Intelligent Plymouth Boot Splash

This is an idea straight out of those futuristic 80′s movies! However, it works and it’s not done on a Commodore 64. With this neat little customization, your splash screen will be happy to greet you any time you want to use your computer. Created by OMG!Ubuntu reader Shnatsel and assured to do nothing to hurt your computers, it’s ready to go!

“It also should be safe to install and use – it won’t break anything, the worst thing it can do is fall back to text mode (but the system will still boot to GUI).”

First thing to be aware of us is if Plymouth looks like a mess to you now it will continue to look a mess with this; you’ll need to fix that.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:shnatsel/plymouth

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install plymouth-theme-smooth-greeting

To uninstall run:

sudo apt-get remove plymouth-theme-smooth-greeting

 

How To | Gnome Panel As A “Wingpanel”

Liking that new fangled Wingpanel we’re all hearing about? Want one of your own? Turn your Gnome Panel in to one!

The trick is to get a floating Gnome panel (the rest is pretty much obvious). Read on!

Step 1. Remove all the panel applets that you don’t want to use – like the menu.

Step 2. Right click the panel, select “Propreties” and on the “General” tab, uncheck the expand option and enable autohide. Now simply drag the panel to the right side of the screen.

Step 3. Now let’s simulate a “floating effect” for the Gnome panel (that means the panel will always be visible but it covers the applications as opposed to when the panel is always visible – when the windows cannot go underneath the panel):

Press ALT + F2 and enter “gconf-editor”, navigate to apps > panel > toplevels and click “panel_0″ or “panel_1″ (it depends on the panel you want to apply this for). Then, modify the “hide_delay” key value to “2147483647″ which is the maximum supported value. This is the panel hide delay which is now set to “2147483647″ so the panel will take around 600 hours to hide (so it’s not really going to hide), thus becoming a “floating panel”.

Tip thanks to Justin | via Justin Stories.

How To | Boost Flash Performance

Want better flash performance in Ubuntu? OMG! Ubuntu reader Eduardo got in touch to share a nifty hack to get just that.

How? I’ll let Adobe’s Mike Melanson explain:

“…there is [an] option in mms.cfg that will be of use to Linux users: “OverrideGPUValidation”. Pursuant to the need to have such stringent rules for validating whether the Linux Flash Player can use the GPU. If you wish to force the Flash Player to bypass its GPU validity checks, add “OverrideGPUValidation=true” (without the quotes) to your mms.cfg.”

This allows you to boost Flash by bypassing GPU validation. Eduardo tested it and said ‘the difference is noticeable.’

Eduardo provides two ways to enable it:

Using the terminal enter:

sudo mkdir /etc/adobe && echo “OverrideGPUValidation=true”|sudo tee /etc/adobe/mms.cfg

He also notes that it may be possible to enable it via the hidden adobe folder inside the home folder, in which case use:

echo OverrideGPUValidation=true >> ~/.adobe/mms.cfg

Plymouth Manager | Change Your Boot Theme

If you’re fortunate enough to have a graphics card capable of displaying Plymouth boot splashes then ‘Plymouth Manager’ may just be of interest.

Features include:

• Enable/disable Plymouth
• Set splash resolution
• Fixing errant errors
• Choosing/creating new themes

Find most recent download at launchpad.net/plymouth-manager/+download

If you’re up for the task, why not help translate it to your language? http://plymouthmanager.wordpress.com/about/

How To | Change Your MeMenu Name

It’s a known and reported bug and while an easy front-end setting to choose the display name is still lacking, this can still be changed.

Responding to the bug report with a fix was a user called Ar. You can use either the Terminal to get the changes (easiest) or manually via the Gconf-Editor (ALT+F2 > gconf-editor)

To remove the name from the MeMenu altogether:

gconftool -s /system/indicator/me/display --type int 0

To show your real name/’about me’ name:

gconftool -s /system/indicator/me/display --type int 2

To display the default account username:

gconftool -s /system/indicator/me/display --type int 1

Note: The gconf-editor option will not be available until you attempt to change this option using the terminal first.

How To | Use Docky Anchor to Change Docky Icons

In the past I talked about how a Docky user can change their Docky icons by navigating to the appropriate folder in Nautilus. Well, now I can take that one step further.

I’m going to show you how to use your Docky Anchor icon to navigate directly to that lovely Nautilus folder all with one click. For those of you that are worried that doing this might not allow you to open your Docky Settings, don;t worry. You will still be able to right-click on the Anchor and click Settings.

Step 1: GConf-Editor

• Open your gconf-editor by navigating to Applications > System Tools > Configuration Editor (or gconf-editor in your terminal)
• Navigate to /apps/docky-2/Docky/Items/DockyItem/
• Change DockyItemCommand to gksu nautilus /usr/share/applications
• Close GConf-Editor

Step 2: Change your Icons

• Click on your Docky Anchor
• Type in your password
• Navigate to the program icon you would like to change

How To | Install Docky Stacks

Install Stacks in Docky with one command

The script automatically fetches and installs the files needed to both install and successfully run Docky with Stacks.

Open a terminal and enter the following line carefully:

wget href="http://www.panticz.de/sites/default/files/Docky/compile.docky.stacks.sh.txt -O - | bash -

 

 

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Click here to see the original article and the source code of the bash script.

How To | Customize Your Docky

I’ve made it known in the past that I’m a Docky user. I love my Docky, and everything about it. Here are some ways that Docky users can customize their settings to spice things up a bit. Thank you to OMG! Ubuntu for making me aware of these tips.

1. Blur the dock background

1. Open up Compiz-Config-Settings-Manager from the System > Preferences menu
2. Enable ‘Blur’ by checking the box next to the icon
3. Now click on the blur icon to enter the blur config area
4. Here you want to add Docky to the list of ‘Alpha blur windows’. Use either the ‘grab’ method (by clicking the green cross) or by manually adding ‘class=Docky’ to the entry field.

2. Add more themes

Download one of the themes below, click the Anchor icon followed by the ‘Install theme’ button and locate the .tar file. The new themes will be available for use.

• Elegant Dock

• Shiki Colours

3. Change the urgent color glow

The color of the alert ‘glow’ used to notify you that a dock item wants your attention is also configurable. To change it:

1. Press Alt + F2
2. Type “gconf-editor” (without the quotes)
3. Navigate to: apps > docky-2 > Docky > DockController
4. Experiment with finding a color that suits you by changing the UrgentHue value to a number between -180 to 180. The default is 150.

4. Launch any application using the Anchor icon

You can set the Docky Anchor icon to launch any application you like. Here’s how: -

1. Press ALT + F2 together
2. Type “gconf-editor” (without the quotes)
3. Navigate to: apps > docky-2 > Docky > Items > DockyItem
4. Enter a command in the DockyItemCommand field to launch a specific application/action.

For example to launch the Gnome Control Centre when clicking on the Anchor enter:

“gnome-control-center”

5. Learn how to make themes

You know you want to…I know I want to! There can never be too many themes for Docky. To learn how to make a theme visit wiki.go-docky.com/index.php?title=Theme_Specification. When you have a completed theme, add them to gnome-look.org.

Finally…

If by the end of all that you’re not ready to end your Docky High…you can download this cool Docky inspired wallpaper made by ~ebupof.

For more Docky tips, information and answers to common questions you can head over to the Docky Wiki: wiki.go-docky.com