Apple application bar

Introduction

A nice feature of Apple's OSX is definitely the app dock. And if Apple can make it, then the Open-source community can do this as well! There are two application docks I have tried so far, Avant Windows Navigator (AWN) and Cairo Dock. I will describe both shortly:

- AWN is a easy to use and install application dock. It's available from the Package Manager or you install it yourself. There is only one but, I tried AWN a couple of time now on different distro's and it's not one of the very stable dock around. For some reason, it never work flawless and that's why I have looked around for a good alternative.

- Cairo Dock was the alternative I have been looking for. It's made by some French developers and the whole website is in French, except for the Wiki page's. But still, even for a French site, you will succeed with finding the right package. After you have installed the software, you can find the program in the System Tools section. I will now describe how to install this great program and some nice features I came across.

Cairo Dock installation instructions

The best way to install Cairo Dock, is using the Package Manager. Before you can find this software in the Package Manager, you'll have to do the following from the Terminal or add the "deb http://" lines in the "repositories" section in the Package Manager:

Edit your sources.list (sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list) and add the following line:

For Gutsy Gibbons

deb http://repository.cairo-dock.org/ubuntu gutsy cairo-dock

For Hardy Heron

deb http://repository.cairo-dock.org/ubuntu hardy cairo-dock

For Intrepid Ibex

deb http://repository.cairo-dock.org/ubuntu intrepid cairo-dock

Ok, now every thing is setup to install Cairo dock. You can decide for your self how you want to start the installation:

Package Manager
Lauch the Package Manager and click on "refresh". Now you can search for "cairo". Select every package which has to do with the CairoDock (cairo-dock and cairo-dock-plug-ins)

Command line
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cairo-dock cairo-dock-plug-ins or if cairo-dock-plug-ins can't be found, try cairo-tdock-plugins

After installation has been completed, go to he Ubuntu menu in the "System Tools" section. Here you will find CairoDock. Launch it and you will see something that looks like the following screenshot. The LaunchBar on the screenshot has already been customized.


Ok, now the question is: Does CairoDock automaticaly start up? In my case, the answer was no. And I think I was not the only one, but the solution is very easy though. Like everything in Linux ;-)

Go to the "Preference" section in the Gnome menu. Here you will find a option "Sessions". In this screen you will be able to add CairoDock. Have a look at the screenshot and copy the settings.

Network light blinking

For some reason, some person decided that it's very nice to see your network light of your Wifi blinking. Every laptop user should know that this can be very irritating because usually this light is in front of you.

There are ways to solve this problem, I know one of the solutions and I will explain it here.

First of all you need a network manager which is able to run a script after the connection has been made. Because I use Wicd Network manager which you can download from this location: http://wicd.sourceforge.net (follow the installation instructions from there website)

Now we have to create script which can be run by Wicd. Open a Terminal and type the following: > sudo gedit /etc/network/if-up.d/noblink

After you have typed your password, a file editor will open. Paste the following lines in the file and save and close it:

#!/bin/sh
echo none > /sys/class/leds/iwl-phy0:RX/trigger
echo none > /sys/class/leds/iwl-phy0:TX/trigger
echo none > /sys/class/leds/iwl-phy0:radio/trigger
echo none > /sys/class/leds/iwl-phy0:assoc/trigger

Now we are almost finished, the only thing we have to do, is telling Wicd that it should run this file after the connection has been made. Open Wicd, and go to the Wireless network connection which you want to use. Click on the white arrow which will collapse the advanced settings of the Wifi connection. Here you can click scripts, and after you have entered your admin password you wil be able to tell which script has to been run and when. Have a look at the screenshot and do the same.

To test if this works, disable your Wifi and enable it. Now try to make the connection to your Wifi network and if everything works fine, you will see that the blinking has been stopped. The only problem with this setup is, that you have to specify for every Wifi connection that this script should be used.

Easy to use bittorrent client

I'm using bittorrent for many years now, and I have used many different clients as well. But as you probably know, you will always stick to one client after a while. There can be many reasons to do so, and for me, performance and easy to use interface was the main reason. So on Windows I used Bittcomet for a while, but when I changed to Linux, there was no Bitcomet available anymore.

But, as we all know, in the open-source community there is always a decent replacement for almost everything. So I stumbled across Deluge bittorrent client. It has every thing you need, easy installation and the software is well maintained. There are many options to choose from, and even if you don't really know how bittorrent works, the default settings should be enough for almost everyone.

Just have a look at the following screenshot, you can download the software from http://deluge-torrent.org/downloads.php and select the appropriate Ubuntu package.

Reduce power consumption on Linux

If you have a desktop, power consumption shouldn't be a real issue if you're not a environmental activist. For Laptop users, power consumption is always an issue and in Ubuntu, there are several ways to reduce this.

The easiest way is to change the power options from the menu, go to the Ubuntu menu, then to Preferences and Power Options. Here you can do some common changes which you also find in Windows for example.

But there is a difference between laptops and desktops, therefore you can change a parameter in a configuration file where you can tell Ubuntu that you're working on a laptop. You have to do the following:

Open a terminal and type: sudo gedit /etc/default/acpi-support

Now you will see an editor, look for ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=false and change this to ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=true

Reboot your laptop to make sure that the configuration has been loaded properly.

Random links

When surfing on the web, I find some useful links once in a while. I will put them in this post with a description, if you think you have some useful links as well, just drop me a message.

http://www.linuxalt.com - Alternative software for Linux