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).

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

Ubuntu Desktop Screenshot of the Day #6 - Hello Hardy Heron!

Just a quick post before I go to bed. I finally got an Ubuntu 8.04 beta installed on my laptop with the proprietary video drivers installed and most importantly with wireless access working! For the wireless, all I really needed to do was install the b43-fwcutter package which actually downloaded and installed the firmware as part of the package installation. How nice is that! Using the wifi card with WPA seems to be pretty solid now. It was almost never usable before and I would always a have to connect to good old linksys to get online. Shhh...

I still do not think kindly of the Broadcom 4306 wireless card I have thanks to the lack of openness. I will be doing a lot more hardware research on future computer purchases!

The last time I tried to upgrade to 8.04 it was a disaster. Today I started fresh with the daily DVD image from 4/5/08. I have to get a DVD because the drive in my laptop no longer reads CDs. Installing the DVD went fairly smoothly but then I realized I was just running 7.10 that pointed to the Hardy repositories so I had to preform an upgrade. ~600MB of packages downloaded later... The install/upgrade went well except Mono (the Linux .NET implementation) didn't work so a few applications like F-Spot and Tomboy likely do not work either (I haven't tried them yet).

Anyway, I need some sleep so here it is. Click on the image for the full resolution image.



Ugh, the sun will be here way too soon. Thanks for the info there new world time clock applet.

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.

Ubuntu Desktop Screenshot of the Day #4

Victory! This is a screen shot I took transferring waypoints from my GPS using EasyGPS running under wine. All the details will be in a post that will soon follow this one.


As you can see there are a ton of icons on my desktop. That is from actually using Linux. I am messy and leave lots of icons on my desktop all the time on any OS I use. The theme is the default Ubuntu 7.10 Human theme (I switched to that for some other tutorial screen shots) and the background is a picture I took in Switzerland of the Mönchsjoch hut next to Mönch, near Jungfrau and near the top of the Aletsch Glacier. Go there! Take the train! It is beautiful!!

Ubuntu Desktop Screenshot of the Day #3

Today is going to be a busy day at work catching up with everything that piled up over the holidays so I am going to be lazy and go ahead and post another desktop screen shot. This is one from my laptop and the first SSotD from it. The laptop is a Pentium M 1.4 GHz with 512MB of RAM.

Isn't it awesome that a Sudoku game comes with Gnome by default? 16 games come with Gnome out of the box actually. That sure is a lot better than just a stupid minesweeper and solitaire game! I just wish I didn't suck so bad at sudoku. But then again, my wife stole my sudoku book that I got last Christmas and did all the puzzles in it before I got a chance to get good.

It also would be nice to watch an episode of The Office one day and see Pam playing Gnome Sudoku instead of boring old Windows solitaire. Pam is a sudoku master after all: "Suduko. Level moderate, 18 minutes. Suck on that, Halpert." She sure wouldn't have gotten that virus while trying to download a celebrity sex tape if she was running Linux either.

Ah yes, and the background is GNOME Flowers.

Ubuntu Desktop Screenshot of the Day #2

This is a screen shot of my home PC Desktop. It is the P4 3GHz with 3GB of RAM (recently upgraded from 1GB).


The background is an image I took at Pilot Mountain while doing some hiking with my Dad in late November this year. I am using the Cillop-Mediterranean controls, Clearlooks with a Cherry on Top window borders, and the JiniBlueSky icon set. I wish the icon set didn't have a different Firefox icon. I prefer the application icon in that case.

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.