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Showing posts from August, 2008

Gimp 2.6 Promises

Gimp has so many usability issues and GIMP team is going to address some of them in 2.6 version. Gimp 2.6 will have only one menu bar One of the primary usability issue that confuses newbies is two global menu bars (One in tools palette & second one in image window). Now Gimp is going to get rid of tools palette menu bar and display only one menu bar in image window. So image window is always open and its background defaults to gray if there is no image in use. GEGL support Current implementation of GEGL is going to pave a way for future CYMK support. CYMK is important for professionals to accurately print images with exact colors. This is not much important for web developers & home users and they can live without CYMK. Dockable dialogs Another much awaited GUI improvement. This is really useful to people who switch between different tool dialogs. There are many more improvements to Gimp 2.6 and lets see whether its going to be interesting to use.

Useless Use of Kill -9

Are you using "kill -9" to kill process ? kill -9 won't allow processes to execute cleanup code before terminating them. And remember this when writing shell scripts. Complete article on Useless use of kill -9

xmonad - Tile Window Manager

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xmonad is one of the tiling window manager available for screen space conscious people. Moving mouse on a large screen or multi head setup is pretty time consuming and tiling window managers offer you a choice between keyboard or mouse. Here is the guide on how to install xmonad and how to use it. We will also get to know little bit about other tiling window managers too. Installing xmonad Latest version of xmonad is available right out of Ubuntu universe repository. Execute following command to install xmonad and other little application launching utility called dmenu. sudo apt-get -y install xmonad dwm-tools Restart your current session or logout of current session and re-login with xmonad selected. You will see an empty desktop & stop banging that keyboard thinking something went wrong. Read remaining post before continuing. Terms Most of the tiling window managers have concepts like Master Pane, Tile Pane, Layout, Workspace, Frames. Frame Frame contains nothi...

Run Compiz on Blacklisted Hardware

Are you using unstable video driver ?, Do you have older hardware which is not properly supported ?. If this is the case then the chances are that your hardware is blacklisted by compiz. But compiz provides a nifty way to skip these checks. Execute following command to start compiz without black list checks. SKIP_CHECKS=yes compiz Another way is adding following option to ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager file. SKIP_CHECKS=yes

Running "rm -fr /"

Kamel Icons - Icon Theme

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Download "Kamel Icons" icon theme from Gnome Look.

Red Icons - Icon Theme

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Download "Red Icons" icon theme from Gnome Look.

Evolvotron - Evolutionary Art on Ubuntu

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Evolvotron is a random image generator using algorithmetic mutations. It sometimes generates stunning pattens, textures and inspirational art. Above image generated using evolvotron in just couple of mutations. And its available as a wallpaper for download at Gnome-look . A tip for beginners is to start with a tile that has lot of variations. Installation Evolvotron is available in Ubuntu universal repository and use following command to install it. sudo apt-get -y install evolvotron Usage Check out help menu to get info on keyboard shortcuts and command line options.