Anyway, there is a plugin for a specific implementation of BankID of one bank available in the Chrome app store (just click here), which apparently forces the plugin to trigger. I have not tried this at all, cause right now I have Firefox, and using a ppa for Oracle Java, but it is definitely worth taking a note of, as Oracle is continuing to mangle and strangle Java, and as I understand it, any redistributing of it right now is fairly complicated. I know Ubuntu is (have) removing it all together due to license changes, pretty sure other major distributions will do the same, and really, nothing will make me happier not having to remove and replace less applications on a new install. In other news, Minecraft runs on OpenJDK, which is my number two reason for having Java installed.

First thing I do is install Sun Java, and remove OpenJDK as well as IcedTea. Mainly because I need JRE for my online bank, and OpenJDK does not work for some reason. However, Canonical has decided to remove Sun Java from their repositories, why I don’t know, but it’s not there. Luckily there is a PPA just for Sun Java, so just open a terminal window and type in:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ferramroberto/java

Then update, and install JRE and plugins:

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin

After this you might want to remove openjdk6-jre and icedtea-plugin then run an autoclean:

sudo apt-get remove openjdk-6-jre icedtea-plugin && sudo apt-get autoremove

Next item I change my power saver settings. Especially in Xubuntu the defaults are fairly annoying, where the screensaver goes on after 10 minutes. To change the settings, open Settings Manager and go to Power manager, and tweak your settings there. Since I use a desktop computer (not a laptop), only interesting settings are under the On AC tab, but feel free to tweak as needed. If you, like me, don’t like screensaver, you can also disable the screensaver under the Screensaver icon in Settings Manager.

The final “tweak” I did was to make sure my font settings were correct, mostly the DPI, aliasing and  Sub pixel order. To change these settings, go to Settings Manager, click on the Appearance icon and from there select the Fonts tab. My settings are Full aliasing (make sure you have a video card that supports this), sub pixel order is RGB, and my DPI is set to 96. However, if you want larger or smaller fonts, feel free to experiment with the DPI settings.

Pretty much all I did, though I also changed to Aw0ken icon theme, cause it is awesome (check out gnome-look.org to find it), as well as installing Gnome DO, Chromium Web Browser, Spotify, Last FM and conky, but all those are a matter of taste really, and freaking easy to install.

UPDATE 22/10:

I’ve updated this a bit. Adding a PPA through Software Source will leave you with an key error each time you update or try to install it. Adding it with add-apt-repository makes it import the key as well (have not been messing much about with PPA’s before). Also, corrected sun-java6-jre-plugin to correct package name, namely sun-java6-plugin.

What I found was a string using sensors and then cut away some of the unwanted information. My problem was that it included the degrees symbol from the command. So, I had to learn how to use cut. Now, I started with the basic command just getting the temperature:

sensors | grep ‘Core 0′

Since I use a multi core CPU, I fetch the temperature of each core separately. The above will show something like this:

Core 0: +37.0°C (high = +80.0°C, crit = +98.0°C)

As seen, there is allot of unwanted information displayed there. So we just cut out the part we want using cut:

sensors | grep ‘Core 0′ | cut -c17-21

Which will only display the +37,0 (or you can change it to cut -c18-21 so it won’t show the +). It might be different on other computer, but the basic principle is the same. If you want to experiment a bit with it, I would suggest you start out with using cut -c1-30, which lets you keep character (or column) 1 to 30, then you just change until you have desired result. Also note that for my system cut -c17-22 and cut -c17-21 showed the same result in the terminal, but the first showed some messed up characters in conky.

Anyway, now that you have a command that lets you fetch out your CPU temp, you can easily translate it to conky. Here is what I used, for my quad core CPU:

Core 01: $alignr ${execi 30 sensors | grep ‘Core 0′ | cut -c18-21}${iconv_start UTF-8 ISO_8859-1}° ${iconv_stop}C
Core 02: $alignr ${execi 30 sensors | grep ‘Core 1′ | cut -c18-21}${iconv_start UTF-8 ISO_8859-1}° ${iconv_stop}C
Core 03: $alignr ${execi 30 sensors | grep ‘Core 2′ | cut -c18-21}${iconv_start UTF-8 ISO_8859-1}° ${iconv_stop}C
Core 04: $alignr ${execi 30 sensors | grep ‘Core 3′ | cut -c18-21}${iconv_start UTF-8 ISO_8859-1}° ${iconv_stop}C

Note the last part, which is there only to get it to show °C instead ^ÅC or something similar, which is also why I cut out the degree symbol from the command. And finally, a full screenshot of my conky setup:

background yes
use_xft yes
xftfont HandelGotD:size=9
xftalpha 0.5
update_interval 4.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_type normal
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 200 5
maximum_width 220
draw_shades no
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders no
default_color grey
default_shade_color red
default_outline_color green
alignment top_right
gap_x 12
gap_y 48
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale no

TEXT
$sysname $kernel on $machine

Uptime $alignr $uptime
Load $alignr $loadavg
Core 01: $alignr ${execi 30 sensors | grep “Core 0″ | cut -c17-21}${iconv_start UTF-8 ISO_8859-1}° ${iconv_stop}C
Core 02: $alignr ${execi 30 sensors | grep “Core 1″ | cut -c17-21}${iconv_start UTF-8 ISO_8859-1}° ${iconv_stop}C
Core 03: $alignr ${execi 30 sensors | grep “Core 2″ | cut -c17-21}${iconv_start UTF-8 ISO_8859-1}° ${iconv_stop}C
Core 04: $alignr ${execi 30 sensors | grep “Core 3″ | cut -c17-21}${iconv_start UTF-8 ISO_8859-1}° ${iconv_stop}C
GPU: $alignr ${execi 60 nvidia-settings -query GPUCoreTemp | perl -ne ‘print $1 if /GPUCoreTemp.*?: (\d+)./;’}${iconv_start UTF-8 ISO_8859-1}° ${iconv_stop}C

wlan0 $alignr ${addr wlan0}

Inbound $alignr ${downspeed wlan0} kb/s
${downspeedgraph wlan0}
Outbound $alignr ${upspeed wlan0} kb/s
${upspeedgraph wlan0}

$processes processes ($running_processes running)

CPU $alignr ${cpu cpu0}%
${cpubar cpu0}

MEM $alignc $mem / $memmax $alignr $memperc%
$membar

Root $alignc ${fs_used /} / ${fs_size /} $alignr ${fs_free_perc /}%
${fs_bar /}

Home $alignc ${fs_used /home} / ${fs_size /home} $alignr ${fs_free_perc /home}%
${fs_bar /home}

Videos $alignc ${fs_used /home/me/Videos} / ${fs_size /home/me/Videos} $alignr ${fs_free_perc /home/me/Videos}%
${fs_bar /home/me/Videos}

swap $alignc $swap / $swapmax $alignr $swapperc%
${swapbar}

NAME $alignr PID CPU
${top name 1} $alignr ${top pid 1} ${top cpu 1}
${top name 2} $alignr ${top pid 2} ${top cpu 2}
${top name 3} $alignr ${top pid 3} ${top cpu 3}
${top name 4} $alignr ${top pid 4} ${top cpu 4}
${top name 5} $alignr ${top pid 5} ${top cpu 5}

As promised, though a bit late, my full .conkyrc. Please note, blindly copying this might not work, you will have to edit for your own system, e.g. my GPU temp is fetched via nvidia-settings, so if you have a ATi card, this will of course not work. Also the speed graphs need the correct device (for me it is wlan0, for you it could be eth0 or wlan1 or whatever).

This pretty much resulted in me spending half my saturday downloading different systems (Mageia GNOME Live and ZenWalk 7.0 Live), figuring out why they won’t work, then redownloading your original distro, having 3 botched installs due to incompatibilities between the dbus version, which result in you having to format your home partition to freaking solve it. Total time wasted: Saturday evening + sunday morning until afternoon. Be smart about it…

What I first noticed the DPI settings for fonts were way off, but as always those are easy to fix, so I just bumped them up to 92. My second instinct was to test my wireless card, so I connected straight to my network, and went on YouTube, and watched a few videos. It seemed to be more stable there, but still it is hard to judge just by a few moments of browsing.

Then I wanted to take the package manager for a spin, which is where Sabayon utterly confuses me. Not only does it use portage, as Gentoo, but it also have a binary in house developed package manager called Entropy. This is something I don’t understand, they include two widely different package managers in a single distribution, and recommend you just use one or the other…

Anyway, I loaded up Entropy GUI and tried to locate my most commonly used software. First load took forever, though I am sure this was due to it loading the entire database from the server, and being hampered by the live system. Then I searched for a few packages, and I am not sure what to make of it. First, they package naming scheme is probably way more different than from what I am used to, so I will not hold t hat against them, but I still got an impression that any search phrase including any commonly used word will result in a wide variety of hits. E.g. I searched for Gnome DO and probably got every package for GNOME listed, and I could not figure out how they were sorted. When I tried to sort by application, which I presumed was application name, it grouped them together with some strange headlines. I didn’t spend much time figuring out, and it is probably simple once you know what it tries to do, but it was not self explanatory.

Second negative thing for me, which is probably totally unfounded, but still at the back of my mind, is that the install media is 1.2 GB. This, to me, translates to a ton of preinstalled crap I do not want. While looking through the software selection I saw that several browsers are installed, which I don’t really approve of. I am more of the 1 app per task mindset, and large install medias really sets me sceptical at first boot.

In summary, I will not try Sabayon, mostly because of my previous experiences with it have left me scared of using Portage. Secondly, I really don’t like the fact that there are two different package manager on the system. I feel like that really isn’t such a good idea, at least not using both of them interchangeably. But at the same time people have said allot of positive things about Sabayon, so I am sure they are doing something right, which really makes me want to give it a spin…

Also, Spotify works perfectly under Linux with Ubuntu / Debian or Fedora / Mandriva / OpenSuSE for now. Or you can always use Crossover or Wine. Check out http://www.spotify.com/no/download/previews/ for more details

So true

I don’t know about others, but I sure recognize my self in this…

Gaming has essentially moved away from being the lone gamer, sitting in a dark basement, to being the lone gamer, sitting in a dark basement talking with people from all over the world, yelling out obscenities about the lag, the glitcher or more. The social aspect of gaming has grown so rapidly, though there aren’t many people noticing it, and more specifically, profit for it.This brings me to my project:

A while ago, there was a website called playstation3clans.com (and co.uk actually). The entire point of the website was a place where users could come, and join up in different clans, or where clans could go to advertise them self and try to get more members. However, the site, even though it drawed some attention, never really took off, but was fairly active with about 100 – 200 registered members, where 50 or so of them was more or less active visitors. The website was taken down a while ago, and I thought the concept was sound, but the community didn’t generate activity, which is crucial for the website. So I figured I would have a go at it, thus were psnclans.com born. The basic concept is the same, clans post to get recruits, and the users post to get noticed. However, I have a few incentives in place to get more activity, like front page placement for active posters clans (decided by monthly votes), and planning on expanding the concept to ladders and tournaments further down the line, if it ever were to take off.

So if you are like me, a gamer who really enjoys playing online with friends, talking BS over the microphone and just having a good time, take a few moments to sign up there, and try to help  kickstart the website. And the website is of course fully driven by Linux server, and other open source software, like phpBB3.

Hardware issues (?)

After an install, I went ahead with the usual procedure of setting up my WLAN USB dongle. What I usually have to do is to blacklist some modules so that the correct one are used. However, for some reason or another, Fedora is the other way around. My USB dongle does not work at all when I blacklist the wrong modules, but works perfectly with them loaded. All in all strange, but it didn’t take me long to figure out.

What was a bit more annoying was that I had to add a 3rd party repository for the nVidia proprietary driver. After some Googling and reading, I figured this was a trusted repository, but still was not the perfect solution for me. However, Fedora are one of the more “fundamental” distributions, where focus on using FOSS alternatives are much stronger and more dominant than in other distributions. I also figured out that my keyboard / mouse problems were more of an XFCE problem than an (X)ubuntu problem, as they persisted in Fedora. It might also be a problem with my hardware, as it comes and goes, and even changing batteries does not help at all.

Default desktop

Unlike Xubuntu, the default desktop of Fedora doesn’t look good at all in my eyes. So I went ahead, and tried making changes, only to hit a wall at each theme I tried from xfce-look.org.

Not pretty

What always happened was that the new theme was installed OK, but some applications would not follow the system theme for some reason. When I finally figured it most likely was a GTK problem, and checked the versions of the applications, I figured I would have to start finding alternative software. The problem was that Fedora 15 XFCE ships with allot of GNOME software as standard, and all of these use GTK3, while XFCE4 is still on GTK2.

Customizing the desktop

So, when my theme troubles were figured out and to some degree solved (there are 2 applications I can’t replace; networkmanager and PackageKit), I started customizing my desktop. I ended up with using my standard icon theme, Aw0ken Icon Theme by alecive, and Greybird theme by The Shimmer Project (yes, it is the default Xubuntu theme, and yes, I like it). Unfortunately, the version I downloaded of the Greybird theme does not include GTK3 theme, however, it supposedly do include this now.

Customized desktop

PackageKit

As Fedora has started using the official GNOME Package manager GUI, PackageKit, this is the default for the XFCE spin as well. Of course, most people well versed in Fedora use the command line tool, yum, however I am still not used to Fedora package naming scheme, so I still need a GUI for finding and install packages. Unfortunately, PackageKit is probably one of the slowest package managers I have ever used. Additionally, it has some strange quirks, as being unable to find any packages after first launch, cause the repositories are not refreshed. This also happens later on, so if you at first don’t succeed, try refreshing repositories and search again.

PackageKit

Another thing I reacted to was the fact that updating packages do not need root access. This at first scared me, as I was thinking “WTF, this has full access to my filesystem, and I don’t have to enter a password before it makes changes to it?”. But after reading some on it, I saw that this was actually a compromise from Fedora 14, where you could install ANY signed package WITHOUT root access! I am not sure if I like the way this is heading, but with the rate of upgrades being released in Fedora, it is sure nice to not having to type in my password each time I update my computer.

My impressions

After using Fedora for a few weeks, I am actually very impressed with it. It is easy to use, easy to configure and stable. However, there are some annoyances, like the several GNOME applications needing to be replaced from a default install, and the freakishly slow GUI for the package manager. Also, for some reason Firefox defaults to using nautilus as a file manager, instead of Thunar. This is annyoing when you don’t have a GTK3 capable theme, as nautilus 3.0.1 is installed by default. However, if you can look pass these few annoyances, Fedora is definitely a keeper.

Some might say that the differences are hugy, cause GNOME Shell use metacity, while Unity use Compiz, but really, down to the nitty gritty, what is the difference. First off, both GNOME Shell and Unity use the expo when mouse hits top left part of the screen. Secondly, both use application search, rather than menus. Only difference is that GNOME Shell still use the application grouping in their menu, if you can call it that.

Note the picture above, of Ubuntu’s Unity. Note the application searching and side bar for quick launch and open windows. This is basically the exact same as the picture below, just a different look.

While it really doesn’t matter to me the whole who copied who thing, but it does matter to me because I first did not like Unity, only to find out that GNOME is heading pretty much the same way. While GNOME Fallback mode is an option, I found that simple options like changing theme is not there. In fact, only thing I could customize on my desktop was my background. I did not really look into it, but for me that has always been one of the reasons I liked GNOME, and the way it was easy to combine themes.GNOME fallback is not “classic” GNOME.

Well, this just sealed my future with XFCE, I really hope they don’t do anything drastic like this. To me, both Unity and GNOME Shell are trying to solve a problem I don’t really have, and in the process removing everything I liked about them (GNOME and Ubuntu). And with Fedora, Xubuntu, OpenSUSE, Arch Linux, several Slackware based  distributions, Mandriva and Mageia all have their XFCE spins the choice is pretty much the same it already have been.