Ubuntu Desktop Screenshot of the Day #8 - Election Season Edition

My desktop theme has been the same way too long and I haven't posted a new screen shot in a while so today I decided to tackle both of those things. Seeing as it is election season here in the US where I am, I decided to go with a nice red, white and blue theme. The background is called "another gnome wave (blue on red)" and is one of several with this same design and different colors. I am also trying out CrossOver Chromium a little more since I have been using its Windows counterpart Chrome more seriously for a few days now too. I hope to share more thoughts on Chromium later. In the screen shot you will also notice the Dictionary application. This is the first time I have ever used it because I generally use Google as my online dictionary. One last thing, the website shown is Electoral-Vote.com which tracks daily polling for each state and predicts the outcome of the election if it were to happen today (based on our antiquated electoral college system that allows a President to be elected without a majority of the poplar vote, like in 2000, and focuses campaigning to only a handful of states).

Like Clockwork - GNOME 2.24 Released

Like clockwork, GNOME 2.24 was released today as an upgrade from 2.22 which was released on March 12. GNOME is on a strict 6 month, time based release cycle. With a time based release schedule, changes are more incremental than in other projects but they still manage to get a lot of good stuff in. Check out the GNOME 2.4 release notes for all the details and with good screen shots.

The highlights of this release as I see it are:

• The first release with the mobile development platform "to provide a core platform on which distributors and handheld manufacturers can build rich programming environments". Although not running GNOME specifically, that fancy new T-Mobile Android phone is running Linux.
  
• A new integrated IM client, Empathy. Some are excited about Empathy possibly replacing Pidgin (formerly Gaim) in some distributions but I am skeptical. I love Pidgin. That is my only IM client on Windows and Linux.
• The addition of tabs to Nautilus, the file manager. This has been a complaint by many for what seems like forever.
• New Screen Resolution Controls. We shall see if this helps. Linux notoriously has issues with multi-head systems. Much if this is thanks to poor display drivers though. The whole stack needs work.
  

This GNOME release will show up in Ubuntu 8.10 on October 30th, Fedora 10 on November 25th and openSUSE 11.1 on December 18th. If you don't want to wait that long to try it out, most of these distributions already are in late Alpha or Beta and have close to the final 2.24 release in them. There used to be a live CD as part of a distribution called Foresight Linux and some VMware images also. I don't see those up yet for this release yet though. I am not sure if the 2.22 release ever had them created either. You may also find the Ars Technica review informative as I usually do.

File modification dates changed in Ubuntu 8.04 on copy or move

Before upgrading from Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04, I had the annoying problem of file modification dates getting changed when copying files to an NTFS file system. I also found that the problem was fixed in a newer version of ntfs-3g and all I had to do was get the package from the Ubuntu backports repository. Yipee!

But now I am running Ubuntu 8.04 and the problem has returned just in a new and nastier form. Now file modification dates are always updated in any move or copy, including ext3 to ext3! I did find that I could get around this problem when copying from the command line with cp using the -p switch to "preserve the specified attributes (default: mode, ownership, timestamps), if possible additional attributes: context, links, all". That didn't work for me when copying to an ntfs partition though. I got an error message: cp: preserving times for `/path/My Documents in Windows/testfile.zip': Operation not permitted

I could (and did) use sudo to make it work on ntfs though. I am glad there is a work around but I really do not want to have to drop to a command line every time I want to move or copy a file that I want the modification date preserved. I want to use Nautilus to drag and drop things!

I knew from my previous issue with ntfs that the copy command doesn't preserve the modification date by default but copying in Nautilus did and now it doesn't. There was a major change from 7.10 to 8.04 with the file system though. GNOME now uses GVFS instead of GnoneVFS (confusing similar names I know). And from my research, it looks like that is the problem. There are bug reports here (Ubuntu) and here (GNOME). Now let's hope it gets fixed for 8.04 and soon! Until then I guess I will be dropping to the command line to move my photos around, argh!

Resize and rotate images easily with Gnome in Ubuntu

Today I wanted to post some pictures to a site but to upload them I needed them to be considerably smaller. I know lots of ways to resize images in Linux but I needed an easy way to resize them. In Windows, I am used to using the Image Resizer Power Toy. (Why is that not a default feature?) The image resizer in Windows allows me to just right click on one or more images and resize them to any number of sizes. That is pretty handy and a feature I was looking for in Linux too. Sadly, there is not one already installed by default. I knew I could use the Gimp to do what I wanted but that was overkill. I wanted a simple and fast solution.

That was when I found the nautilus-image-converter package thanks to this and this. You can install it from Synaptic (System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager) like I did or from the command line with apt-get like so (make sure Ubuntu Universe is enabled first under System -> Administration -> Software Sources):

sudo apt-get install nautilus-image-converter

After installing it, you will need to restart Nautilus. The best way to do that would be to log out and log back in. You could also quit and restart Nautilus with the command

nautilus -q; nautilus &

which will quit and then start it back up in the background. Once Nautilus has restarted it will load the new extension and you will be able to resize and rotate images from the right click menu. You can also resize and rotate multiple images if you select multiple images first. Both resizing and rotating allow you to take the action on the current image or make a copy and rename it with .resized or .rotated. The copy option is the default for both actions. See the screen shots below for all the options available.

The new resize and rotate options

The resize image(s) dialog

The rotate image(s) dialog

There you have it. Easy image resize and rotate in Gnome. And want it to be default, vote for the idea below:

Ubuntu Desktop Screenshot of the Day #7 - ATI Big Desktop

Why in the world have I waited so long to play with Big Desktop?? I can't live without multiple monitors these days but in Linux I have dealt with a limited setup for a while. I've had my system setup with dual monitors but with dual X sessions too. This has kept me from being able to drag icons and windows between monitors. Fortunately things like Cut/Copy/Paste worked but it was less than desirable. I also could not open the same application in both windows so if I wanted a browser in each window one was Firefox and the other Epiphany.

Tonight I decided to just mess with the aticonfig program that helps you setup your xorg.conf for ATI cards. I followed the Ubuntu forums thread on Big Desktop (but only part of the way) and now look what I have:

Click for the full size 3200x1200 desktop image

Isn't that sweet? One interesting note is the screen is not really that large. The monitor on the right is a smaller resolution than on the left so really the gedit window is almost to the borders of the right monitor. I wonder what other tweaks I can get working. I only messed a little with this to get to this point. It is just so tedious fooling with my xorg.conf file!

I see a lot of others have had success too (some more easily than others, lucky nvidia owners):

• Ubuntu 8.04, ATI, & Big Desktop
• Dual Head and Compiz Fusion (user not stuck with ATI like me)
• My first look at Ubuntu 8.04 LTS as a Desktop and Server (another nvidia user)
• Ubuntu 8.04 : Hardy Heron (I envy nvidia owners more now!)
• Configuring Dual Monitor on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon (ati how-to)
  

Also, better background support would be nice here. The background I have now works well tiled. All the other single images I tried didn't work well split across screens. Vote for the brainstorm to have that fixed. Fortunately it may come sooner rather than later as Google Summer of Code has sponsored the GNOME project Individual Workspace Wallpapers which might help some.




And for my future reference (and yours) and backup, here is my new /etc/X11/xorg.conf for my Big Desktop setup of an ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)] on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron (I have a Logitech MX1000 mouse in there too).

#Section "InputDevice"
# Identifier "Configured Mouse"
# Driver  "mouse"
# Option  "CorePointer"
# Option  "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
# Option  "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
# Option  "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
# Option  "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
#EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"

 # Uncomment if you have a wacom tablet
 # InputDevice     "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
 # InputDevice     "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
 # InputDevice     "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
# Inputdevice "Configured Mouse"
 Identifier     "Default Layout"
 Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]" 0 0
 InputDevice    "Generic Keyboard"
 InputDevice    "Logitech MX1000"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
 Load  "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
 Identifier  "Generic Keyboard"
 Driver      "kbd"
 Option     "CoreKeyboard"
 Option     "XkbRules" "xorg"
 Option     "XkbModel" "pc105"
 Option     "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
 Identifier  "Logitech MX1000"
 Driver      "evdev"
 Option     "Name" "Logitech USB Receiver"
 Option     "HWHEELRelativeAxisButtons" "7 6"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
 Identifier  "stylus"
 Driver      "wacom"
 Option     "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
 Option     "Type" "stylus"
 Option     "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
 Identifier  "eraser"
 Driver      "wacom"
 Option     "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
 Option     "Type" "eraser"
 Option     "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
 Identifier  "cursor"
 Driver      "wacom"
 Option     "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
 Option     "Type" "cursor"
 Option     "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
 Identifier   "Generic Monitor"
 HorizSync    30.0 - 70.0
 VertRefresh  50.0 - 160.0
 Option     "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
 Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
 Option     "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
 Option     "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
 Option     "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
 Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[1]"
 Option     "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
 Option     "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
 Option     "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
 Identifier  "ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)]"
 Driver      "fglrx"
 Option     "DesktopSetup" "horizontal"
 Option     "Capabilities" "0x00000800"
 Option     "PairModes" "0x0+0x0"
 Option     "EnableMonitor" "crt1,tmds1"
 BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
 Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]"
 Driver      "fglrx"
 BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
 Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[1]"
 Driver      "fglrx"
 BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
 Screen      1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
 Identifier "Default Screen"
 Device     "ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)]"
 Monitor    "Generic Monitor"
 DefaultDepth     24
EndSection

Section "Screen"
 Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
 Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]"
 Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
 DefaultDepth     24
 SubSection "Display"
  Viewport   0 0
  Depth     24
 EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
 Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[1]"
 Device     "aticonfig-Device[1]"
 Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[1]"
 DefaultDepth     24
 SubSection "Display"
  Viewport   0 0
  Depth     24
 EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
 Option     "Composite" "0"
EndSection

View XPS (XML Paper Specification) files on Linux

A few days ago I was looking at the page for Windows XP SP3 and noticed some documentation at the bottom in a file format I had never heard of before. In addition to a PDF, there was an XPS (XML Paper Specification) available.

XPS is a new competitor to PDF. It was developed by Microsoft and included in Vista and Office 2007 (no wonder I have never heard of it before). They have submitted to the ECMA for standardization but I don't have much hope in them using the ISO Standard stamp as much more than a selling point. Microsoft has not shown they intend to play nice with standards. Remember their HTML extensions and ActiveX? And the latest crap with OOXML? They like to "Embrace, extend and extinguish"

Either way, if you are running Linux and need to view one of these files, I've only found one program so far that does it. The Gnome viewer Evince doesn't yet but the KDE4 viewer Okular does. To install it on Ubuntu just use Synaptic. There is a lot to install since you have to have the KDE base libraries but other than that it is fairly simple.

Ubuntu Desktop Screenshot of the Day #5

Wow! I have not posted in almost 3 weeks! Blogging takes a long time and I am short on time lately. I still don't have a ton of time so I am just going to take the easy way out and put up a new screenshot. Today's shot comes from my work desktop.


In it you see me downloading the Music For The Motion Picture Into The Wild by Eddie Vedder (you know, from Pearl Jam). When I first tried to download my album I got a message indicating there was a new release. The Linux Amazon MP3 Downloader was upgraded from 1.0.2 to 1.0.3. Here are the release notes:

Released: 1.0.3
- Fixed bug where read-only .amz files weren't being loaded.

Released: 1.0.2
- Initial release.

So they fixed that annoying bug keeping a lot of people from being able to download files. Nice work. I wonder how long ago they released it. I don't download a new album very often so I did not really keep up with it. I wrote about a work around for this problem before on March 4, 2008 though. I only had problems myself when I was running a Firefox 3 beta.

Gnome 2.22 to be released today

I'm excited. Gnome 2.22 is set to be released today. Check out what's new in the release notes. The changes I find most useful are PolicyKit integration (so I don't have to type in my password if I just want to do something like view the partitions in GParted) and GVFS. Those changes will help and will continue to help make Gnome a more usable desktop in future releases.

The official release hasn't been posted yet but once it is I plan to download a Foresight LiveCD to check it out for myself. Foresight is the distribution used as "the top choice when demonstrating the latest GNOME". Once the ISOs are posted, the Gnome 2.22 LiveCD torrents will be here.

I won't be running Gnome 2.22 regularly until after Ubuntu 8.04, which will have it, is released on April 24th (as currently scheduled). That is the date I am really looking forward to. It is funny to read the release notes of Gnome and Ubuntu because much of the new stuff in Ubuntu is because it is new in Gnome. The Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 6 release notes mention PolicyKit, the new world clock applet and GVFS. All of those are also in the Gnome 2.22 release notes.

Start applications in Gnome automatically on login in Ubuntu

After figuring out how to have Gnome automatically login, I realized I was still missing a few things in that process. I wanted some applications to auto start when I login too.

The main application is my instant messaging client, Pidgin. I ALWAYS forget to login so my friends and coworkers often wonder where I am when I would normally be at the computer or should be working, respectively. Adding new application is not to hard as long as you know where to look. The hardest part may be having to know where the application you want to launch is located on the file system.

To start an application automatically on login, first go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions. That is where all the already configured startup programs are and where we will add our new one(s).


Then, obviously, click on Add to add the application you want to start up automatically.

This is the hardest part because you have to know the location of your application. There is no nifty select application like there is when you use "Open With" from right clicking on a file. I think there really should be! It works great. See the screen shot to the right for what I would like to see.

Instead you have to know or find your application. I didn't know where Pidgin was. The best way to find out is with the command whereis. Like so:

$ whereis -b pidgin
pidgin: /usr/bin/pidgin /usr/lib/pidgin

(The -b switch means only look for binaries.) So pidgin is installed in /usr/bin/. Configure it like so below. All that matters of course is the Command. The rest is just to help you identify it.

And there you have it:


You can load anything there, including scripts. That is very helpful if you have specific things to configure at boot for your UI.

And as a side note. The Windows boot up is a little easier to configure. All you have to do is stick your application in your Startup command folder (All Programs -> Startup) or use msconfig. But be careful when you add programs to startup or your system will run like my Windows system on startup which is horrible! It takes 6 1/2 minutes for my Windows system to get from the BIOS screen to a desktop with no hour glass mouse. Even then, trying to open MS Money takes another 5 minutes! In all, it takes 10-15 minutes to get to a usable desktop in Windows for me!! That is sad. Welcome to Ubuntu where I don't have that problem. Ubuntu is ready to go after about a minute. I just hope over time I don't get the problem in Linux.

Gnome Keyboard Shortcuts Rock With My Multimedia Keyboard

I use my Linux box at work a lot more than my machine at home, especially lately. Since the keyboard at work is mapped via Synergy, none of the special keys on my multimedia keyboard work or are just not setup to work. I'm going to have to double check on that Monday morning. Maybe I just have a configuration issue.

Tonight I discovered that most of the keys do work on my multimedia keyboard at home! (Same keyboard by the way, the Microsoft Natural MultiMedia Keyboard 1.0a.) I pressed the calculator button out of habit and up popped the calculator. Sweet! Then I tried out the Play/Pause, Mute, Volume, Previous/Next buttons, and the My Documents button. All but the My Document button worked. But I wanted it to.

So off I go searching and under System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts I hit the jackpot. It turned out that nothing was mapped to the My Documents key.

I simply selected the "Home Folder" and pressed the My Documents key and it set 0xef (the My Documents key apparently) to open a Nautilus window to my home directory. Nice! Unfortunately the My Pictures and My Music buttons don't work when trying to map something to them. It doesn't much matter at the moment though because I don't see an action for opening your ~/Music or ~/Pictures directories. I also don't see any ability for custom actions. Considering the overall customization abilities of Linux, that really surprised me. Maybe I wanted the My Music button to launch a script that does some crazy thing. Well I don't think I can. At least I can change every other default shortcut if I have the desire too.

Also, here is a handy table of some common keyboard shortcuts I love and use regularly:

Action	Shortcut
Show the Applications Menu	Alt + F1
Bring up a run application dialog	Alt + F2
Take a screenshot	Print Screen
Take a screenshot of the active window	Alt + Print Screen
Move to the workspace to the right	Ctrl + Alt + Right Arrow
Move to the workspace to the left	Ctrl + Alt + Left Arrow

There are many, many, many more so check out the Keyboard Shortcuts application to see what is configured. The default settings may vary slightly between distributions but hopefully not much.

Also, one last tip for you Windows switchers. If you miss pressing the Start/Windows button to bring up the application menu (instead of the current Alt + F1), you can remap that easily too. It turns out pressing that is the same as "Super + L". Honestly though, I would recommend getting used to the default since that is what is going to be everywhere else.

Oh, and one more note. Last one, I promise. If you have "Desktop Effects" enabled (i.e. Compiz), there are a lot of other special Compiz shortcuts that come into play there. Many of those effects utilize the "Super" key which is also the Start/Windows key.

Burning an ISO in Ubuntu Linux

Previously I blogged about writing a CD or DVD in Linux. Writing an ISO image is just as easy when you know where to get started. Like writing a data or audio cd, ISO writing is also built into Gnome.

Instead of following the whole selecting a data or audio disc, go straight to your .iso file on the filesystem, right click on it and select Write to Disc. That is all there is to it!

Ubuntu Auto Login With Gnome

I've gotten tired of having to log into Gnome every time I restart my computer. With my laptop this happens a good bit since hibernating does not work (hopefully I can solve that problem at some point). You can have Gnome automatically login for you though. The process is simple, you just have to know where to look.

Go to System -> Administration -> Login Window

From here you can configure Gnome to automatically login as any user on the system immediately or after a delay. The latter option allows you to still login as a different user if that is your intention. All of my current systems are only used by me so I don't need that feature. And the obligatory sreeenshot to help you know you are in the correct place:

Downloading Pictures From My Camera Changes The Dates!

I've been loving my Linux experience so far. Sometimes things just work the way or better than you expect. Sometimes, like today, they don't.

Today I got home from spending time with the family for Christmas and decided instead of booting into Windows to copy my digital photos off my camera, I would use Linux. I was very confident it would work because the camera shows up as a generic mass storage device which I know is well supported by Linux. My 500GB external hard drive shows up this way and it works flawlessly.

I plugged in the camera and up popped a "Photo Import" dialog. Sweet!

As in Windows, I decided to import my images manually though so I clicked ignore. I have a system for this, ok! I also was not sure what the whole import would do. Turning on the camera had added a "disk" icon to my desktop so I just browsed there, created my local folder on the NTFS partition where all the other images are, and then moved them over. Now I wish I would have just copied them.

After moving all the files, I wanted to sort them by the date they were taken. In Windows, that is the same date as the file. But oh no, not in Linux. The move operation had changed the modified date (the files was NOT modified, just moved) so they were all times of just a few minutes ago. Gnome will show you the picture taken date that is embedded in the EXIF data but only on a per image basis so there is no sorting to be had. Good thing the file names are sequential. I still would like to have the file dates the same as the date they were taken.

I did a little searching and found I am not alone in wanting to sort by date the picture was taken in Gnome. We are both without an answer though. Someone suggested F-Spot which is a photo collection application that comes pre-installed in Ubuntu. I might try that out sometime soon to see if it can rename the files for me. There has to be a utility or script to change the file modified date to the picture taken date somewhere!!!

UPDATE 3/7/08: After some more research I discovered this problem is limited to NTFS and there is a fix thanks to Ubuntu Backports.

Burning a CD or DVD in Ubuntu

Every year my wife and I get calendars made with family pictures for grandparents and/or parents. We use digital photos and also scan in some older photos. Unfortunately I could not get my Memorex MEM 48U USB scanner working in Linux so I had to boot into Windows which lead to my discussion of dual booting Ubuntu and Windows. If I hadn't waited until the last minute, I likely would have spent more time on the scanner. There might be more on that issue in the future.

So after firing up Windows, scanning all the pictures and getting them all organized, I still needed to burn them to CD to take to Office Max. I rebooted into Linux figuring this would be an easy task. I looked and looked and looked for CD burning software but didn't see any pre-installed. I was a little disappointed. I fired up Add/Remove applications and installed GnomeBaker. It had 4 stars (out of 4) for popularity and "integrates well" with Gnome. No problem, not everyone wants to burn CDs.

At this point I fired up GnoneBaker and stuck in my blank CD. Up popped this message:

Oh Gnome, I'm so sorry for underestimating you! Why would I need an external CD burner when it is built into Gnome already?! Duh! After choosing "Make Data CD", I just had to create some directories and use some drag and drop to setup the content for my disc.

Then I selected my burning options. I changed the name from the default shown in the screen shot below. I generally play it safe too so I changed the disc to burn at some super low speed like 4x. I had other things to do before I headed to the store anyway. I could wait.

And then make it write the disc... (the preparing to write step took a lot longer than I expected, what was it doing?)





And there you have it. I burned a CD in Linux, so simply. After the successful burn without it, I uninstalled GnomeBurner. The GnomeBurner interfaced looked a little confusing anyway. Maybe I will install it again some other time if I want to do something more complex but until then I'll stick with the easy way.

Update: And burning an Audio CD was just as easy. Start from the same dialog when you pop in a blank disc and then up pops Serpentine to burn your audio CD.


Drag and drop in some mp3 (or other file formats too I am sure). Whoops, I added too many at first.


Start the disc burning.


And then wait a really long time. I assume this step is converting the MP3s I selected into wav files to burn to the disc. The during this process, CPU usage ramped up to a solid 50% (I have a hyperthreading P4).

And the next thing I knew, it was done!

Ubuntu Desktop Screenshot of the Day #1

One of the things I love about Gnome is the ability to easily load different themes. Windows doesn't have a concept like this. There are add on applications like WindowBlinds but my experience with that is the performance cost is way to great. There are a bunch of sites that have themes and wallpapers such as art.gnome.org and Gnome-Look. I use art.gnome.org A LOT to download wallpapers for all of my systems, Windows included. Gnome allows you to change the application theme, window borders, icons, backgrounds and more.

Because of all this awesome UI customization goodness, I am going to take some time occasionally to post a screen shot from one of my Ubuntu systems. Today's screen shot is from my secondary work machine. This machine is a Celeron 1.8GHz, 630MB of RAM with an Intel 82845G based video card. It is running Compiz (a compositing window manager that uses 3D graphics acceleration via OpenGL) for all sorts of fun and useful eye candy. Compiz worked right out of the gates from what I remember on this system. This is my only system that is currently running Compiz though. I think my home system can but I have higher priorities.

My work Linux desktop does run pretty slowly though. It is fairly under powered and I push it to its limits. I am not sure if Compiz is slowing it down any. I'll turn it off again one day and see. Another thing I want to mention about this system is I uses Synergy to access it. Synergy is wonderful. I recommend it for anyone with multiple systems and multiple monitors that don't want the hassle of a KVM switch. Several people at my office use it to access their Mac laptops too since it works on Linux, OS X and Windows.

Now, without further ado... (click on the image for a larger version)


I also wanted to point out a few things about this image. One, the background I am using is one of my favorite* Gnome backgrounds (so far at least) called Gnome Gallery. There are a ton of backgrounds with the Gnome logo incorporated into them. So many in fact that they have a whole section devoted to them. Sorry this is a crappy JPG. The PNG was 1.6MB and not really worth it. Also, I got to play with Gimp (Photoshop replacement? We shall see.) to save the default PNG to a JPG at 60% quality. I might save the next one at a higher quality or just stick with the PNG.

Ah yes, and the other very important thing that I LOVE that I wanted to mention. Screen shots are a breeze in Gnome! In Windows you can press PrintScreen to capture the screen to the clipboard. Gnome takes it a step farther and throws up an application to automatically save that screen shot as a PNG somewhere. Alt + PrintScreen will just capture the selected window instead of the entire screen by the way.

* The default spell checking language in Firefox currently is British English. I'm an American so I opt to spell the word "favorite" instead of "favourite". Oh look, now it is US English.