Back to five years ago, when I first started my blog, many of my articles were just translated from the English articles.

After five years’ writing, I have a lot of my own thoughts, so most articles were written by me. A friend told me that it’s time to translate my articles back to English, to share with the people over the world.

So, here’s the first article not about Ubuntu Tweak. I don’t have a good written English yet, but I will improve. Just point out the grammar/word mistake, thanks!

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As a long time Ubuntu user (about 5 years), I’m really happy to see that the release of Ubuntu 11.04. This is really a big jump! Unity is an innovation desktop shell which brings a lot of advantages to make the desktop life much more easier!

And I’m also a Mac OS X user, Unity has many concepts like OS X, such as “Application Menu”(or Global Menu) and Launcher (Dock). So I’d like to compare Unity with OS X, to see which design is better.

The first post, I will talk about the bad of application menu in Unity.

The application menu is first appeared in Mac OS. It can save the vertical screen space, and user can always reach the menu even they don’t watch it (if it can be consider as a feature).

The bad is: there will only be one menu showed in the panel, you have to click and focus the other application, then can click its menu, one more step then typical desktop (Windows, GNOME, KDE etc).

Is that all? No!

Application menu is not about saving screen space, it’s about a consistent way to access the application feature.

Let’s start from Pidgin and its shortcuts.

As you know, Pidgin has two kinds of window: one is buddies window, which you can choose who to chat. The other one is conversation window, this is the window which you can have the real conversation with your buddies.

Each window has its menu,when the conversation window is activated, the application menu will look like this:

So it’s the Pidgin’s main menu when the buddies window is focused.

“What’s wrong with that? It just works!”

You don’t get the point. Let’s see another screenshot, the Adium in Mac OS X.

Adium is an open-source IM application which shares the same protocol library from Pidgin (libpurple). In Mac OS X, application menu is associated with application, not window.

So no matter which the current focus window(conversation window or buddies window), the application menu will always be the only one.

See the highlight item: Quit Adium, I can always use the shortcuts (CMD+Q) to close the Adium, even when I’m chatting with my buddies in the conversation window.

But in Pidgin (also Empathy), I have to do an extra step: 1. use “Ctrl+W” to close the conversation window, or “Alt+Tab” switch to buddies window. 2. use “Ctrl+Q” to close the application.

If you don’t use shortcuts, it is much more inconvenience: 1. move mouse to click to focus the buddies window, 2. move mouse to application menu and click “Buddies” and “Quit”. Really a big mouse movement!

In the classical desktop, you just need to find the Pidgin buddies window, then click the menu.

I hope you understand my words. So here’s my conclusion.

As I said before: Application menu is not about saving screen space, it’s about a consistent way to access the application feature.

It means, I can do everything with the current application through application menu, just because it’s “application”. How can it be “application menu” if it is only show window menu?

I know most applications do not have multi-windows with different menus, so they just work with Unity’s application menu.

But Pidgin/Empathy/GIMP(2.6) are all frequent used multi-window applications, they need to be changed as a real application menu application to make the desktop experience more comfortable.

Of course, the best solution is to provide an API to set the real aplication menu, like the way AppIndicator does.

There’s much more work that Unity has to do, I hope the developers will focus on how to solve bugs and make desktop more consistent, not always focus on new features.

As an application developers, I found it is more important to provide a standard set of API then always hack on the source code.

Only three days after Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.0′s release, it has been downloads for 10,000 times!

You can see the DownloadCount here. And the number is still increase.

I’ve made some mistakes so that some people can’t use Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.0, now the problem is solved so if you have any problem with Ubuntu Tweak, Please update from the repository.

Okay, at this post, I want to know the frist thing after you install Ubuntu.

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First I tell you what is the first thing after we Chinese people do after install Ubuntu. The thing isn’t install Ubuntu Tweak, it’s edit the sources.list.

Yes, the sources.list by default isn’t suitable for us, because the source is slow to connect and update. We need to edit it to use our own source, so the update of Ubuntu will be fast.

What’s purpose I ask you this question? Because I want to add a feature to edit sources.list easily.

My idea is:

1. Recommend the best source to users(according users’ language), users can simply finish editing the source by just select and confirm.
2. Provide a text view to let users freely edit the sources.list, they won’t need to run: sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list.
3. When finish editing the source, users can invoke the Update Manager to continue system’s update.

Do you need this feature? No matter what, I’m always doing the same step after I install Ubuntu. So are other Chinese people.

So, if you need this feature, and you need to use a source that doesn’t included in the Ubuntu’s Update Manager. Please post your country(or language code, such as en_US) with your sources here, so that I can collect them together.

This feature will be added in the Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.1, if things goes well, it will be released soon!

Metacity is a compositing manager in Hardy now. But Compiz Fusion is turn on under Hardy by default if your hardware support. Now there’s another way to enjoy the Compositing feature, fast and simple.

First, make sure that Compiz Fusion is turn off in your hardy.

Open “System”->” Preferences”->”Appearance”->”Visual Effects”, and select “None”.

Then press “Alt + F2 ” or open the Terminal, type: gconf-editor to open the Configuration Editor.

Find the key: /apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager, then turn on.

The metacity is a compositing manager now! You can see the shadow of the windows and menu.

If you press Alt+Tab, you’ll see the screen like this:

And you can run some application like Avant Window Navigator without Compiz, that’s the power of Compositing!

Pagico is an Organizer Software, it has a lot of amazing features. I just can’t list them all, if you interested of it, please visit here.

Today, there’s a good news. Pagico is finally working on both Feisty and Gutsy of all architecture(i386 or amd64)!

the first stable release of Pagico for Ubuntu is available!

I’ve posted Pagico to gnomefiles,  and here is the homepage: http://www.pagico.com/linux/

Hope you’ll like it!

Services of Ubuntu itself

The first application of services control is “System”->”Administrator”->”Services”:

Although it can control the main services(totaly 23 services), but the services and startup-scripts in my system’s number is 93(/etc/init.d/)! Among them there are 35 items in the runlevel-2(/etc/rc2.d).

How can I use “Services” to control a service such as Tor? I’ve no idea.

bootup-manager

bootup-manager(bum) is another tool for controlling system services.

It is better than “Services” , because it found the Tor, the Vboxnet and so on.

But it is also not complete.

rcconf

It seems that the bum is the GUI interface of rcconf. I found there are almost the same.

So…I think bum is better than rcconf, just because it’s GUI tool.

sysv-rc-conf

It is really a good tools! You can use it to control almost all services, and you can change the runlevel of them whatever you like.

But the problem is: it is based on the command line and text mode, has few help information. It’s hard to normal user and beginner. Isn’t it?

If it has more information of every service, I think it will be better.

At the end, I have a idea.If there is a GUI interface of the sysv-rc-conf with a lot information/help of every service, it may be fit for beginners.