Linux in the Future

If anyone has read my profile, I claim to be "an escaped test monkey from the future". It's not too far off, but the truth is I'm not from the future. I've been thinking for a while about the "Year of Linux". Quite frankly, I think we missed it. There were articles in the late 90's that the future of computers was not in a boring office, but rather in the dynamic corner of the home known as the "living room". Both Microsoft and Apple took a shot at conquering your living room, but it didn't work. I think Apple still has the itv thing, but I have never seen one in anyone's living room. The strange thing is that Linux pulled a Houdini on us all. I signed up for a cable subscription, and suddenly Linux was in my "living room". Not only did it suddenly show up, but it managed to attach itself to my first true love, my television. Now i know it is only Linux in an embedded form, in my DVR, but Linux all the same. There are a new generation of televisions on the market that have all the capabilities of a DVR already built in to them. So that means even more linux devices will be out there. Now since we have all of the troops already in the trojan horse, maybe its time to spring the trap. In the very near future I see a new network emerging that will give us an ability to connect all of these devices, and use them right from our desktops. How awesome would it be to start a pot of coffee right from your desktop. Manage your DVR, from anywhere. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I know that there are techno geeks that would love more options in there lives. Our current main focus maybe desktop computing, but I have a feeling that new devices and appliances will be the inroad for linux dominance.

What should a GUI look like?

I've spent the last few days thinking about what a gui should look like. I stated before that i would really like to create my own GUI (graphical user interface). I can't think of anything that really sticks out as being a must have function. I have thought seriously about how HP have designed the MIE. In my opinion MIE is great for media browsing. I can totally see a desktop running MIE at a party and having my friends browse my music collection, and seeing pictures of my family, but I don't know so much about having my emails exposed like that. Not that I have anything to hide, but it's just a bit wierd. So i was thinking about a GUI with multiple panes, but with different functionality, have a pane for Media, one for Business, etc. Unlike the MIE though I would really want the user to have options. I feel very confined by MIE when I'm testing my themes. I have the MIE installed ontop of Ubuntu 9.04, and one of the things that I like, is that i don't always have to use it. Other times I just have to have it on, but the choise is there. So I definitely want to give that option to the user, even if you have it on, and you just feel like using the traditional desktop, you will have the option. That's about all I have to say on the matter. I would be really interested in what your ideal GUI looks like.

On a side note I installed Linux Mint on my Desktop, I never use my desktop, but i wanted to see what all the hooplaah was all about. Needless to say i think they have a really nice looking theme. So you guessed it, I'm going to butcher it. I haven't received request for any of my themes, which sucks a bit, but I guess everyone is happy with the MIE as is. Oh well. It'll be a passion project. Hopefully I'll have something by next week.

How to: Change Your Mini MIE Theme

Well it has been a very fun weekend for me, but it's finished. After a few minutes of playing with my Mini MIE VM I'm done. I like gdebi, but you can do this however you want. My intent when i started the theming project was to try to make themes that just worked. Unfortunately things don't work out as planned all the time. HP Mini MIE user hold "Alt+F2" and get your hands on that command line. Type "xterm", and here we go.

1) sudo apt-get install gdebi

2) Go here and get gtk-theme-switch 2, the dependencies are already met, so just get the i386 version at the bottom there. There was a message about the same package already in repos, but I wanted to stay away from the repos if i could, but try it if you like.

3) untar your new theme to /usr/share/themes/

4) Thanks to this guy we get "gtk-theme-switch2 /usr/share/themes/YOURTHEMEHERE" no quotes.

5) Now type "gconf-editor" go to apps->metacity->general. Scroll down to the theme option, double click, and type the name of the theme here. In my example "Tam_MIE".

That's it changing the theme is complete. I know its a little involved, but it really is not bad at all. Especially if you're just going to change it once in a while.

It looks pretty funny, but my display could only go be at its lowest resolution. Again I didn't really care to make the VM look good. Well i hope someone finds it helpful, it really was alot of fun for me, I didn't know what the HECK I was doing. Again if anyone is interested feel free to email me for your copy of a theme.

Running HP Mini MIE Inside VirtualBox

As I posted a while back I am very new to all of this stuff, but I try. After a long night, I managed to kind of get HP Mini MIE installed in VirtualBox. If you'd like to get as far as i got, this is how I did it. Needed is the newest VirtualBox, the HP Mini MIE .img file, a USB drive (not sure whats recommended mine is 4GB), and Imagewriter. Sorry if i don't add links to it all, but I'm tired. Make sure you can mount USB into VirtualBox, System>Administration>Users and Groups, highlight your profile, and click unlock. Click Properties, then go to Privileges Tab. Scroll to the bottom, and make sure "Use Virtualbox" is checked.

1) Use Imagewriter to get the .img onto your USB

2) Use "VBoxManage convertfromraw -format VDI dennis-stable-install-usb-gm-1.img MiniMIE.vdi" no quotes of course. This makes your .img VirtualBox ready.

3) Start VirtualBox, and make your new Virtual Machine. Make a primary master partition (Used 8GB), and add MiniMIE.vdi as a primary slave.

4) Start your new Machine, make sure to hit F12 and select boot from Primary Slave , option 2. Also under Devices>USB>Select Your USB. This will mount your USB into the VirtualMachine. Watch the install happen.

After it installs things get weird. I think it has to do with the whole lpia thing. I don't rightly know, but anyways I would appreciate any help anyone could give. This whole adventure is to try and see if the "gnome-appearance-properties" command works on the HP Mini MIE. If you have better luck with your attempt please let me know where i went wrong.

UPDATE: Xorg needs to be tweaked, but I made some ground check out my screenshot.

UPDATE2: Ok I kind of know whats going on, but I don't know how to fix it. My Virtual Machine does not see a network connection, and I can't "Install Guest Additions" because i can't apt-get dependencies, there are a few. My xserver is runnung but in a limited space. If anyone could send some tips my way it would be greatly appreciated. I'm pretty sure my wife has contacted a divorce lawyer by now, just kidding, but I'm desperate to get this darn thing conected to the net. So i can apt-get "break my system".

UPDATE3: Ok i have network connection! Even after an update i was unable to get the video and sound working, but that doesn't matter to me. I used the "pcnet32.ko" from Ubuntu Remix to get my wifi installed. "depmod -ae pcnet32.ko" and then edited /etc/modules with a "pcnet32" entry. rebooted, and wifi came to life. I'm sure you could do something similar for both video and sound, but thats not my concern. I went through all this troble to try and figure out a solution for installing alternate themes. It was alot of fun, Oh BTW happy fathers day to you all.

Tam MIE

I've been browsing the Internet for any information I might be able to find on accessing "gnome-appearance-properties", but I haven't heard back on wether or not this command can be executed in a store bought HP Mini MIE. I was contemplating changing the title of my blog, but after much consideration i will not. The themes should work just fine on the HP Mini MIE when someone figures out just how to access the "Appearance" option. So all I'm doing is getting things ready. So I'm very sorry for any false hope i might have caused, and believe me if I had an HP Mini MIE I'd have it all figured out. But until then my work will continue on themes.

Any how, here we go... HP put together a beautiful little netbook called the HP Mini "Vivienne Tam" Edition. Believe you me if i had the cash to spare I'd scoop this up for my daughter or my wife. However for some crazy reason unbeknown to anyone on earth, HP decided that there is no such thing as a "chic geek". Well i beg to differ i know for a fact there are ladies out there with plenty of style and intelligence, so without further ado, here is my theme for the "Ladies of Linux". Based on the "Vivienne Tam" wallpaper,and the color on the case of the Netbook, the "Tam MIE" theme is a array of brilliant and vibrant colors. I hope someone likes it, I've been using it all week, and to be honest it's grown on me. I also took a screenshot of moovida standing in for elisa. For those of you who don't know its the same software just different name. If anyone is interested in this one please let me know. For those people using the store bought HP Mini MIE I will continue to scour the internet for a solution.

A Set Back

Well it looks like I have managed to break the most reliable operating system. Just goes to prove that I can do just about anything. I was trying to use the "Ubuntu Customization Kit" to try and create a disk with Harbour Launcher on it to test out the themes, and I totally fudged it. In the process i rendered my Ubuntu install useless, and after i reinstalled everything, my Harbour Launcher was really really slow. So now i have a dilema. I hate when I do this, my last set up was totally awesome. Well I'm going to try and fix it, but this was totally my fault. I do have something in the works for a theme. Hopefully if i can get past this hick-up I'll have it by weeks end.

UPDATE: A bit of a blessing in disguise. Ok first of all I forgot to install my Nvidia driver, so that was the problem with my crawling Elisa. Of course i didn't find out until i had already upgraded to Moovida. For those of us running a patched up Mini MIE, let me say Moovida works. The one thing that i found in my 2 minutes of playing around was that if you accidentally close Moovida, Harbour Launcher can not restart it, so you'll have to drag ur mouse over to the application menu at click on Moovida again. Not a big deal if you ask me, but other than that, i was still able to use all other operation as normal. I also found that playing music on it no longer takes up 50 percent of my system resources. If i collapse the window it takes up about 15 percent. A big improvement. Any ways just thought someone might be interested.

UPDATE 2: Well I've been contacted by a reader, and was asked some questions that i did not foresee being a problem. Apparently there is not Appearance Option Under Preferences on the HP Mini MIE. I know that there are some options that are hidden, i dont know if this is one of them, but if a command line can be accessed try using this command without quote "gnome-appearance-properties". Or try doing Alt-F2 and execute the command from there. Sorry I wasn't aware of Appearance not being present as an option, and not having access to the Mini I really wouldn't know how to even change the theme. I am sure that there is a way to access Appearance, but I wouldn't know where to begin. If a solution does not come up soon, I'll make sure to rename my blog. If anyone has any information that would prove helpful, please post or contact me.

HP BLUE MIE

Here it is peeps, my theme based on something blue. This is "Glassy-Bleu" GIMPed blue. There are just a few little things that I'll be changing in the near future, but it's close enough to being complete. Some stuff just didn;t translate well to blue. I don't have any way of distributing the files i have worked on, but if anyone would like to have these files, please feel free to let me know.

One more small step for "THEMEKIND"

I know that everyone might get tired of my strange postings, but what can I say, I get excited easily. Using glade, i was able to do something simple, like switch the position of the desktop items around. Just search for "harbour-launcher.glade" in your filesystem. Make sure to create a backup of the original, just in case something goes wrong. I'm going try build a new UI, but baby steps come first.

Ferrari MIE

Well everyone I was doing some muddling around on the internet and i found a downloadable copy of my original "Ferrari MIE" theme. I'll have to reconstruct this one properly since I destroyed it in my reinstall. But that's for an in the future project. Next up will be a blue theme based on an HP wallpaper i found on the net. After that i was thinking of a red one for use on the "Vivienne Tam" edition Mini. I don't know why HP wouldn't offer a red theme for it, but i guess that's the way the cookie crumbles. I did briefly look into how the interface works, but no luck as of yet on how to actually move desktop objects around. I'm sure it's out there somewhere.

Aqua Dreams MIE

I know I said the end of the week, but I wasn't counting on Francois from Zgegblog to get back to me so soon. My thanks to him for having the time to burn, and giving me permission to butcher his beautiful creation. Also thanks to everyone that submits "How To's" on the GIMP website. I am very new to anything having to do with art, but I try. Thank you also to the poor lonely HP developer who designed the interface, it is really nice, but it can't be dark all the time. Let's get to it though. I took the original "Aqua Dreams" wallpaper and GIMPed it with a opaque rectangle, just to give some horizontal segmentation. I did use the original HP MIE media buttons for inspiration on a new set of media buttons. Some people might not like them, but i wanted to bring some of those nice blue colors to this end of the desktop. There are some conflicts in the way that the slider bar is created. I know that its in the original "Aqua Dreams" .rc file, but to be honest I can live with it. I did not change anything with elisa because i rarely access it. Also I didn't change the original launch bar, again i thought the blue just fit. Please let me know what you think, my hope is to get the .rc files cleaned up, the folders zipped and ready to give out to anyone brave enough to copy them in. Until then if you have any questions, or comments, please feel free to write. I will forewarn that Francois has requested I let him see the finished product, so there may be some tweaking done before i zip. On a bit of a side note, I had to reinstall Ubuntu 9.04 after the "Ferrari MIE" fiasco. I'm not sure why I had problems, but I installed "Harbour Launcher" using as many of the packages in synaptic as possible. So far everything with working just fine.