How-To: Use KWin in MATE

KWin in MATE

If you've read any of my reviews over the last several months, you'll know that I've bemoaned the effective death of Compiz. (I guess it's more like in a vegetative state: technically it still exists, but it doesn't actually work.) Since then, I've accepted the fact that for my next distribution upgrade, unless I come to the point of being comfortable with KDE and all of its applications, I will likely stick with MATE or Xfce in conjunction with Devilspie or a similar program for improved window management. That said, out of curiosity, I wanted to see if it would be possible to use KWin with MATE or Xfce, because KWin is even more powerful than Compiz in actual window management, and it comes with the same level of eye candy. Plus, KWin, being an integral part of KDE, is likely to be maintained and developed well for the foreseeable future. Indeed, I found several tutorials explaining how to combine Xfce with KWin. However, there were none for MATE, so that's what this article is. This was tested on a Linux Mint 17 "Qiana" MATE live USB made with UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see how it's done (in this distribution — other distributions may name their packages differently).

How-To: Make Xfce Like Unity

This is more or less the sequel to this post. It came about because I wanted to see if it would be easy to make Xfce look like Apple's Mac OS X; I figured that Unity looks similar enough, so I might as well write about that. Follow the jump to see how to do it. I would have added more pictures if I had more time, but I'm heading back to campus tomorrow, so I can only make this a quick post in the meantime.

FOLLOW-UP: How-To: Get My Desktop with MATE in Ubuntu

Desktop Cube + Chromium + Marlin + Gloobus-Preview

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post here about how to replicate my current desktop setup (Linux Mint 9 LTS "Isadora" GNOME) with MATE in Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot". The two things I complained about were the malfunctioning Compiz desktop cube effect and the ugly dark panel using the Zukitwo GTK+ theme. Well, I am happy to report that both of those issues are fixed. As before, I did this by using an Ubuntu MATE Remix live USB session made with MultiSystem, and before I did any of the other things I installed the necessary packages to allow for the use of other GTK+ themes as mentioned in the previous post about this.

I was able to fix the first issue by following the instructions set out comment #32 on this article. There were just two changes to these instructions that I needed to make. The first was to insert "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libgnome-menu2" just before the line "sudo dpkg install *.deb". The second was to change that line "sudo dpkg install *.deb" to "sudo dpkg -i *.deb" (because "dpkg install" did not work for me but "dpkg -i" did for some reason). After following the rest of the instructions, I was able to install and use Compiz and Emerald as I do on a daily basis on my installed system with no issues of the desktop cube flashing or anything like that, and I was able to use all the other important things that worked even in the newer version discussed before too (like the ability of Compiz to open certain applications on specific workspaces by default). This is all thanks to using Compiz 0.8.6 rather than the latest version. Yay!

Marlin + Linux Mint Menu + Pluma

I was able to fix the second issue by not using the Zukitwo GTK+ theme but instead using the Greybird GTK+ theme that is the default in Xubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot". Because I would use that version of Xubuntu frequently as a live USB in order to run VirtualBox to install other distributions in a VM, I had to interact with that theme a lot, and I happen to like it quite a bit. It is a modified version of the Elementary GTK+ theme, and it retains the smooth, slick, gray, inoffensive look of the original while making the scrollbars normal (instead of ultra-thin). Plus, the panel is dark, yet there is no part of the panel that looks ugly like it did with Zukitwo. I was able to install this theme by issuing the commands "sudo add-apt-repository ppa:shimmerproject/ppa" and "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install greybird-themes" into the terminal in that order. I was then able to change the theme settings to use that theme, and because Greybird has GTK2 and GTK3 themes both native MATE applications as well as Marlin (which I installed on the side as discussed in the previous post about this) looked quite good. Plus, because the dark panel actually looks nice, it did not require any further modification, so I didn't have to edit the gtkrc or create a "~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini" file as before, which is comforting. The only thing that the PPA seemed to lack (which was weird, because this was promised as being part of the full package too) was the Greybird window decoration theme for Emerald, so I went to the website of the project that created the Greybird theme, downloaded and opened the TAR.GZ archive and extracted only the Emerald theme package to a different folder. I then used the Emerald Theme Manager to locate and use that theme, and the desktop became complete.

And now, I truly do have my old desktop back. The only remaining problem is that Gloobus-Preview claims to be crashing a lot, but I haven't seen an actual crash yet, so I will just ignore those crash dialogs just as with Marlin or the Linux Mint Menu. Other than that, I do not have much else to say besides the fact that I am in all probability just going to install Linux Mint 13 LTS "Maya" GNOME/MATE (yes, apparently "Maya" is the official codename now) and follow these instructions. Also, given that I am using an older version of Compiz, I would probably have to use the Synaptic Package Manager to lock the installed versions of Compiz and Emerald to prevent any upgrades. This should not be an issue because I already have a few packages locked on my installed system, and that was easy to do and I haven't had any troubles with those packages since then. Awesome!

How-To: Get My Desktop with MATE in Ubuntu

Installing MATE Patches

Finally, the busiest part of my week is over, and I have time to write this. Anyway, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" is getting ever closer to its final release, and that means Linux Mint 13 LTS "M[...]a" will be released soon afterwards as well. That version of Linux Mint will ship with the GNOME 3/Cinnamon and MATE DEs. I haven't tried Cinnamon for myself yet, so I will reserve judgment until later, but from what I can see, it looks like a pretty nice way to have a Linux Mint-style GNOME 2 interface in GNOME 3.

That said, there is always the possibility that I will not be able to get used to Cinnamon. In that case, I have essentially been exploring a contingency plan in the form of customizing MATE to act as closely as possible to my current GNOME 2 desktop on Linux Mint 9 LTS "Isadora", and I would like to share that here. Follow the jump to see what I did. I did this all in the live USB session of an Ubuntu remix made as a MATE live session.

How-To: Make KDE Like Unity

I was going to do a review of PC-BSD, but unfortunately, that didn't work out (more on that later), so I'm doing this instead, though I had planned this for next week.

Vanilla KDE

Many months ago, I did a post on how to make KDE look more like Elementary OS. It was just one way of showcasing KDE's power and customizability. Now, I'm doing the same with regard to the Unity UI present in recent versions of Ubuntu. I know that a lot of people online have expressed displeasure with Unity along with the intention to use KDE instead. But what if you like the Unity UI but want the other features of KDE as well? Then this article is for you.

If you are using Kubuntu, this post is technically moot, because it is possible to use all of Unity 2D under KDE in Kubuntu without any issues; that is because Unity 2D is made with the Qt libraries, which also underlie KDE, so there's some compatibility there as far as I can tell. If you aren't using anything Ubuntu-based, though, then you're out of luck in terms of trying to use Unity 2D, so this is for you. I did this using a Chakra 2011.12 "Edn" live USB, so all my instructions will be based on that. If you are using another distribution, you may have to search online to see how some steps are done. Follow the jump to do it.

How-To: Make KDE Elementary

This post has been a long time coming. Unfortunately, I got quite busy near the end of this past semester, so I could neither publish this nor put a respin ISO file out there (which is originally what I wanted to do, but once again I quickly got too busy).

Configuring Panels

Basically, the reason for me writing is because most similar tutorials have focused on GNOME and Xfce as the base DEs. I haven't seen any using KDE as the base DE, which is a shame considering how customizable KDE is.

The distribution I used to write this tutorial was Linux Mint 10 "Julia" KDE, but this can probably be done easily with any distribution that packages KDE well, though your mileage may vary. Follow the jump to see what to do. Most of these steps can be done in any order, though if a particular set of steps must be done in a certain order, I will try to make that as clear as possible.

How-To: Remaster Debian 6 "Squeeze"

There are a couple of qualifications to "Debian". In fact, this isn't really a general guide for Debian itself, but it's more for Linux Mint "Debian". In any case, because Linux Mint "Debian" is pointed towards the Testing repositories by default, for standard Debian, the procedure will still be similar anyway.
I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know that the latest versions of Fresh OS are up on my SourceForge site. Yay! These are the download links (for Traditional, Elementary, and Light), and I am also going to link to the project wiki as well. I'm still working on the wiki, so please be patient. In any case, I strongly recommend that you try it out (and if you're especially bold, install it (though be warned that the installer is the Remastersys installer which isn't very consistent), and please let me know what you think either in this blog's comments or in a review on the project's SourceForge page. Thanks!
So this post is just going to be about how I did it. Follow the jump to read more (and to see screenshots of the finished product).

FOLLOW-UP: How-To: Make a Multiboot Live USB Stick

In the post "How-To: Make a Multiboot Live USB Stick", there are major enough errors to fix and changes to be made that I have made this a separate follow-up post.
The hardware is the same. However, the OSs in question have changed.
The smaller change is the removal of PartedMagic from the multiboot combination. I did not want to have to deal with extended partitions, and I figure that on-the-fly creations of live CDs for people in need (to keep) would be more effective anyway.
The larger change is the removal of PCLinuxOS 2009.2. As it seems, PCLinuxOS (as well as its parent distribution, Mandriva) refuses to work on a multiboot live USB (though it will work fine as the sole live OS on a USB stick). After installing more OSs, PCLinuxOS will give an error message that looks like, "This is not a bootable floppy. [emphasis is mine] Please try again."
Basically, your USB stick is apparently now a floppy disk according to PCLinuxOS. I knew then that sticking to that OS would not work.
I searched long and hard for a good KDE-based distribution that would turn on new users and work very well, and I came upon Sabayon Linux.

The following will be a sort of mini-review of Sabayon 5 KDE, the version I installed live to the USB stick.
Sabayon is based on Gentoo Linux, which requires users to compile the source packages frequently (at least once per use). This is not for the faint of heart, but many people enjoy it for the same reason that many car enthusiasts like manual transmissions (which are slowly fading away). This used to be a defining feature in many Linux distributions but has since been basically done away with, so Gentoo has kept it to please the users and to retain the super-bleeding-edge status of the OS.
Sabayon does not require this; it is thus more like a conventional Linux distribution, but it still retains the bleeding-edge codebase of Gentoo. This means that there are a lot of new cool and heavily tested features, making for a great OS experience.
Sabayon 5 KDE comes with a plethora of amazing applications. First, unlike many KDE distributions, Sabayon comes with Firefox and OpenOffice.Org (instead of Konqueror and KOffice) by default and integrates both applications very nicely. Second, it offers a great selection of games, and it even has real game demos like those for World of Goo, and it supports games like America's Army and Wolfenstein. Finally, it is built for media centers. It has a lot of powerful applications like XBMC to manage even the most complex media centers. The final statement (about media centers) is from my reading, not from my experience (as I don't operate a PC media center).
In addition to this, Sabayon 5 KDE implements KDE 4.3 in the best way that I've seen yet. It actually comes with the Desktop folder applet out of the box so as not to confuse new users. The Plasma panel actually works stably without crashing, as do the Plasma widgets too. Finally, the other KDE applications seem to work as intended without a hitch. The whole desktop experience really looks polished and stable, something that I can't say about other implementations of KDE 4.3.
The biggest downside to Sabayon 5 KDE is the relatively demanding set of system requirements. Even the newest (non-purposefully tiny, as in TinyCore or DSLinux) Linux distributions can support computers over 8 years old without sacrificing performance or the features that make them ahead of the (non-Linux) pack. Sabayon 5 KDE doesn't have as much of an advantage, as it requires at least 512 MB of RAM and 10 GB of hard drive space (along with a decent graphics card) to be installed and run well. Furthermore, the boot time is rather long even after installation.

This resumes the talk about the multiboot live USB. Again, this must be done in a Linux system. The partitioning scheme should be two 1 GB and one 2.6 GB ext3 partitions (for the OSs) and one 3.3 GB FAT32 partition (for storage). One can do this in GParted as described in the original post.
Successively install (and test, as described in the original post) Linux Mint 7 "Gloria" Xfce and Sabayon 5 KDE into, respectively, the 1.0 GB partition and the 2.6 GB partition through UNetBootin as described in the previous post.
After these have been tested and are determined to work, download to the desktop the Fedora 11 "Leonidas" GNOME ISO image. Burn the image to a CD but do not do anything to the original image (on the desktop) otherwise. That step is crucial!
Boot into the Fedora 11 live CD, and after logging in, go to "Add/Remove Programs" and search for, check, and apply "livecd-tools" or something like that. After that is all done, open a terminal window and navigate (through commands like "cd" and "ls -l") to the folder (on the original Linux desktop) where the ISO image is.
After this navigation, type into the (still-open) terminal the command

su -c "livecd-iso-to-disk /dev/live /dev/USBDEVICENAME"

where "USBDEVICENAME" is the name of the device and partition (e.g. "sdf2"). To confirm the partition number, type into the terminal (before typing the previous command)

su -c "fdisk -l"

.
Congratulations, you have successfully made a tri-boot live USB drive with room to spare for storage!

How-To: Make a Multiboot Live USB Stick

This is something that I wanted to do for a while to show those interested what Linux is like on the fly. However, I only finished this yesterday.
The USB stick in question is an 8 GB Sandisk Cruzer Micro.
The distributions used are PCLinuxOS 2009.2 (KDE), Fedora 11 (GNOME), Linux Mint 7 (Xfce), and the latest version of PartedMagic. These are the only distributions I've successfully put on a multiboot live USB stick, so I'll only talk about how to create this step.
In terms of setup before the actual live USB creation process, a few steps must be taken. As far as I know, due to Windows only recognizing FAT and NTFS partitions, the steps I used will only work on Linux. My preferred partition editor is GParted. Also, if you don't have UNetBootin, get it beforehand. Finally, make sure that your computer has a CD-RW drive and that you have spare empty CD-R/CD-RWs.
The first distribution to add is PCLinuxOS.
If there are any existing partitions, remove and replace them with a single FAT32 primary partition covering the entire disk.
Next, download the PCLinuxOS 2009.2 KDE ISO image from the Internet and burn the image to (not on) the CD-R/CD-RW. (If, after this step, the disk is ejected, reinsert it but close any autorun dialogs.)
Next restart the computer and (if necessary, reconfigure the BIOS to) boot from the live CD (that is, the CD with the PCLinuxOS image on it).
After that is all done, go to the PCLinuxOS main menu and click on "Make Live USB". Please make sure that the correct USB stick is being written to (you can check this as root in Terminal through the command "fdisk -l" and determining which USB stick with its free space correctly corresponds to your stick, if you know what I mean).
Restart the computer and, after modifying the BIOS to boot from the USB stick, make sure that the live USB works properly.
If it does, it is time to move on. (Revert the BIOS to boot from the hard disk drive.) If not, make sure that you followed all of the steps listed here in the given order.
To prepare for the remaining distributions, in GParted, trim the primary FAT32 partition with PCLinuxOS on it until there is about 100-150 MB of free space left on that partition. Fill the remaining unallocated space with an extended partition. Finally, fill this extended partition with 2 logical FAT32 partitions of size 850 MB (each), another logical FAT32 partition of size 400 MB, and a logical FAT32 partition that takes up the remainder of the extended partition.
The second, third, and fourth distributions are Fedora, Linux Mint, and PartedMagic. Download all of these respective ISO images from the Internet, and use UNetBootin and the "Disk Image" feature to write the images to the partitions. The Fedora and Linux Mint images should go separately in each of the 850 MB partitions, while the PartedMagic image should go in the 400 MB partition. UNetBootin recognizes partitions by disk drive name and number rather than by size, so to verify which partition is which, as root in Terminal type in "fdisk -l" to know which partition to write to in UNetBootin. After each write, verify that the live USB image works properly by booting from the USB. Each time a new image is written by UNetBootin to a partition, that partition is automatically flagged as bootable.
These steps will not allow you to select from all of the distributions which one to boot from (i.e. from a giant GRUB menu list upon booting). You much change which distribution to boot from manually in GParted by modifying the "boot" flag.
If you followed all of these steps and it all works, you should be good to go! If not, please leave a comment!