20090215

new things

Inspiration and credit for this comes from Lifehacker and this guy.

you will need these

Perspective Sans (dafont.com, installation guide at wiki.ubuntu.com) conky (sourceforge.net, aptitude) python, with urllib and feedparser (aptitude, aptitude and aptitude) weather (fungi.yuggoth.org, aptitude) gnome-do (gnomedo.com, aptitude) Dust theme (wiki.ubuntu.com, includes install guide) wallpaper, conky rc's and gmail script (themage.tar, wallpaper artist is benedict campbell, who is insane)

basically do this

Install the font and all packages named above, also the Dust theme (non-Ubuntufolk, I do apologize, but you're on your own). Download themagetar.gz, extract to your home directory (e.g. /home/username/, or ~/). Presumably you can handle setting the wallpaper.

Conky will run the system info panel out of the box (after changing your gmail acct/password info in .conkyrc, and assuming you have python and weather set up correctly) - just run `conky` from a terminal. Run `conky -c ~/.conkyrc2` to get the clock going. To make this run automatically when you log in, open up the Sessions app (System -> Preferences -> Sessions, `gnome-session-properties`, or use gnome-do! ctrl+space) and add `conky & conky -c ~/.conkyrc2` as a startup item.

I have gnome-do running in Docky mode - instructions on setting that up are here.

You'll note that there is no gnome-panel visible here. There actually is one on the bottom edge of the screen, set to autohide. Should you attempt something similar, you can use gconf-editor to make the panel slide offscreen completely (e.g. not leaving a bit of it visible as a visual cue). From a terminal, run `gconf-editor` and navigate to /apps/panel/toplevels/(panel name, mine is top_panel_screen0). Ensure 'auto_hide' is checked, and change 'auto_hide_size' to 0. Close.

And I think that's it... Oh, you may or may not want to use the Dust theme as-is here. I've modified my copy to be greyscale, which works well. As I haven't bothered to repackage it nicely, you can download it here (dump in ~/.themes and set your theme to Greyscale Dust (available in the Appearances app).

Let me know if you have any questions; this wasn't a terribly in-depth guide. More of a here-are-some-things-maybe-try-them post than a guide. I fully expect no more than two people to make use of any of this, but still. Ask away.

oh, hang on

If you have issues with conky flickering (despite double_buffer being turned on), try adding 'Load "dbe"' to the Module section of your xorg.conf. Might take care of it.