desktop

Your Server – The Boot Process

You want to isolate all your server features into background process. You don’t want any server features to be dependent on graphical or client side applications. I previously had my mail server dependent on the client side filtering capabilities of Thunderbird. This was a no no because it required me to maintain a desktop session. This was not optimal because during the day the desktop session was swapped to the hard drive and this caused substantial system lag when coming back to use the desktop. Now with VBoxTool, the web server is automatically booted with the host system, and all functions on the server are consolidated to background processes; there is no more dependency on client side filtering. The MythTV server also boots with the host, and the first screen the host encounters is the GDM login. Now the system is secure. Passwords are required to enter the system as a user.

Personal Cloud Computing From Your Own Server – EyeOS

EyeOS

EyeOS

EyeOS is a fully functional personal cloud desktop. Install it on your server, with or without mysql database support. The software supports flat file storage, so basically drag and drop the package, set a couple of file and folder permissions, walk through the administrator panel and your good to go with your own personal cloud computer. Best of all you are not paying any subscription fees. If you host your own server, there you go, and if you rent space, there you go too. In your browser remove the status bar from the bottom; which is most likely in the view tab. Then hit maximize and viola a fullscreen desktop anywhere you have a web browser. Frankly it works just fine for most things. Clearly its not going to run Windows applications, or Linux apps for that matter, but you can do the basics. Word processing, spreadheets and all that office goodness. FTP, and a web browser so you don’t have to leave your cloud desktop to search the net. I think the idea of a cload computer is excellent. Functionality is the most important thing, and it still feels like a desktop in your web browser is missing a couple of things. In time maybe the browser based desktop experience may feel more seamless, which hopefully is the primary goal of such projects.

Rock Your Desktop – Ubuntu, Windows, MAC, MythTV – Compiz Tweak Fest

Step 1 is to enlarge your desktop to have a couple of viewports. I figured I’ll go through it step by step including the easy ones. Here comes a few posts/howtos with screenies.

Open the Ubuntu preferences menu

Open the Ubuntu preferences menu

If you do not have the compiz config control panel install it with: sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager In the control panel select the general options button.

The general options button in the compiz config control panel

The general options button in the compiz config control panel

In this panel select the desktop size tab.

the desktop size tab in the compiz config control panel

the desktop size tab in the compiz config control panel

Three, four, five viewports. The sky is the limit. Obviously this is all dependent on a properly install video driver. You need adequate hardware being a powerful NVIDIA or ATI/AMD video card or embedded chipset. I recommend installing the up to date drivers, but it is easiest to just select your corresponding driver from the hardware drivers configuration menu.

The ubuntu hardware drivers control panel

The ubuntu hardware drivers control panel

In this control panel you can install the automatically detect drivers for your video hardware.

Select various hardware drivers

Select various hardware drivers

Compiz Auto Move a Window to Another Desktop – Viewport

When you boot your machine you want to open a variety of windows or applications on different desktops, but they only seem to open on the main desktop even with use of the place plugin. The place plugin in compiz works for a variety of applications but does not work for VirtualBox graphical windows. Wmctrl is another plugin that allows you to move windows to different locations on the desktop. For example, if your desktop is 1920 x 1080 you can move a window to the second desktop, in the x direction, by placing it to 1921. For example if you launch MythTV automatically on boot, and you want it on the second desktop use the following in a startup session script. Wmctrl is a package in the default Ubuntu repositories give it an apt-get to install. wmctrl -r "mythfrontend.real" -e 0,1921,0,1920,1080 There are a variety of option to wmctrl, use wmctrl --help for more info. This is how I move my Windows XP to another viewport: wmctrl -r "WindowsXP [Running] - Sun VirtualBox" -e 0,3841,0,1920,1080 In this case I move it to viewport 3.

Automatically Switch Your Desktop Wallpaper

I have my desktop wallpaper switching every minute. I think its cool, you may not, but this is how you can do it. Ubuntu repos have the wallpaper-tray app. Install with: sudo apt-get install wallpaper-tray Run on boot with a startup session. Viola.

Trash Icon on Desktop – Gnome

Using gconf-editor navigate to applications – nautilus – desktop. There are a couple of icons you can select to show on the desktop including “computer”, “home”, and “trash”.