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cool stuff for ubuntu?

post #1 of 4
9/22/06 at 7:37am
Thread Starter 
hey,
i have been using ubuntu for a while now and i was wondering where can i get some cool stuff for it to make it a little less boring?
i saw in some screenshots that some people have this cool sidebar on the desktop that shows system information, clocks, cpu usage, fans speeds, memory usage and other cool stuff. should i get this thing? and where do i get it?
another thing, i saw something that make all your desktop act like water, for example, when u move a window it distorts it self and u can also strech it and cool stuff. will my GMA 950 handle it? how can i get it? and should i get it?
what other stuff do u use on your system to make it look cool and be more handy?

thanks,
Nadav.
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post #2 of 4
9/22/06 at 10:27am
The only two desktop things I use are a weather applet for gdesklets (I had to search the net for it as it's not in the default install) and the conky monitor. If you want to use conky, don't use the one in the repos because it needs a bunch of hacks to work properly. I had to compile the newest version for amd64.

The water desktop effect looks terrible, imo. I'd install Edgy and mess with aigxl/compiz instead.
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post #3 of 4
9/22/06 at 5:54pm
to get the widgets on your screen you need gdesklets.

to get the wobble and cube and all those effects you gotta install xgl/compiz but its pretty unstable at this point so highly not recommended.

as always, feel free to install custom icons, gtk themes, wallpapers, gdm themes, and so forth to spice it up a bit
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post #4 of 4
11/9/06 at 2:52pm
My list of cool stuff for Linux

- XGL+Beryl for the ultimate 3D desktop eyecandy
- xwinwrap for setting the OpenGL screensavers to be the desktop background
- deskbar-applet - search and launch anything, like Quicksilver on a Mac sort of
- gDesklets - applets and widgets
- gKrellM - kind of a sidebar monitoring tool
- beagle - my favorite desktop search tool
- xen - run virtual machines, probably best to go with SuSE for this since it is pre-installed, easy to set up
- Wine or Crossover Office to run those pesky windows Office apps
- CISCO linux vpn client (well, need it for work)
- F-spot - nice photo management tool
- Fluxbox/Blackbox - sweet ultra low resource window manager, also BB4win is the windows version
- Scite text editor, Gvim editor, Cream (easy Vi)
- Eterm - transparent terminals (maybe something newer and better out there, I've been using this for years)
- Ruby and Python scripting languages...can't decide which I like better, but I hate, hate, hate perl
- firestarter - an OK frontend to iptables firewall rules (no firewalls rules enabled by default in Ubuntu)
- VMware workstation or player for running or testing other OS's, works with more stuff than Xen
- Automatix2 - easy, consolidated front end to download all those proprietary formats and libraries for MP3, DVD, AAC, etc.
- gnome-look.org: great site for themes, icons, wallpapers, and whatnot for Gnome

What I really miss is Textmate, the best text editor I've used in a while. No windows or Linux versions will be made.
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