I’ve recently covered some essential Ubuntu 11.04 tweaks, as the new Unity interface has rocked a number of boats with its radical changes. If you missed them, you can read Essential Ubuntu 11.04 Tweaks and More Essential Ubuntu 11.04 Tweaks.
In keeping with the generic and boring post title naming scheme, I present to you: Other Essential Ubuntu 11.04 Tweaks:
Add LibreOffice to the AppMenu
Linux terminal
sudo apt-get install lo-menubar
For whatever reason, LibreOffice isn’t part of the AppMenu, which is completely inconsistent with how Unity functions. I would imagine this will be corrected in future releases of LibreOffice, but this is a nice tweak to make everything consistent, now. If it doesn’t take your first try, “remove” instead of “install” and try it again.
Display Time and Weather in Your Panel
Linux terminal
sudo apt-get install indicator-weather
Install Weather Indicator from the official Ubuntu 11.04 repositories. Once you have it installed, just run it from Dash.
Fix: “The package is of bad quality”
Linux terminal
sudo dpkg -i PACKAGENAME.deb
If you’re getting this error, you can fight back with .dep using DPKG!
Downsize Dash
Linux terminal
gsettings set com.canonical.Unity form-factor "Desktop"
If you have a big enough resolution (1366×768), you make Dash smaller. If you don’t like it, you can switch it back!
Linux terminal
gsettings set com.canonical.Unity form-factor "Automatic"
Add “Show Desktop” to Your Unity Launcher
Linux terminal
sudo apt-get install wmctrl
cd
wget http://webupd8.googlecode.com/files/showdesktop.tar.gz
tar -xvf showdesktop.tar.gz && rm showdesktop.tar.gz
sudo mv showdesktop /usr/local/bin/
Run the command, then you can go to your home folder, drag and drop “showdesktop.desktop” on your Unity launcher. If you don’t want it on your launcher, just run the command and you can use SUPER + D to show and hide your desktop!
Bring Back the SysTray Notification Area
Linux terminal
gsettings set com.canonical.Unity form-factor "Automatic"
This will enable it for all your applications. After running the command, log out and then back in, again.
Important: if AppIndicators stop working or you can’t enable the systray using the above command (it seems that sometimes changing this via command line fails), see: How To Re-Enable The Notification Area (Systray) In Ubuntu 11.04, For All Applications and try to only whitelist a few applications.
Remove AppMenu (GlobalMenu)
Linux terminal
sudo apt-get remove appmenu-gtk indicator-applet-appmenu indicator-appmenu
Again, log out and then log back in, again. This will, however, remove the ubuntu-desktop meta package.
Hide External Devices / Mounted Partitions from Unity Launcher
Linux terminal
gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Devices devices-option "Never"
That’ll get rid of them.
There have been an unusual amount of critiques and complaints about the latest Ubuntu release. But, there are plenty of good steps forward. So, instead of giving-up entirely on the new Unity interface, I hope you were able to take care of some of those things that may be annoying you.
What kind of tweaks have you made in 11.04?
[via WEBUPD8]
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