Some questions and tips

["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=smb://
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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