So here is my way of making gnome more usable. The Default gnome is really simple, less cluttery and does the job of managing your desktop perfectly, the tweaks here will allow you to do 'things' in less steps with more ease of use. So here we go!


* Tweaking Fonts.

Go to System > Preferences > Look and Feel > Font . Here you can adjust the rendering of fonts to suit either your CRT monitor or LCD, make it more fuzzy or sharp.

* Faster Gnome-Menu loads

Now there is Default delay_by_design for Gnome Menu's , the notion is avoid accidental clicks by user when going from one menu to other. Some people don't like it and some don't even notice it, If you watch my clips, you will notice the menus are REALLY FAST already with no tweaks. so this option is for you.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[anshu@Fedora7 ~]$ echo 'gtk-menu-popup-delay = 0"| tee -a .gtkrc-2.0' > ~/.gtkrc-2.0
// this command in one line will write everything in single quote to a file called .gtkrc-2.0
at home folder on your USERNAME only.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Try to re-log into gnome, and you should notice difference.


*Hide applications listed in Menu
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[anshu@Fedora7 ~]$ whatis alacarte
alacarte (rpm) - Simple menu editor for GNOME
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Check video , its nice to see what alacarte does to help you about this.

*Reshuffle Gnome-panel layout
Some people find the top layout of Gnome-panel too macish , users who come to Linux from windows find it more bothering to go up for menu's, you can easily tweak this, Check video for details.

*Gnome-SLAB menu for Fedora 7

I had to turn internet upside down to find a repo which has this Gnome SLAB menu. Tigro repo is what I have found working properly with Fedora 7 here. You can download it and give it a try.

* Make Nautilus behave
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
[anshu@Fedora7 ~]$ whatis nautilus | grep manager
nautilus (rpm) - Nautilus is a file manager for GNOME
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you are on 'HOME' or 'Computer' icons on desktop, you have to browse it by Nautilus, fedora does not tweak Nautilus , and as you click on folders, NEW windows launch, you can tell nautilus to behave and make it more nicer, Check video.

* Nautilus Pro (?) get more options.

Well, ok that is kinda misleading , there is no such thing as Nautilus pro but when you install following applications, you will feel it is Nautilus pro .

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sudo yum install nautilus-open-terminal nautilus-image-converter
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check video how this works out.

*Modify right-click menu using nautilus-actions (advance users)

You can get nautilus-scripts from very old site g-scripts.sourceforge.net Nautilus-actions package created by Grumz at grumz.net , this is in fedora repo itself.

-------------------------------------
sudo yum install nautilus-actions
-------------------------------------




Check video how this package makes changes to right click menu. some options are really nice for normal use and I see (or would like) them get imported into future Gnome releases sooner or later.

Optional :- You can get sample scripts collection by Rafterman, which are hosted on Gnome-look.org I have now installed it but yet to come across situation to use some of them . Right-Click menu is still fast as it was. if you use this , do tell about your experience in comment.


Note:- I am planning part 2 focusing on Compiz + Conky and other applications.

SITUATION:-
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
[anshu@Fedora7 ~]$ sudo ls /root/
anshu is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
[anshu@Fedora7 ~]$
-----------------------------------------------------------------------


So you see, running some commands which need root access CANNOT be run by normal user.
And you have option to go as su (super user. ie- root) to do all steps as root. but what about JUST single line commands. for that your username can have special access. This post will show how and what it is.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[root@Fedora7 ~]# whatis sudo
sudo (8) - execute a command as another user
sudo (rpm) - Allows restricted root access for specified users
sudo [sudoedit] (8) - execute a command as another user
------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I will show how to make your normal user turn into (sudo)root for single line commands .

Steps:-

1* su --login -c 'visudo' // - Press enter and give root's password.

2* add your username under root line.
-------------------------------------------------------------
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
anshu ALL=(ALL) ALL
-------------------------------------------------------------

HINT* press 'I' key to Insert and 'DEL' key to delete words.

3* uncomment ONE option from line 83 OR 86.
------------------------------------------------------------
82 ## Allows people in group wheel to run all commands
83 # %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
84
85 ## Same thing without a password
86 # %wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
------------------------------------------------------------

4* :wq to SAVE and EXIT

5* RECOMMENDED , MODIFY following line in bash_profile to run all files in SuperBIN folder (i.e /sbin or /usr/sbin ):-
-----------------------------------------------------------
PATH=$PATH:/usr/sbin:/sbin:$HOME/bin
-----------------------------------------------------------

6* add user to WHEEL group by GUI or Command:-

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
su -c 'gpasswd -a anshu wheel' // << replace anshu with yourusername ( Duh! )
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Try running commands like "ls /root/" and click some ads on this site as Thank You :).


Update:- Check this guide in video.

So this is one nasty bug I have hit, I am using Fedora 7 , completely updated system.

*NO DNS Situation :-

Below clip will show how the GNOME-APPS take 30-50 secs to open/start when my ISP's network is down only for DNS, I can only ping to ISP gateway , but no working websites and dns. In this situation gnome-apps simply get stuck like anything making whole system unsuable for long time till I get my proper net back.







Proper DNS situation :-

Below clip of my system with proper internet connection where gnome-apps open in milliseconds.



Update #1:- Could not find anything relevant on google and IRC #Gnome @ freenode did not help too, so opened bug report directly with gnome ,lets see how this rolls now



http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=470507


Update #2:- Solved!

Solution:- Fedora/gnome does not update hostname changes made by hostname command, I had to add it in /etc/hosts everything i change hostname. needs to be fixed IMHO.

Fedora 7 is not really just_out_of_oven latest operating system, So I am always expecting everything to work out_of_box , but I am using higher version of kernel (not default) so when things just don't roll out, I get thrown into the loop..

Latest episode was Vmware player not installing, after I failed to install vmware-server, I later found (via Vmware forums) there is easy patch for this.

so After you get your vmware player from Vmware.com , Install the RPM but don't run vmware-config.pl , Download Any-AnyUpdate113 patch , uncompress it and start 'runme.pl' script as super-user/root-user to patch your already installed Vmplayer.

You can now Go to Menu>SystemTools>Vmplayer, and you will see Vmplayer start. Its that easy (once you know what was solution ).

p.S:- I am planning to show many things done on server-side using this vmware fedora virtual image, so i can keep rolling back easily to test applications. Stay-tuned.

When using linux as you keep going with it, soon, you will see that your Disk_free_space has rapidly shrink and you want to scan quickly with efficiency where exactly has all disk space gone.

Disk Usage Analyzer is your swiss-knife for this situation , it can even scan Remote folder (visually) if you have proper access to it.

Check this clip to see what am I talking about.

If you have some favorite application or software but the developer is not providing any RPM binary for you to download and install at your Fedora or Redhat Distro. You got two options, ask the developer to provide a RPM or get the Source file yourself and compile it on your system.

compiling has de-facto three lines (provided all dependency are met (like dll in windows) ie.
-------------------------
./configure
make
make install
------------------------

But, always make sure you read 'INSTALL' or 'README' file in any source tarball , it has list of custom options plus gives you list of other optional devel files needed for source to compile.

But what if you want to distribute compiled binary BACK to developer or share it with others, You can do that by making a RPM file, in fedora you have rpmbuild command which will help you, if developer has provided spec_file . The following Video clip explains how to do that.

In this video, After creating binarys, I get package.rpm with package.src.rpm (which is source rpm ).




Recommended sites:-

docs.fedoraprojects.org (specfile)
docs.fedoraprojects.org (rpmbuild)

The title really sums it up, MPD software will allow you to make your PC as network mp3 player, anyone in your lan can get this network player url as Stream and start playing song , now how cool is that . I am going to show how easy it is.



Visit software home pages as follows:-

Sonata Music Client
MPD

Bonus: I also show how to play Online Mp3 stream from this client itself.

ps: keep volume on high if you cant listen.

So in this small clip, I am showing two basic ways of installing normal applications provided by Fedora distribution , same commands should apply to any other rpm distro and Synaptic GUI works in Debian based distro's like Ubuntu and RPM based distros like Fedora too.

So Just go through the small video clip here and you should be ready to start installing at your Linux PC or Laptop. Have Fun!

Okay, so in this clip you can learn the basics of Working in linux while you change your default desktop look and feel by changing themes, wallpapers, icons and lastly mouse cursor. Extremely simple and basic stuff. A new-comer to linux will really enjoy this ( i hope! ).




ps:- the voice is kindof low so put your volume little high at your pc.

This will be sort-of wiki on all my findings on customizing Default Install of Linux, tweaking it just that much, so the Desktop experience becomes smooth and nice contributing to increased productivity and less headaches.

There will video's (video blogs?), Howto's, Shell scripts to help you make your linux desktop experience a good one. It could be simple commands to huge mashups of applications . It can be tweaking software when simply browsing internet, to listening music and complex stuff like moving files from desktop to Mobile PDA's and Setting Oracle's free DB , writing php codes and similar things.

There are tons of guides like this spread all over the internet, so why am I doing this I hear you ask? well first, they are spread ALL over the internet , I want to gather the best things in one single site for myself, I am sure it will be helpful for others too. And voice for non-ubuntu users is getting muzzled under other loud noises from ubuntu users (nothing wrong about it),So its becoming frustrating to google around and find solution or info on problem relating to Linux Distributions if you are not using Ubuntu (like me as of now) So I want to gather documentations particularly for this reason, Right now I am on Fedora 7, so you will see lots of fedora related stuff.

Plus I soon plan to launch my own code mashup to do things in Linux, so that too will be posted here as it goes.

Wish me luck !