Xubuntu Blog

Xubuntu 8.04 comes shipped with PulseAudio, a new sound management system. For the most part, your commonly used programs should work with this new program. For some, however, Audacity may quit being able to play and record sound. (For those who don’t know, Audacity is a sound editor; which means not being able to play and record sound renders it pretty useless!)

This how-to is extremely easy and short, but it helps me work with one of my favourite programs. In short: uninstall jackd.

1) Go to Xfce Menu > Accessories > Terminal, and enter in the following:

sudo apt-get remove jackd

Reopen up Audacity. Hopefully, it should start working again as it should. If not, you may have to quit the jackd program. Go back to the terminal and enter the following:

killall jackd

Now Audacity should be working just as it did before. Good luck!

(Credit goes to http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=4812244&postcount=5.)

Xubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron was released today! You can view the release notes here. While I haven’t upgraded yet, this page shows that Xubuntu has received a lot of the same fixes as Ubuntu. Links to ISOs to download are available, but to save some wear and tear on the servers, it is strongly recommended that you use BitTorrent. My partner blog will tell you how. It’s very exciting indeed! Happy Xubuntuing.

Ubuntu Brainstorm is a new site that allows you to vote for improvements, features, ideas and fixes for Ubuntu. It is made in order to bridge the communication gap from the developers and users. From the article posted at The Fridge:

An idea on brainstorm can easily be linked to a Launchpad blueprint as well as to a bug or a forum discussion thread. In this way we expect to bridge the locations where ideas are often submitted now, as forum posts or bug reports, with the blueprint format they should be expressed in to be implemented.

Here are the current ideas for Xubuntu: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=Xubuntu&ordering=mostvotes

Do you have an idea that you’ve been itching to share with the developers, but didn’t know how? Now’s your chance to post it at the Brainstorm!

One of the best scripts for GNOME’s file manager Nautilus is audio-convert. audio-convert is a program that lets you convert mp3s to oggs, wavs, and vice versa. For me, it’s one of the main reasons I use Nautilus. Now, though, I can also use it with Thunar too. Here’s how:

1) If you haven’t already, install audio-convert. To do so, open up a terminal (Xfce Menu > Accessories > Terminal) and run the following:

sudo apt-get install nautilus-script-audio-convert

2) Next, open up the Thunar file manager and go to Edit > Configure custom actions…. Click the Add (plus) sign and put in the following:

a) Under the Basic tab:

Name: audio-convert
Command: /usr/share/nautilus-scripts/ConvertAudioFile %f

b) Under the Appearance Conditions tab:

Put a checkmark next to Audio files. Click Ok and exit out of the actions manager.

Now you can right click any audio file and go to audio-convert. audio-convert will do the work from there. Enjoy!

I for one got tired of having to type lame -b 128 etc, etc. into the terminal each time I wanted to change the quality of an mp3. Sure, there’s http://www.media-convert.com/ , but that lags our internet. So I whipped up this script. It has an installation guide for both Thunar and Nautilus and for me it works great.

Read the guide here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=653006

You may have noticed after upgrading to Xubuntu Gutsy that your background color turns brown for a few seconds, before returning back again. If you have, then you may have also noticed that it doesn’t really match well.

Turns out the program is straight in the login manager. Specifically, in the file /etc/gdm/PreSession/Default. Thankfully, it’s easy to fix.

Open up a terminal (Xfce Menu > Accessories > Terminal) and run the following:

wget http://ubuntu.freehostia.com/Default
sudo mv Default /etc/gdm/PreSession/
rm Default

Log out and in, and the background color will be gone. Enjoy!

(Thanks to NoVista at http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3584409&postcount=6 for this tip!)

Just like in GNOME! …With a little bit more effort, of course.

So, why would somebody want a background image for their panel? Well, for one, a nice gradient image on the panel can really complete the feel of your desktop. For another, using a section of your wallpaper for a panel background can make your desktop feel more integrated.

For instance, here’s one of my panels with a background image the same as my wallpaper, to make it feel more like a dock:

One image I recommend using is the OSX menubar image. Scroll down and choose the image for your desktop resolution.

Sounds good? Let’s get started!

1) Rename the image that you want to background.ext (ext being the file extension. ex: png, jpg, etc.). Put the image in your home folder. (actually, you can name it whatever you want, but for consistency, we’ll leave it as background.ext. Make sure it’s in your home folder though!)

2) Open up the terminal (Xfce Menu > Accessories > Terminal), and create and edit a GTK configuration file:

touch ~/.gtkrc-2.0
mousepad ~/.gtkrc-2.0

3) Copy and paste in it the following:

style "panel"
{
bg[NORMAL] = “#FFFFFF”
bg_pixmap[NORMAL] = “background.ext”
fg[NORMAL] = “#FFFFFF”
}

widget_class “*Panel*” style “panel”
widget “*Panel*” style “panel”
class “*Panel*” style “panel”

(Again, .ext, of course, being the file extension).

4) Save the file and exit. You’ll have to log out and in again for the changes to take effect. If you don’t want to do that, run the following in the terminal:

killall xfce4-panel
xfce4-panel &

to complete the changes.

Have fun with your panel!

(Special thanks to crimesaucer at http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3517612&postcount=396 for this tip!)

As of yesterday, xubuntu.info has a new owner. And guess what: it’s another blog!

Of course, here’s the catch: it’s Italian. If there are any Italian readers here, be sure to check it out.

Over the past week I helped my sister switch over from Ubuntu to Xubuntu. (Maybe I was a little biased about Xubuntu as she was making the switch, but c’mon…I write a blog about it, I might as well be! :P)

She had reasons for doing so: she wanted something faster, preferred Thunar over Nautilus, and just wanted it looking nicer.

Point by point, here’s what impressed her the most:

1) It’s simple.

Q: How do I run Thunar to open my home folder?
A: Thunar.
Q: What’s the command for the terminal?
A: Terminal.

Now that’s semantic! Things in Xfce are logical, simple, and obvious (Or, as she put it, “I type in what I want and I get it”).

2) Thunar.

I’ve already covered some of this, but she prefers Thunar over Nautilus for two main reasons:

a) You can easily switch the address bar from pathbar to toolbar style. I like to type. For me (and my sister) it’s quicker to type than to click through each and every folder. And it also has a similar feel to the terminal: it even has auto-complete.
b) Restore from trash. I find it hard to believe that Nautilus still doesn’t have this. As my sister put it, “now I don’t have to constantly remember where to reput my files.”

So really, it doesn’t matter if one file manager has network support or support for backgrounds. In the end, people just want the basics.

3) It just looks nice.
She REALLY likes the compositor in xfwm4. (I previously had her set up with Compiz-Fusion, but all the wobbling windows bothered her.) So now her computer has nice, stable shadow and transparency effects. She especially likes being able to see through the windows.

It’s also surprising to see how good the desktop can look using just the default icons and themes. As my blog partner Vincent put it:

Yesterday I returned back home from holiday. In my holiday, I have not touched a decent bike for quite a few weeks. True, I’ve used a mountain bike, but the saddle was very hard and the big tires cause you to cycle slowly while still using a lot of force. The result was that when I used my own, decent bicycle this morning, it was a very pleasant feeling.

Now what does this have to do with Xubuntu? Well, my holiday also meant: two weeks without touching a computer, two weeks without seeing the slightest bit of Xubuntu. So when I then turned on my computer, I realized, once again, how pretty Xubuntu is. And it was a pleasant ride

4) Docks.

She likes docks. Not necessarily a Mac-like dock, but just a row of icons to click on. Because see, she doesn’t like digging through menus. She likes icons. (See folks, when I had mentioned that in my joke topic at Ubuntu Forums, I was only half-kidding!)

I tried setting her up with cairo-dock, but that just confused her. You see, in the newest version you have to add launchers from /usr/share/app-install, and neither me or my sister’s system have anything in /usr/share/app-install. Then something screwed up her workspaces (which she doesn’t even use) and turned her entire background grey.

Needless to say, I got her off of that and set her up with a size-48 panel with her icons, the trash applet, and a weather report. She has it on the left side of her screen, which I don’t understand but, it’s her system.

So, now she has a system that does exactly what she wants and how she wants it…with Xfce.

If you’re an Ubuntu user who’s interested in Xubuntu…why not give it a whirl? If you’d like, just open up a terminal and run sudo aptitude install xubuntu-desktop (or, if you’re a point-and-click kind of person like my sister, you can do it from Synaptic or Adept, depending on your system.)

If it still doesn’t satisfy, just use sudo aptitude remove xubuntu-desktop to take it off. If it does, however, you can take it one step further and follow aysiu’s guide on having a system with only Xfce (this is what my sister did, albeit without removing OpenOffice).

Nothing’s stopping you…it’s free.

Some themes, like Carbonit, theme the border of your desktop icons. Most of them, however, don’t, and they can leave your icons with ugly borders around the text. With this tip, you can get your icons looking like this:

Nice, huh? Let’s get started!

1) Open up a terminal, and create and edit a GTK configuration file:

touch ~/.gtkrc-2.0
mousepad ~/.gtkrc-2.0

2) Copy and paste in it the following:

style "xfdesktop-icon-view" {
XfdesktopIconView::label-alpha = 0
}
widget_class “*XfdesktopIconView*” style “xfdesktop-icon-view”

You can also change the font colors.

style "xfdesktop-icon-view" {
XfdesktopIconView::label-alpha = 0

fg[NORMAL] = “#ffffff”
fg[SELECTED] = “#ffffff”
fg[ACTIVE] = “#ffffff”
}
widget_class “*XfdesktopIconView*” style “xfdesktop-icon-view”

Gives the icon text a dark black background with white text.

3) Save the file and exit. You may need to log out and in again for the changes to take effect.

If you’d like, you can also make the icon text border transparent with your wallpaper. The end result would be something like this:

Looks nice? Here’s how you do it:

1) Open up a terminal, and create and edit a GTK configuration file:

touch ~/.gtkrc-2.0
mousepad ~/.gtkrc-2.0

2) Copy and paste in it the following:

style "xfdesktop-icon-view" {

fg[NORMAL] = “#ffffff”
fg[SELECTED] = “#73B2D0″
fg[ACTIVE] = “#D17100″
}
widget_class “*XfdesktopIconView*” style “xfdesktop-icon-view”

You can change the number in XfdesktopIconView::label-alpha to your liking. Enjoy!

(Thanks to PrimoTurbo at http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=3197338&postcount=435 for this tip!)