Some tips and questions

["Sandeep Khanna" <sandeep khanna villanova edu>]

Hi Everyone,

I am linux user, linux fan, developer, etc ;) I really like this OS very
much especially with the GNOME desktop. I used the KDE desktop some time
back and liked that too. Although, it has some good features, good integration
among applications, etc but, I simply love GNOME for various reasons.

Over the past few months I have been exclusively using Mandrake 8.2 + GNOME
1.4 and occasionally using Windows 2000 on the other partition for Microsoft
Money. I wish there was a Microsoft Money equivalent in Linux (I know about
GnuCash, but, it still has a lot to catch up with MS Money) or I could somehow
use MS Money in Linux (I tried Wine, and unfortunately if you have Win2K
your chances of running most of the apps are very bleak :(  )

After a long time of uneasyness and can't-wait-to-use-it feeling, I came
across Garnome which would let me use Gnome 2 without breaking my current
Gnome 1.4 setup. Great !  I downloaded the 0.12 tarball and installed it
on my Compaq 12XL125 AMD K6 533, Trident Video card with 8 Mb VRAM, 192
Mb, 30 Gb laptop.

My original goal was to be able to use something similar to Mac OS X (with
Anti-aliased fonts, good App integration, faster GUI, etc). I had got the
Anti-aliased font problem kindof solved using GdkXft with Gnome 1.4. It wasn't
the best, but satisfied my soft-GUI hunger for the moment.

The installation of Gnome 2 in my user directory was smooth as promised,
and I made some changes in the /etc/X11/wmsession.d/ directory as suggested
in this mailing list to have Gnome 2 as a Session item in the GDM login manager.
Did that fine. And, Voila !! I had Gnome 2 running right away.

My first impression was.....Aah, Antialiased fonts alas, cool ! I also realised
that somehow Mac OS X had a lot of influence on Gnome 2 (Menu Panel on top,
Anti-aliased fonts, simpler configuration utilities, etc) But, I had some
duplicate entries in the Main Application Menu and it's sub-menus. Also,
A common observation and complaint by me is that why is the GUI so slow in
responsiveness in Linux and that too especially on laptops.

Although, Everything was fine until I rebooted the
machine and logged in to my usual Gnome 1.4 first, and then relogin in to
Gnome 2. The bottom edge panel was missing !!, the battery applet occasionally
disappears, the weather applet had disappeared too. Menus were slower: the
higlight-focus was barely following the mouse in the menus ! After a while,
I managed to get the bottom edge panel by creating a new one. I also tried
changing the Window manager using the GConfd configuration editor,
but, it did not have any effect as Garnome (Gnome 2) kept on loading Sawfish
by default !

Also, How do I add more applications or general
stuff to Gnome 2 , like install an application and it shows up in the Gnome
2 menu?

Why can't Nautilus 1.0.6 display Authentication dialog for SMB shares/machines
on the network? Also, It would be great to have A Network-Neighbourhood icon
on the desktop that uses Nautilus for SMB browsing & sharing. 
I did that as follows:
sandeepk sandeepk ~/.gnome-desktop $ cat Network\ Neighborhood.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Network Neighbourhood
Type=X-nautilus-home
URL="">
X-Nautilus-Icon=gnome-gnomba.png
sandeepk sandeepk ~/.gnome-desktop $

There is no Sharing option in the Properties Menu of
folders in Garnome (Gnome 2) !!! which is there in Gnome 1.4

I have Mandrake 8.2 + Gnome 1.4 running on another desktop machine (Intel
P-II 333 Mhz, 192 Mb Ram, 4.3 Gb HDD, Matrox Millenium Graphics card with
8 Mb video memory) and with this inferior configuration in comparison
to my laptop, the GUI is a little more if not best, responsive on the desktop
!!! Why so?

Atleast with Gnome 1.4 the menus were a little more
responsiveness but, in Garnome (Gnome 2) they were dragging slow to follow
the mouse. Sawfish, Sawmill, etc.....these window-managers are really slow
in comparison to IceWM, XFce. In my current setup, I use Mandrake 8.2 + Gnome
1.4 with IceWM as the Window manager. It's the fastest I could get :) Also,
for having a slighty better GUI responsiveness, I changed my Video resolution
to use 16 bpp (thousands) instead of 32 bpp (true colour). You would definetely
see a performance improvement doing this.

The first day I saw Nautilus, I knew that this is the thing for Linux. It's
simply great ! Although, many people complain about it being slow in starting,
displaying stuff, and crashing often. 
To make your Nautilus experience faster, in the Nautilus preferences:

1. Disable the usage of smoother graphics in the Appearance section.
2. Disable all the tabs (U might leave the tree tab if you like) in the Sidebars Panels. Henceforth, no slowness and no crashes :)
3. Disable the "Show count of files in folders" option in Speed Tradeoffs section.
4. Disable "Show Text in Icons" option in Speed Tradeoffs section.

Try Nautilus now, u will be amazed at it's speed.
For those who do not use Nautilus to manage their desktop (so no Nautilus
icons, no Nautilus opened for Home directory), you can add the following
to your "bash_profile":
nautilus --no-default-window --no-desktop &
This keeps Nautilus loaded in the memory, so that any subsequent accesses
are honoured instantly :)

Galeon is one of the best browsers I have ever used. Fast as I.E., tabbed
as Netcaptor or Opera, etc. But, it could take some time to open up the first
time. So, the trick is to have Galeon loaded in the memory just like Nautilus
by adding the following to your "bash_profile":
galeon --server --server-timeout=0 &

Also, In general try using the default themes for Gnome and any other softwares
as I found that these really give a faster GUI experience as compared to
some of the other themes used.
Hope my experience helps the Linux community, and I too get some questions answered !

Thanks in advnace,
Sandeep Khanna




-- 
Sandeep Khanna
Professional Software Developer
Java, Linux, PHP, XML professional
BeyondBooks.com
Contact Number: 
(Home) 1-610-964-1320 
(Office) 1-610-832-0230 Ext (106) 
	

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