Second Day of Tinkering
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form" -- Genesis 1:1–2
It's the second day after I have installed ubuntu 18.10 on my laptop. I shared with you how the installation process went and what are the 16 things that I did after installation in the previous post. The milieu is still not inhabitable and I am up for some more tweaking. For the time being, I am keeping the Yaru community theme and the Yaru flat icon set, which are the default theme and icon set in ubuntu 18.10. The theme and the icon set both are very beautiful. When I decide to change the theme, I shall talk about other themes and icon sets that I love. Although I kept the default theme, I have reduced the dock icon size to 40 points, due to the small screen size of my laptop. The default 48 point icons are more suited for a 15.4 inch or larger display. In a 14 inch display 40 point icon looks more crisper.
A terminal is the soul of Linux. Linux addicts spends most of their times on a terminal. The default colour scheme of terminal in ubuntu 18.10 is called Tango; it's basically white text on dark background with no transparency. The default is nice, but being a Matrix fan, I like green on black more. So, I changed the colour scheme to green on black and added a little bit of transparency to the background. Then, I installed a program called cmatrix (see the .gif). You can install it from the cosmic-universe using the following command:
sudo apt install cmatrix
To make this .gif image I installed Peek, which is a slick app available in the software centre to record screen-casts. It can directly save the screen-cast in optimised .gif images. If making .gif images interests you, you may follow this thread to find out more about several other choices with more customisation options.
Once upon a time, even before unity, when there was gnome 2, gnome was very flexible. With the added complexity, day by day, most of the configuration options gnome were restricted. However, there are ways to change it beyond recognition. The dconf Editor provides a graphical user interface (GUI) to tweak gnome. It can mess up with your system real bad, though! So, be careful when you use it. The program itself gives a warning, when it is launched. Lo! don't be afraid to use it, though. After-all, if we don't mess up a bit, how would we learn. It won't probably break a system beyond repair.
I installed it to activate the click-to-minimize option in Dock. Unity had this kind of feature and it was a little bit more convenient than gnome. It was minimize-or-overview kind of action where the overview gave the overview of the windows of the same application (same window class). In here, if we choose minimize-or-overview, click either minimizes or gives an overview of all the open windows. I set the current value to minimize. There are several other options one can try.
For last few releases of ubuntu, the click on login screen (GDM) has been disabled by default. This dconf Editor maybe used to activate click on log in screen. However, it is required to be run as gdm user and with root privileges (sudo). To do that, you need to run the following command from a terminal:
sudo -u gdm dconf-editor
And then go to the desktop > peripherals > touchpad > tap-to-click and enable it.
So much to add a little convenience! Now it's time to explore the gnome shell extensions for more conveniences. This post was supposed to be specifically on gnome shell extensions, but I kept on meandering. Shell extensions can unleash the true power of gnome shell. They can be directly installed from a browser (both Mozilla Firefox or Chromium). Extensions can be installed from the App Store, as well. The following are the gnome shell extensions that I find very useful (indispensable maybe) in my day to day activities. These are NOT listed in any specific order.
So, these are the gnome shell extensions, I have installed so far. Please comment and tell me about the extensions you are using. I would be delighted to explore more amazing gnome shell extensions.
And the earth was without form" -- Genesis 1:1–2
It's the second day after I have installed ubuntu 18.10 on my laptop. I shared with you how the installation process went and what are the 16 things that I did after installation in the previous post. The milieu is still not inhabitable and I am up for some more tweaking. For the time being, I am keeping the Yaru community theme and the Yaru flat icon set, which are the default theme and icon set in ubuntu 18.10. The theme and the icon set both are very beautiful. When I decide to change the theme, I shall talk about other themes and icon sets that I love. Although I kept the default theme, I have reduced the dock icon size to 40 points, due to the small screen size of my laptop. The default 48 point icons are more suited for a 15.4 inch or larger display. In a 14 inch display 40 point icon looks more crisper.
A terminal is the soul of Linux. Linux addicts spends most of their times on a terminal. The default colour scheme of terminal in ubuntu 18.10 is called Tango; it's basically white text on dark background with no transparency. The default is nice, but being a Matrix fan, I like green on black more. So, I changed the colour scheme to green on black and added a little bit of transparency to the background. Then, I installed a program called cmatrix (see the .gif). You can install it from the cosmic-universe using the following command:
sudo apt install cmatrix
Once upon a time, even before unity, when there was gnome 2, gnome was very flexible. With the added complexity, day by day, most of the configuration options gnome were restricted. However, there are ways to change it beyond recognition. The dconf Editor provides a graphical user interface (GUI) to tweak gnome. It can mess up with your system real bad, though! So, be careful when you use it. The program itself gives a warning, when it is launched. Lo! don't be afraid to use it, though. After-all, if we don't mess up a bit, how would we learn. It won't probably break a system beyond repair.
I installed it to activate the click-to-minimize option in Dock. Unity had this kind of feature and it was a little bit more convenient than gnome. It was minimize-or-overview kind of action where the overview gave the overview of the windows of the same application (same window class). In here, if we choose minimize-or-overview, click either minimizes or gives an overview of all the open windows. I set the current value to minimize. There are several other options one can try.
For last few releases of ubuntu, the click on login screen (GDM) has been disabled by default. This dconf Editor maybe used to activate click on log in screen. However, it is required to be run as gdm user and with root privileges (sudo). To do that, you need to run the following command from a terminal:
sudo -u gdm dconf-editor
And then go to the desktop > peripherals > touchpad > tap-to-click and enable it.
So much to add a little convenience! Now it's time to explore the gnome shell extensions for more conveniences. This post was supposed to be specifically on gnome shell extensions, but I kept on meandering. Shell extensions can unleash the true power of gnome shell. They can be directly installed from a browser (both Mozilla Firefox or Chromium). Extensions can be installed from the App Store, as well. The following are the gnome shell extensions that I find very useful (indispensable maybe) in my day to day activities. These are NOT listed in any specific order.
- Clipboard Indicator. It adds menu in the top panel to access the clipboard history. By default it provides a preview of 15 copied items. One can selectively delete some entries, delete all entries and switch on the private mode to prevent the logging of copied materials for some time.
- OpenWeather. A nice and elegant weather applet. It has a choice of different unit styles and you can customise the position on panel as well.
- Caffeine. Prevents sleep, even when the computer is idle, as caffeine is supposed to do.
- Coverflow Alt-Tab. Adds a nice coverflow animation while cycling through open windows using Alt+Tab or Super+Tab.
- EasyScreenCast. This screen cast extension is amazing. Some times ago, it was possibly the only app that worked on Wayland sessions. It can record an area, a window or a desktop. It even has multi monitor support. It can also record audio from any selected channel. Another honourable mention for recording a short screencast is the default keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R.
- Emoji Selector. ubuntu 18.10 comes with colour Emoji support and there is a program called gnome Characters installed by default that gives you a Emoji palette. However, I think a drop-down menu in the panel offers more convenience. The search option is also better than the gnome Characters.
- Applications Overview Tooltip. Shows the full name and description of Apps on mouse over on App Spread. Useful when the first part of the App names of two or more Apps are similar.
- Appfolders Management extension. Group Apps into App folder.
- Disconnect WiFi. It does not turn off the WiFi; simply disconnects it. You can also reconnect
- Audio Switcher. You can choose the audio input and output devices from right below theThere are some apps on these but I am not sure which one is the best. I have not tested all of them.
- Hide Top Bar. Gives you more screen space and useful for a small screens. However, it causes a small overlap of Top Bar with Dock on the top right corner of the screen. To avoid this overlap you can reduce the length of Dock using dconf Editor. Just go to org > gnome> shell > extensions> dash-to-dock and then toggle off the extend-height option.
- Drop Down Terminal. I miss this amazing extension. It is not working in 18.10. I still installed it hoping that future updates shall fix it.
- Duolingo Status. If you are using Duolingo, this extension is a must. Contrary to the black and white icons, it adds a coloured icon to the panel. The red owl logo turns to green when you complete the daily goal. It also shows your daily XP, streak and the levels.
- GSConnect. Not perfect but a very good initiative. You can remote control your laptop using mobile phone. Similarly, the mobile can be controlled (sending text etc) from the desktop.
- Time ++. A time management app. It integrates with Pomodoro, a time management program available in cosmic universe. Also provides stopwatch, alarm clock and to-do list.
- Todo.txt. A simple to do list manager.
So, these are the gnome shell extensions, I have installed so far. Please comment and tell me about the extensions you are using. I would be delighted to explore more amazing gnome shell extensions.
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| A GIF of Coverflow Alt-Tab made with EasyScreenCast and Peek |
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