Running on Gnome

After my debacle with xorg the other day you’d think I’d leave fiddling with stuff alone for a while. Oh no, not me. On a whim I decided to start using the Gnome Desktop Environment. You see if I want to become some sort of GNU/Linux advocate, then the people I will end up helping will more than likely be using Ubuntu and therefore most probably Gnome. So I’d better properly get to grok it. I’m going to try and use Gnome applications rather than KDE based ones too.

I’m no stranger to Gnome, I used to use it way back when I used Mandrake and installed Ximian Gnome. I just haven’t used it to any great extent for a number of years.

The Gripes

One of the reasons I’ve been using KDE pretty much exclusively for ages is that whenever I’d try out Gnome there woul be one or two annoying gripes. I’d try and make myself solve them but sometimes it’s easier to just go with something that works and that’s what I had with KDE. So off back there I’d go making a mental note to return to Gnome and sort out the problems. Well here they are:

1. Fonts.

More to the point, fonts in Firefox. On KDE they’d look fine and dandy, in Gnome they’d look jaggy and horrible. I played with the Gnome font settings and I just couldn’t solve the problem. So, since I’m giving Gnome a proper go, time to go off Googling. I eventually found this page which describes the settings in ~/.fonts.config. After digesting and editing, success. My fonts now look a lot better. I wouldn’t say perfect so more fiddling required but difinitely better.

I also found this page useful. It details stuff about Xorg, Fonts and DPI.

2. The Clipboard

I love a recoverable clipboard history and I used Klipper in KDE a lot. I didn’t know of a Gnome alternative but now I’ve found one in Glipper. It more or less does the same job as Klipper.

3. Nautilus

Nautilus, the file manager for the Gnome desktop is actually quite cool. There’s a big but here though, it’s slooooowwwwww. Loading the contents of say /usr/bin where there are thousands of files can take what seem like an eternity. There are a few tweaks like turning off file counting etc but it’s still too slow. So I’ve installed Thunar, fast and responsive with a good start up time and directory load time. Well, yes it does. I’ve still got Nautilus if needed but Thunar can be my default file manager.

4. IDE

I’ve been using a combination of Kate and Krusader to edit/save files locally and remotely and it’s been OK. However, since I’m on this Gnome quest I thought I’d better look for an alternative. I did some reading up and it turns out that Gedit the default Gnome text editor, is a lot more powerful than it looks at first sight. Through a series of plugins I now have it looking and feeling really good and I love the file browser with the ability to open and edit remote files.

5. The Gnome Panel

I just don’t like it compared to KDE’s I’ve just decided I’m stuck with it and I can’t be bothered patching stuff to get a mac-esque looing panel.

Boat Burning

As a side effect of setting up Gnome I somehow seem to have destroyed my KDE menu. I have no idea how but it doesn’t seem to matter really. It’ll just make me hang around in Gnome for a while longer I suppose.

Here’s my Gnome desktop taken just now. I run a screen mode of 2880×900 spread over two monitors, so the grab is a bit wide.