the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dr3mro/personal
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
The first of these adds a new repository with the patched version of Nautilus, while the second combination installs the patched version. With that done, it is time to issue the following command:
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences enable-recursive-search false
That sets the value of the new enable-recursive-search option to false for searching within an open directory. It also can be found using Dconf-Editor in the following hierarchy: org -> gnome -> nautilus -> preferences. The obsession of the GNOME project team with minimalism is robbing users of some options, and this would be a good one to have by default too. Maybe the others should be treated in the same way, even if you need to use Gsettings or Dconf-Editor to change them to avoid clutter. Having GNOME Tweak Tool able to set them all would be even better.
Sorting a kernel upgrade error in Linux Mint 13
30th November 2012Linux Mint 14 may be out now, but I'll be sticking with its predecessor for now. Being a user of GNOME Shell instead of Cinnamon or Mate, I'll wait for extensions to get updated for 3.6 before making a move away from 3.4 where the ones that I use happily work. Given that Linux Mint 13 is set to get support until 2017, it's not as if there is any rush either. Adding the back-ported packages repository to my list of software sources means that I will not miss out on the latest versions of MDM, Cinnamon and Mate anyway. With Ubuntu set to stick to GNOME 3.6 until after 13.04 is released, adding the GNOME 3 Team PPA will be needed if 3.8 arrives with interesting goodies; there are interesting noises that suggest the approach taken in Linux Mint 12 may be used to give more of a GNOME 2 desktop experience. Options abound and there are developments in the pipeline that I hope to explore too.
However, there is one issue that I have had to fix which stymies upgrades within the 3.2 kernel branch. A configuration file (/etc/grub.d/10_linux) points to /usr/share/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib instead of /usr/lib/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib so I have been amending it every time I needed to do a kernel update. However, it just reverts to the previous state, so I thought of another solution: creating a symbolic link in the incorrect location that points to the correct one so that updates complete without manual intervention every time. The command that does the needful is below:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib /usr/share/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib
Of course, figuring out what causes the reversion would be good too, but the symbolic link fix works so well that there's little point in exploring it further. Of course, if anyone can add how you'd do that, I'd welcome this advice too. New knowledge is always good.
A place for GNOME?
21st September 2012There has been a lot of doom and gloom spoken about the GNOME desktop environment and the project behind it. These days, it seems to be the fashionable thing to go constantly criticising it, especially after what Linus Torvalds said. KDE went through the same sort of experience a few years ago and seems to have got far enough beyond it that some are choosing it instead of GNOME. For a good while, it was the other way around.
Since its inception, the GNOME Shell has attracted a lot of adverse comment. However, since my first encounter, it has grown on me to the point that I added it to Ubuntu and Linux Mint and use it as my default desktop environment instead of Unity, Mate or Cinnamon. The first of these may not be so surprising because of the unique approach that has been taken. The use of lenses and an application launch bar are items to which I could adapt, but it is the merging of application menus and title bars with the top panel of the desktop that really puts me off it. Application window buttons can be moved to the right everywhere but on this global menu, so I tend to view things from afar instead of using it every day. There just is something about the experience that won't grow on me. Strangely, that also applies to my impressions of KDE, albeit differently; there just is something less slick about the appearance of the bottom panel, the plasmoids and other items like them.
Given that Mate and Cinnamon continue the GNOME 2 approach to things that dominated my home computing for much of the last five years since I turned to Ubuntu, my decision to use GNOME Shell instead of either come as a surprise. It isn't that the environments aren't slick enough, just that I have come to prefer the way that GNOME Shell handles workspaces, spawning them as you need them. If that could be an option in Cinnamon, then it might become my desktop of choice. However, that seems to go against the philosophy of the project, even if someone adds and extension for it.
For a time, I played with going with LXDE rather than either Unity or GNOME Shell; as it happened, my first impressions of the latter weren't so positive until I spent a day with the GNOME variant of Fedora 15. Being not dissimilar to GNOME 2 in the way that it worked was the main attraction of LXDE and my initial use of it was with Lubuntu running on a netbook; the LXDE version of Linux Mint 12 now runs on it so there hasn't been so much change on that machine.
Sometimes, the only way to deal with change is to have a look at it to see what's coming and to decide what you need to do about it. In the case of GNOME Shell, my day with Fedora 15 on a backup PC changed my impressions, and Linux Mint 11's GNOME 2 desktop looked a bit old-fashioned afterwards. In fact, I popped GNOME 3 on there and have been using it as my main desktop environment ever since.
With computing, there always are some who expect things to just work and be the way that they want them. The need for extra configuration is a criticism that still can be levelled at GNOME Shell. Before going with Mate and Cinnamon, Linux Mint went the same way for a while, leaving me to wonder what can be done with such an approach. Will someone else pick up that baton and do the handiwork so that users don't have to do it? Not yet, it seems. Since no one is following the lead of Linux Mint 12, the need for user tweaking remains, even if I have found which ones work for me.
The first place to begin is GNOME's Extensions website, from where I raid a few extensions every time I do an operating system installation. The Alternative Status Menu extension is among the first to get added so that I have the shutdown option again on the user menu, a common criticism of the default set up. Since I always install the GNOME Tweak Tool from the distro repositories, I add the Advanced Setting in User Menu extension to get an entry in the status menu that grants quick access. Frippery Bottom Panel comes next on the list because of its workspace switcher and application window list. Others like Frippery Move Clock, Monitor Status Indicator, Places Status Indicator, Removable Drive Menu, Remove Accessibility, Shell Restart User Menu Entry and User Themes follow in some order and make things feel more pleasing, at least to my mind.
You aren't stuck with the default theme, either, and I have chosen Elementary Luna from deviantART. For adding your own themes, the above listed User Themes extension is needed. Because I want the Frippery Bottom Panel to match the top panel, I tweaked its stylesheet and that's where the Restart User Menu Entry extension comes in handy, though some care is needed not to crash the desktop with constant shell restarts.
Doing the above makes GNOME Shell really amenable to me, and I wouldn't like to lose that freedom to customise. Saying that, the continued controversial changes aren't stopping yet. Those made to the Nautilus file manager in GNOME 3.6 have caused the Linux Mint project to create Nemo, a fork of the software, and Ubuntu is sticking with the previous version for now. Taking some action yourself instead of just complaining loudly sounds like a more positive approach, which makes its own statement. However, at a time when many want the GNOME project team to listen to users, the new Nautilus appears and is not to be what they needed to see. Could the project go on like this? Only time can answer that one.
While it appears that many have changed from GNOME to other desktop environments, I haven't come across any numbers. A reducing user base could be a way of sending a message about any discontent, one that makes use of a great feature of free software: there is plenty of choice. If the next version of Nautilus isn't to my taste, there are plenty of alternatives out there. After all, Cinnamon started on Linux Mint and has gone from there to being available for other distros too; Fedora is one example. Nemo could follow suit.
Now that GNOME's constituent applications are seeing changes, GNOME Shell may be left to mature. Computer interfaces are undergoing a lot of change at the moment and Microsoft Windows 8 is bringing its own big leap. Though controversial at the time, change can be a good thing too and us technical folk always like seeing new things come along (today saw the launch of the iPhone 5 and many folk queueing up for it; Google's Nexus 7 ran out of stock in its first weeks on the market; there are more). That could be what got me using GNOME 3 in the first place, even if my plan is to stick with it for a while yet.
Widely differing approaches
28th January 2012The computer on which I am writing these words is running Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop environment, a fork of GNOME Shell. This looks as if it will be the default face of GNOME 3 in the next version of Linux Mint, with the MGSE dressing up of GNOME Shell looking more and more like an interim measure until something more consistent was available. While some complained that what was delivered in version 12 of the distribution was a sort of greatest hits selection, I reckon that bets were being hedged by the project team.
Impressions of what's coming
By default, you get a single panel at the bottom of your screen with everything you need in there. However, it is possible to change the layout so that the panel is at the top or there are two panels, one at the top and the other at the bottom. So far, there is no means of configuring which panel applet goes where, as was the case in Linux Mint 11 and its predecessors. However, the default placements are very sensible, so I have no cause for complaint at this point.
Just because you cannot place applets doesn't mean that there is no configurability, though. Since Cinnamon is extensible, you can change the way that time is displayed in the clock, as well as enabling additional applets. It also is possible to control visual effects, such as the way new application windows pop up on a screen.
GNOME 3 is there underneath all of this, though there's no sign of the application dashboard of GNOME Shell. The continually expanding number of slots in the workspace launcher is one sign, as is the enabling of a hotspot at the top right hand corner by default. This brings up an overview screen showing what application windows are open in a workspace. The new Mint menu even gets the ability to search through installed applications, together with the ability to browse through what's available.
In summary, Cinnamon already looks good, though a little polish and extra configuration options wouldn't go amiss. An example of the former is the placement of desktop numbers in the workspace switcher, and I already have discussed the latter. It does appear that the Linux Mint approach to desktop environments is taking shape with a far more conventional feel than the likes of Unity or GNOME Shell. Just as Cinnamon has become available in openSUSE, I can see it gracing LMDE too whenever Debian gets to moving over to GNOME 3 as must be inevitable now unless they take another approach such as MATE.
In comparison with a revolution
While Linux Mint are choosing convention and streamlining GNOME to their own designs, it appears that Ubuntu's Unity is getting ever more experimental as the time when Ubuntu simply evolved from one release to the next becomes an increasingly more distant memory. The latest development is the announcement that application menus could get replaced by a heads-up display (HUD) instead. That would be yet another change made by what increasingly looks like a top-down leadership, reminiscent of what exists at Apple. While it is good to have innovation, you have to ask where users fit in all of this when Linux Mint already has gained from what has been done so far and may gain more again. Still, seeing what happens to Ubuntu sounds like an interesting pastime, though I'm not sure that I'd be depending on the default spin of this distro as my sole operating system right now. Also, changing the interface every few months wouldn't work in a corporate environment at all, so you have to wonder where Mark Shuttleworth is driving all this, though Microsoft is engaging in a bit of experimentation of its own. We are living in interesting times for the computer desktop, so it's just as well that there are safe havens like Linux Mint, too. Watching from afar sounds safer.