Hi! On Thu, 2011-04-07 at 17:12 +1000, Basil Chupin wrote:
I just installed 11.4 with the gnome DE on a test-bed to see what it is like in anticipation of using gnome 3 (which my current distro, Ubuntu, will not be adopting).
I installed 11.4 from the DVD, and it is the 32-bit version. (The installation is a stock-standard installation with all the latest upgrades as of a few hours ago.)
I have 5 questions which I would be pleased to have answered:
(1) I like to have a totally clean workspace/desktop and therefore put all the icons for the apps. I use on the top/bottom panels. In 11.4 I have done this for all the apps, I normally run except that the icons for TRASH and the HOME directory which cannot be deleted/moved to trash - the option is greyed out on the drop down menu. How does one get rid of these icons so as to have a totally clean workspace/desktop?
Though there is no "dedicated GUI" way to do this, it can still be done by opening the application "gconf-editor" and then turning some check-boxes off in the apps/nautilus/desktop directory. Expand "apps", then nautilus, and finally select "desktop" on the left-hand pane. On the right-hand pane you should see the options, such as, "home_icon_visible". Tick them off.
(2) I use Mozilla Thunderbird (and Firefox). While there is the normal icon showing for Firefox there is no such icon for Thunderbird - all one is given is a blank 'page' as the icon. How does one get the appropriate icon for Thunderbird - which, by default in other distros, is automatically shown when one installs Thunderbird? (BTW, searching for, and finally finding such an icon in icons/hicolor/apps/48x48/ and selecting it does zilch, nothing, zero.)
I believe this is an outcome of bug 680533 which we have just submitted a fix for. You can execute the following command from the terminal to set things right as far as missing icons for applications go #sudo gtk-update-icon-cache "/usr/share/icons/hicolor" and that should solve matters.
(3) I wanted to change the background for the desktop. I went to download a couple I liked from the website - but the damn images were blurred and unrecognisable when installed as the desktop background! What the....? How does one get a new backgrounds to be usable?
I just did that, and it works for me. The workflow from the click on the "Get more backgrounds online" is the following:- I. Choose the background you like, and the resolution for that from the drop-down box and hit on the "go" button. II. You should a large wallpaper III. Right click on the wallpaper and select "Set as background" Doing this saves pretty wallpapers as my desktop background in the full glory of hi-res.
(4) I have always set things up so that I have 6 desktops/workspaces - and I know which one I use for which application. For example, space #1 for Thunderbird, space #2 for Firefox, et al. Just before posting this message I had TB running in its usual workspace #1. There was a message in TB which had an URL link (in this mail list as a matter of fact mentioning the availability of gnome #3), clicked on the link and waited for FF to open -- but nothing happened. As usual I went to space #2 to look at FF - but there was nothing there!
I won't go thru all the "variations on a theme" about this and what I tried but what I can state is that I had just prior to all this decided to try out the Desktop Effects (Control Center/Desktop Effects).
With the Effects activated and starting Firefox in space #2 OVERWROTE Thunderbird which was started in space #1. Whatever you seem to start in a different workspace ends up in space #1.
Deselecting Desktop Effects stops this nonsense.
But this of course is not normal and the question therefore is: what haven't I installed/not configured so as to cause this ridiculous behaviour?
This could be a bug with compiz ("desktop-effects"), please look at bugzilla.novell.com and see if a report already exists regarding this or file a new one if you can reproduce this consistently.
(5) Is there an option, which I am not aware of, in openSUSE's update manager/software manager which will automatically select the best server for any upgrades/updates from one of my local mirrors? Downloading files from the (?)main server is a PITA -- the transfer rate is less than dial-up speed (although files from Packman came down at a most reasonable speed)?
openSUSE's Mirror Brain, which redirects download requests to a server best-suited to the requesting client automatically should do this. There is no option turned off by default that should prevent this from happening if you are using the default repo url's (ie. http://download.opensuse.org/*) and not mirrors directly. So it might be that the server you are being redirected to is having problems with speed etc. Hope that helps. -- Atri -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-gnome+help@opensuse.org