Thank you Unity...

[K-Project]

Unity, in and of itself, is not too bad. But you can't help but look at it and compare it to Gnome 3/Shell, and wonder why they needed to do it. They are different in some ways, but far too similar in others. I just feel, considering the amount of energy they are putting into Unity, that it would have been better spent in the actual distro itself rather than the interface. I mean, look at this FFS. As a Kubuntu user I had no idea that Ubuntu had borked up such a fundamental part of using the OS. I'm shocked that after all their amazing work over the years, they dropped the ball on this and then still released it. I would have expected to see a tutorial of this nature in 2005, not 2012. Thank God for the sanity of Kubuntu, and I hope this problem doesn't trickle down to us.

Anyway, to me there is nothing about Gnome 3/Shell that they could not have tailored to their requirements to make it more uniquely "Ubuntu" imho. It's a lot of effort for what real gain?

[SteveRiley]

look at gnome-do it works ok on my Ubuntu-12.04 that uses the "classic gnome" log in insted of unity

Fall Back mode (what looks like GNOME 2) is going away in GNOME 3.8. Mostly because the requirement of having accelerated graphics will be dropped; Mutter (the GNOME window manager) will be extended to work with LLVM (which provides CPU-based compositing).

[james147]

look at gnome-do it works ok on my Ubuntu-12.04 that uses the "classic gnome" log in insted of unity ..... http://do.cooperteam.net/

VINNY

The problem is they are uni computers and I really don't feel like building it on them...

[vinnywright]

I have to pick from gnome3, unity and xfce on our uni computers and I hate them all... Can't say which I prefer though, I tend to be launching gnome3 at the moment but mostly because unity hates dual screens - it stops the mouse at the edge of the screen unless you move it fast enough which really messes with my work flow... You can probably turn it off... but I hate the way gnome3 and unity do configuration and can never find the option I am looking for...

Personally I miss krunner most of all from them, I can live with gnome if I have access to a decent runner.

look at gnome-do it works ok on my Ubuntu-12.04 that uses the "classic gnome" log in insted of unity ..... http://do.cooperteam.net/

VINNY

[pauly]

This may sound silly but have you tried...right click desktop add widget? lol

[james147]

I have to pick from gnome3, unity and xfce on our uni computers and I hate them all... Can't say which I prefer though, I tend to be launching gnome3 at the moment but mostly because unity hates dual screens - it stops the mouse at the edge of the screen unless you move it fast enough which really messes with my work flow... You can probably turn it off... but I hate the way gnome3 and unity do configuration and can never find the option I am looking for...

Personally I miss krunner most of all from them, I can live with gnome if I have access to a decent runner.

[kdeputer]

I just tried Unity or should say, I'm trying out the live version on a usb stick. I don't hate it. Does it get more annoying or something?

I thought I'd dislike it since I don't like bloated or high-resource desktop environments so I wasn't really fond of where they were all going. But, I found myself getting frustrated with xfce so I am planning on going back to kde. However, I used YUMI to have a multi-boot usb stick and Kubuntu 12.10, Mint 13 KDE and now Ubuntu are on it and all (each) boot up fine.

I just thought I'd try it (Ubuntu). My system seems fast and yes, there are some annoyances but I'm wondering what all the fuss is about. I think Gnome 3 is 100x worse. That DE is just an atrocity now. I thought Gnome2, MATE and Cinnamon aren't bad but Gnome3 I couldn't stand.

'Interesting that some users don't like Unity at all. It's not the best, imho, but far from the worst.

[Don B. Cilly]

htop ... within a plasmoid.

Hey, that would be good, a plasmoided htop. Know of one?
The way I got Glassmonitor working is just fine for me for the moment, see code below. It really fits the theme, and is minimal enough (for me).
It looks like this.
If I want to do some more work on it (the htop thing would be top I guess I'd better ask for advice in the programming session...

I never liked unity nor Gnome

I didn't mind Gnome... but then, as I said, I just could not get used to Unity, even though I had the time do do so. KDE, the more I use it, the more I love it.

[To check this code, get GlassMonitor and substitute the .theme within the .skz (with your favorite archive manager)]

################################################################
# Theme by	:	Diego Ghersi <vemecdos at gmail dot com>
# Website	:	http://www.biodesign.com.ar
#
# Theme name 	: GlassMonitor
# Theme Version	: 1.1 v
################################################################
#
#	KarambaDisplay settings
karamba x=100 y=100 w=243 h=720 interval=1000 locked=false
#	Font settings
defaultfont color=255,255,255 fontsize=9 font="Bitstream Vera Sans" shadow=1 bgcolor=0,0,0
#	Background and Image settings
image x=0 y=0 path="image/none.png" name="background"

################################################################
#	Karamba Body

# INFO SECCTION
<group> x=0 y=25
image x=21 y=24 path="image/backtittle.png" # INFOS Title
text x=121 y=0 sensor=program program="echo ${USER}@`hostname`" fontsize=15 align=center interval=3600000 # User name Line

text x=21 y=25 value="General" fontsize=14 align=left font="" #Info Tittle

text x=30 y=45 value="Kernel :" 				#
text x=100 y=45  sensor=program program="uname -r" interval=3600000	# Kernel Lines

text x=30 y=60 value="Machine :" 			#
text x=100 y=60 sensor=program program="uname -p" interval=3600000	# Machine Lines

text x=30 y=75 value="KDE / Qt :"								#
text x=172 y=75 value="/"									#
text x=100 y=75 sensor=program program="kde4-config --version | grep KDE | awk '{ print $2 }'" interval=3600000	#
text x=180 y=75 sensor=program program="kde4-config --version | grep Qt | awk '{ print $2 }'" interval=3600000	# KDE and QT version.

text x=30 y=90 value="Uptime :"								#
text x=100 y=90 sensor=uptime format="%d day(s)  %H h %M m" interval=60000		# UpTime Lines

#text x=30 y=105 value="Users :"				#
#text x=100 y=105 sensor=program program="users"		# User Line
</group>

# CPU and Memory SECCTION
<group> x=0 y=135
image x=21 y=0 path="image/backtittle.png" # CPU AND MEMORY Title
text x=21 y=0 value="CPU and Memory" fontsize=14 align=left font="" # CPU MEMORY Tittle

text x=30 y=25 sensor=program program="cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep 'model name' | sed -e 's/.*: //'" interval=120000	# CPU memory lines

graph x=32 y=43 w=150 h=33 sensor=cpu points=80 color=255,255,255 interval=1000	# CPU GRAPH
text x=190 y=56 sensor=cpu format="%v%" interval=1000

text x=30 y=85 value="CPU frequency :"
text x=129 y=85 sensor=program program="cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep 'cpu MHz' | sed -e 's/.*: //'| sed -e 's/\..../ MHz/'"  interval=120000

text x=30 y=100 value="CPU temp :"
#text x=120 y=100 sensor=program program="cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/temperature | grep 'temperature' | sed -e 's/.*: //'"
text x=129 y=100 sensor=program program="sensors -A | grep 'Core0' | awk '{print $3}'" interval=1000
#text x=129 y=100 sensor=sensor format="%v°C" type="temp" interval=5000

text x=42 y=138 value="Ram"
text x=133 y=138 sensor=memory format="%fm Mb free" interval=5000
text x=121 y=163 sensor=memory format="%um of %tm Mb" align=center interval=5000

bar  x=42  y=150 path="image/barload.png" sensor=memory format="%um" interval=10000
image x=42  y=150 path="image/barlines.png"

#text x=42 y=160 value="Swap:"
#text x=133 y=160 sensor=memory format="%fs Mb free"  interval=10000
#text x=121 y=185 sensor=memory format="%us of %ts Mb" align=center  interval=10000

#bar  x=42 y=182 path="image/barload.png" sensor=memory format="%us" interval=10000
#image x=42  y=182 path="image/barlines.png"

image x=30 y=40 path="image/grill.png" # CPU grill
</group>

# Network Info
<group> x=0 y=320
image x=21 y=0 path="image/backtittle.png" # NETWORK Title
text x=21 y=0 value="Network" fontsize=14 align=left font="" # Network Tittle

text x=30 y=67 value="Local addr. :"
text x=120 y=67 sensor=program program="/sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep 'inet ' | cut -d : -f2 | cut -d ' ' -f1" interval=600000

text x=30 y=83 value="Ext addr.:" color=255,255,255 fontsize=10 font="Droid Sans Mono" color=255,255,255
text x=120 y=83 sensor=program program="rm -rf .jftgwh ; mkdir .jftgwh ; cd .jftgwh ; wget http://checkip.dyndns.org/index.html && cat index.html | cut -d ' ' -f 6 | cut -d '<' -f 1 ; cd .. ; rm -rf .jftgwh" fontsize=10 font="Droid Sans Mono" color=255,255,255

text x=30 y=100 value="Download :"
text x=90 y=100 fontsize=14 sensor=network device="eth0" format="%in kB/s" interval=1000 decimals=2
text x=168 y=105 sensor=program program="/sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep 'RX byte' | awk '{print $3 OFS $4}'" interval=30000

text x=30 y=113 value="Upload :"
text x=90 y=113 fontsize=14 sensor=network device="eth0" format="%out kB/s" interval=1000 decimals=2
text x=168 y=118 sensor=program program="/sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep 'TX byte' | awk '{print $7 OFS $8}'" interval=30000
graph x=32 y=25 w=150 h=34 color=1,247,1 points=60 sensor=network format="%in" device="eth0"  max=110 interval=1000
graph x=32 y=26 w=150 h=34 color=247,1,1 points=60 sensor=network format="%out" device="eth0"  max=110 interval=1000

image x=30 y=25 path="image/grill.png" # Net grill
</group>

# Top ****e
<group> x=0 y=460
image x=21 y=0 path="image/backtittle.png"
text x=21 y=0 value="Top ****e" fontsize=14 align=left font=""
text x=21 y=24 value="Top processes:"
text x=21 y=38 sensor=program program="/bin/ps -eo pcpu,cpu,ucmd --sort pcpu | sed '/^ 0.0 /d' | tail -8;sleep 2" interval=120# SHADOW=1 FIXEDPITCH=true
</group>

[Jonas]

I thought htop was the sysmon you were looking for, within a plasmoid. The superkaramba theme you linked to is almost identical to the regular/default sys monitor plasmas that ship with Kubuntu (?) or have I misunderstood again ?

I never liked unity nor Gnome. I like seamless theme - it's what it say seamless and apart from the info it's invisible.

b.r

Jonas

[Don B. Cilly]

By python scripts I meant the screenlets in particular which work just fine on plain Ubuntu, but not with KDE, just wonder why.

Still, thanks for the tips, I've tweaked a superkaramba theme, Glass Monitor, which I use because it fits the look of the Elegance theme (I just love the clock) to fit my setup and needs.
Those themes are really easy to work on, so I'll probably expand on it eventually, though at the moment it's just fine, I'm a happy chappy, my only regret is I didn't switch to this earlier.
Hadn't been for Unity, I may never have done, so, thanks again ;·)

[Robtygart]

I started off with Mint 10 +KDE then went to Kubuntu, I had Unity on for about a day, and I have installed it a couple of times after that (dual boot) I can't get used to it. Now with Unity Lense (Stupid Idea!!) You get even more unwanted annoyances.

[james147]

I still wonder why python scripts shouldn't work with KDE (really, why?)

Python scripts should work under kubuntu... parts of kde are even written in python.

There are also allot of plasmoids on kde-look.org to display system stats: try this one http://kde-look.org/content/show.php...content=100393 or this one http://kde-look.org/content/show.php...content=148482

[Don B. Cilly]

Try Htop.

I tried htop. Very nice. It is. Not what the "gripe" was about though :·/

not a fan of Unity

Let me state that again, in more detail. After the initial (strong) dislike, I actually had two months during which I was using a borrowed netbook... being borrowed I couldn't change things... to get used to it (Unity).
Well, no way I got used to it. The more I used it, the more I hated it.
I mean, if I have to do things the way Canonical wants me to do them, rather than how I want to, I might as well go full lobotomy, use a mac and offer masses to S. J.

After a brief sad affair with Mint, and a few pae-silliness-induced aborted tries on virtualbox, I deleted the Win-boot partition (no, you don't need it) and installed Kubuntu.
Heaven.
Pity about the sysmonitor, with the screenlets I had good ones and a really good one, but no big deal, I'm really glad I switched.
I still wonder why python scripts shouldn't work with KDE (really, why?) and why there's no decent monitors for it... no big deal mind you, just wondering.

[Robtygart]

Try Htop.

No I am not a fan of Unity.

[Don B. Cilly]

Yes, well... I see what you mean by "highly configurable". I certainly had to configure it... pretty much from scratch
I did, after quite a few tries, find a script in the wiki that didn't crash completely (after deleting half the lines).
Still, something to play with, I guess. But then maybe I'll play with the karamba instead... best sysmonitor screenlet I found was info-panel, czech job. See this screenshot (not mine).

I just wish someone would either (a) make python screenlets work with KDE or (b) make a karamba, plasmoid or conky even vaguely at the level of that czech job.
Thanks for the tip anyway.