Gnome desktop overhaul guide

The Gnome desktop environment is pretty cool. It’s simple and solid. Unfortunately a default Gnome desktop is not very appealing to the eyes. We all come to the point where we wonder, “Can I make my Gnome desktop look super l33t?” And then when we see screenshots of awesome Gnome desktops, a burning desire flames up in our hearts. That’s how it was for me, anyways. So I set out to transform my desktop into something that looks cooler.

Wakoopa for Linux has arrived!

I just found this today, and I am overjoyed. Read about it here. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m sure it will be good, and even better as time goes on and they polish it up.

edit: I tried it, and it’s awesome. No problems at all so far, and it works just like the Windows tracker except for the lack of web tracking for now.

deck out your Windows XP, Linux style

I like Windows XP, mostly because I don’t have money to buy Vista. XP works alright, but after using Linux (Mint and Ubuntu) there are just a few really useful features that I miss. XP also looks pretty bad compared to newer operating systems. So here are some nice improvements I’ve found. These are best for people who use Linux as well as Windows, but most of these are useful even if you don’t use Linux.

unlock files/folders in Ubuntu

I’m running Ubuntu 9.04 now. It actually doesn’t crash every 20 minutes like 8.10 did for me (to this day I do not know why it did), so I’m happy. It was super easy to set up, but of course there are always those little problems you run into. One pesky annoyance was that when I moved my giant music/documents/videos/games folder from Windows over to Ubuntu, it was locked! That means I couldn’t delete, add, or move files within that folder and all subfolders.

Here’s the solution I found. Open a terminal and run this command: sudo chmod 777 [path] -R, where [path] is your locked folder or file. In my case I did sudo chmod 777 /home/fipi/Stuff -R, and viola, now I can delete, create, and move files to my heart’s content.

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