I've discovered a few things since I've been using Linux: one is that I can completely change the look and feel of my desktop environment with a couple of clicks of the mouse; I can do the same more easily if I'm not sure quite what I want by dropping into the command line; there are (literally) dozens of themes for each of the desktop environments I choose to run; there are many packages that will get what I want done, without having to shell out more than what I paid for my commercial OS, whether it's Tiger or XP; the only limits on my computing experience is my own imagination.
First, the look and feel of my desktop can be changed as simply as control-alt-backspace; this logs me out, and allows me to choose a new desktop environment. I'm getting kind of tired of using GNOME all the time, and I want something a bit zippier. I could go to the Synaptic Package Manager and do it all through the GUI, but since I'm not sure exactly what I want, I open a terminal and type the following:
sudo apt-cache search fluxbox
, because I want to know what I need to install to get fluxbox as my window manager. This command searches the entire eighteen thousand (or so) packages available to Ubuntu users and lists them, all accompanied by a short description.
I run the command, and I get the following response:
alltray - Dock any program into the system tray
backstep - Draws icons for minimized windows on your desktop
bbmail - Mail notifier for Blackbox/Fluxbox
bbpager - Pager for the blackbox and fluxbox window managers
bbrun - An elegant tool for the Blackbox window manager that runs commands
bbtime - Time tool for the blackbox/fluxbox window managers
fbdesk - desktop icons for fluxbox window manager
fbpager - a pager application for the Fluxbox window manager
fluxbox - Highly configurable and low resource X11 Window manager
fluxconf - FluxBox configuration utility
gsetroot - a C/Gtk-based front-end for Esetroot
kdocker - minimize all applications to system tray
pekwm - Fast & Light WindowManager
I'm not interested in pekwm (right now), mail, Esetroot (whatever that is), a time tool, or a dock(er), so I type the following:
sudo apt-get install fbdesk fbpager fluxbox fluxconf
and hit return. The system calculates what other packages it will need to install to support those (the dependencies) then tells me what they are, and asks if it should install them with a simple y/n. I click y, then the system downloads all the packages, compiles them, and I hit control-alt-backspace, go down to the bottom right corner of the login screen, click options, and choose 'change session'. Now I have a new choice: fluxbox.
I click on fluxbox, and then enter my username and password, and the system then asks me if I want to use this as the default environment, or only this one time. I choose one time, as I'm new to fluxbox. I start up in fluxbox, and after playing around for a while, surfing the web, figuring out how to do some things, I log back out and get back into GNOME. Fluxbox is really nice, but as it's so new, I need to learn more how to configure it, which I'll do at some point in the near future.
I head over to teh Google, and enter fluxbox +themes, and am brought to this page. I browse through all the things that they have to offer (quite a lot, in fact), downloading some, and mentally bookmarking others for future reference.
I then head over to the fluxbox wiki and look how to install my new themes. Seems a popular thing to do, so it's one of the easiest things to find.
I quit firefox, control-alt-backspace again, get back into fluxbox, and install my new themes. I spend a total of about twenty minutes from the time I typed
sudo apt-cache search fluxbox
until I'm in fluxbox with a fully configured (at least for now) desktop environment. There's much more I can do to customize it, and I will, but that's enough for now.
If I want to burn an ISO file in Tiger, I can use the built-in Disk Utility, or if I'm using XP, I can get a freeware equivalent; but what if I want to do something other than that? Well, at least in the case of Tiger, I have to shell out the extra bucks to buy something like Roxio's Toast. In Linux, I just head over to Synaptic, or in this case (again) because I'm not sure what exactly I want, the command line, to apt-cache search for something suitable. I find it, download it, it's integrated in my system, and there will never be an 'upgrade charge' or such nonsense, and it will always work on the system that I have now. No need to buy new hardware to run the latest and greatest version of it.
I'm so new to Linux, that it's still (after six months) hard to wrap my mind around the completely different paradigm. It's like I'm at the entrance of a vast, sparkling warehouse that stretches on beyond the range of vision, and the possibilities of what I can do with computer, and how I can configure it, are solely a matter of how many steps I take into the warehouse.
It's exciting, but it's also a bit scary, as I've always been used to the one choice handed down to me from on high; I've always been satisfied with that, up until the recent past. Why I switched I'd like to go into in a subsequent post, as it's complex enough to fill another diary.
I've just opened up another (yet another) blog, so that if I want to post more than once a day I can. I may start cross-posting, once I get my head on straight.
Here's some an interesting Linux vid; fluxbox, running on Ubuntu: