Vote for my Brainstorm Idea

Vote for my idea (#9626) on Ubuntu brainstorm! I think all developers will agree with me on this one, how great would it be if launchpad had a way for your users to donate money to your project? It already allows them to donate time, code, and expertise. Three is a crowd, make it a party and add money to that list.

Using gmail as the default email on Ubuntu, done right!

If you're like me, you love gMail. If you could, you would marry it. I would anyway.. A big pet peeve of mine in Ubuntu has been when I click a mailto:// links, Evolution would open up instead of the system just somehow knowing that I use gMail and taking me there. As some of you know, I'm also in love with Gnome-Do, it's a messy love triangle but it's getting cleaner thanks to this script. This little hack allows you to use the built in Gnome-do Email function with gMail. I initially stole this from the How-to Geek, but it did not fit my needs exactly. I'm posting it here so that everyone can benefit from my changes. In its current state a la how-to geek, you need to decide if you want to open a new firefox window, or a tab, you cannot do both. I love tabs, and despise multiple instances of the same program running, however with How-to geek's method, if you don't have FF open, the script throws an error and will not open firefox and gMail for you. This script is my fix for that. For the complete how to, please head to http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/set-gmail-as-default-mail-client-in-ubuntu/. They've done a great job, and I don't see any point in duplicating their efforts, so use their howto, but substitute my script for theirs.

 #!/bin/bash  function gmailinFF  {    firefox -remote "openurl(https://mail.google.com/mail?view=cm&tf=0&to=`echo $1 | sed 's/mailto://'`,new-tab)"  } RUNNING=`ps -e |grep firefox`  if [ -z RUNNING ]  then    firefox &    sleep 2    gmailinFF $1  else    gmailinFF $1  fi

C'est tout! I hope this helps someone..

Enabling Composite with Metacity in Ubuntu 8.04

One of the more exciting changes (for those of us who like eye candy and freedom) in Metacity 2.22 is the ability to use Metacity as a composite manager. This means that you can use cool stuff like Avant Window Navigator, or see the pretty version of Gnome-Do without running something like Compiz-Fusion. This is particularly exciting for me, because the compositing in metacity does not rely on GL extensions in graphics drivers. I personally value freedom over shine, so I have chosen to use the free radeon drivers vs. the proprietary fglrx ones that include AIGLX support. I know that on some cards the radeon driver supports AIGLX (better than fglrx does too), but my card is a goofy one, the Mobility Radeon x200m, and the radeon driver does not support 3d on my card. Here is how to enable metacity to run as the composite manager for your gnome desktop. I'm doing this on Ubuntu 8.04 (flock 6).

alex@hardy-test:~$ gconf-editor

In gconf-editor, go to apps > metacity > general and check "compositing_manager." C'est tout! You now have a composited desktop, without running Compiz! Enjoy, mes amis!