20 Really Awesome Linux Desktop Customization Screenshots

In terms of customizability, I can honestly say that the Linux desktop is far better than Mac OS X or Windows. In Linux, there are tons and tons of desktop environments, window managers, icon sets, and different applications readily available for easily customizing or tweaking the overall desktop look and feel. Although it's possible to change the appearance of Mac and Windows desktop, the options for doing so are quite limited. So that we can fully appreciate the flexibility of Linux, I gathered several awesome-looking desktop customization screenshots (with short details) from the web that I would like to show to all of you. I hope that these screenshots will somehow arouse your creativity and inspire you to transform the appearance of your desktop into something that's also amazing.

Without further delay, here are some impressive Linux desktop customization screenshots:

1. Gnome Seven for Gaia by Izobalax

Details:
GTK & Metacity - Gaia 09 by fkant
Icons - Gaia Icons by *imrik
Wallpaper - One by *imrik
Other - Pidgin, GQview, Thunar, Banshee, GIMP, Rainlendar, Screenlets

2. KDE 4.4 by Sebcioz

Details:
Plasma theme - Air
Icons - Reflections DOCK
Wallpaper - Grey Inspire
Cover - superkaramba's applet: Amarok2Simple

3. Awn is awesome by Blazmir1

Details:
GTK & Metacity - Aurora Aqua & eCO - Experiment
Icons - Meliae SVG Icon Theme v. 1.2
Wallpaper - Self Portrait April 09' by `j3concepts
Fonts - droid sans, trebuchet ms

4. DSTRY by Izobalax

Details:
GTK & Metacity - Crazy Muthafucka
Icons - custom theme using AMANA icons
Wallpaper - The Escape, part of the Desktopography 2009 series
Other - Conky, GQview, Thunar, Banshee, Totem (custom image), Pidgin, Tint2

5. Grey by IHackr

Details:
GTK & Metacity - spacedust
Icons - sonetto
Wallpaper - Minimo
Other - Conky, VLC, Songbird

6. Jaunty 4.0 by Ivsaken1

Details:
GTK & Metacity - Biergarten 0.3
Icons - Hydroxygen
Wallpaper - origami by Hallaserke

7. Ready For ArchLinux by Grafilker

Details:
- Archlinux + Gnome + Avn + Screenlets + Conky

8. Conky Galore by TheSeanKelly

Details:
Icons - Smokikon v0.9
Wallpaper - AREA04 CEF
Other - awn, conky

9. 19.05 by lynucs

Details:
Desktop - Xfce4
GTK & Metacity - clearlooks Darkcoffee2
Icons - area04
Wallpaper - ASEN by VisionsofArt
Other - gqview, xchat, konqueror, firefox, xterm, fbrun, cal (calender for term), sonata

10. Dust maxxed out by BilliShere

Details:
GTK & Metacity - dust gtk
Wallpaper - indian summer 08
Other - screenlets, snackr (adobe air app) and conky

11. GNU Linux 03 by jjrrmmrr

Details:
GTK themes - BiMetallico 1.1
Icon - Mac4Lin ver.0.4 GTK Icon Theme
Screenlets - widescape weather, digital clock and clear calendar

12. Bliss by lynucs

Details:
OS - Fedora 9
Desktop - Xfce4
Wallpaper - Homespun
Other - xfterm4, edit, gqview, roxfiler, widescape

13. Linux Desktop by ebupof

Details:
GTK & Metacity - Shiftie
Icons - Si
Wallpaper - Leafie PRO

14. Linux Desktop by PurposeOfReason

Details:
OS - Archlinux
Desktop - Openbox
Wallpaper - Foresight by Paul Scott-Wilson
Other - pypanel, xcompmgr. Conky

15. Simple Debian by hadret

Details:
GTK & Metacity - Alun Dark
Icons - Meliae & hydroxygen
AWN Icons - ecqlipse 2
Wallpaper - Debian Grass 2
Other - AWN, Conky, GNOME-MPlayer, Iceweasel, Nautilus

16. Vorta Conky and Tint by Kshegzyaj

Details:
Desktop - XFCE
Theme - Vorta suite
Other - Compiz, Emerald, Conky

17. Linux Desktop Customization by FrostTyrant

Details:
GTK & Metacity - Elegant Brit
Desktop - XFCE
Other - Thunar

18. Linux Desktop Customization by Froli

Details:
OS - Archlinux
GTK & Metacity - Nova-Blue
Icons - ALLBLACK
OpenBox Theme - arch.blue

19. Simply Linux by HellsDark

Details:
GTK & Metacity - MurrineGlow Blue GTK 2.0
Icons - HDmix
Wallpaper - Plasticstripes Underwater
Emerald - Gomoso brave dark
Other - NowPlaying Screenlet, Conky, AWN

20. No manual entry for life by KingCam

Details:
GTK & Metacity - ASN
Icons - Micro
Dock Icons - Handelgot_Icons
Wallpaper - Raw
Pic - Iridescence

If you think that your Linux desktop looks as good as those we’ve shown above, or if you know a link or two to other awesome Linux desktop screenshots, please share them with us via comment.

How to Synchronize Dropbox and Ubuntu One Online Backup Services

How to Synchronize Dropbox and Ubuntu One Online Backup Services: Dropbox and Ubuntu One are two of my favorite online backup services. They both provide safe, reliable, and easy-to-use cloud storage solutions. Their features may vary but they are all important to me, so I have installed and used Dropbox and Ubuntu One together on my Ubuntu desktop.

I have Linux, Windows, and Mac computers at home and I find Dropbox essential for quickly synchronizing files across different operating systems. Meanwhile, Ubuntu One is integrated with some of the applications I've installed on Ubuntu such as Evolution and Tomboy notes so I can't live without it too.

I find it inconvenient to maintain two online backup services on my Linux box that I decided to link and combine Dropbox and Ubuntu One so that they are synchronized. This means that whenever I made some changes or created some files on my Ubuntu One folder, it will automatically sync with my Dropbox folder, and vice versa. How did I do it? It's really easy.

If you have not installed Dropbox yet, I suggest you read this: How to install and use Dropbox in Ubuntu Linux

After installation, open the Dropbox preferences and change the default folder location or path and point it to your Ubuntu One folder.

Inside Ubuntu One, you will now be able to see the Dropbox folder. So, changes made inside the Dropbox folder will instantly be seen in Ubuntu One.

Next up, right-click on your Ubuntu One folder and click on the "Make Link" option. Move the "Link to Ubuntu One" folder and place it inside the Dropbox folder.

Your original Ubuntu One folder will now be synchronized with Dropbox, which also means you can now access your Ubuntu One folder from your other OS with a Dropbox desktop client installed.

That was a really simple trick, isn't it? But, I do hope some of you would also find it useful.

5 Best Free and Open Source File Archivers for Linux

A computer program that merges a number of files together into one archive file, or a series of archive files, for simpler transportation, storage, or backup is called a file archiver. Archiving or packing refers to the process of making an archive file, while unarchiving, unpacking or extracting means reconstructing the original files from the archive.

The simplest file archivers just gather a list of files and concatenate their contents sequentially into the archive. For transferring a large number of individual files over a high latency network like the Internet, numerous file archivers employ archive formats that provide lossless data compression to reduce the size of the archive.

If you are looking for a capable free and open-source file archiver for Linux, you should check out this list, and then pick out the one that would suit your needs:

Xarchiver
Xarchiver is a popular GTK+2 based file archiver that is designed to be independent of the desktop environment. It is utilized in a good number of lightweight Linux distributions like Xfce and LXDE. Xarchiver supports 7-zip, arj, bzip2, gzip, rar, lha, lzma, lzop, deb, rpm, tar and zip archives, archive navigation with mimetype icons, archive comment ability and archive listing as HTML or txt. Cut/Copy/Paste/Rename actions within files of variety of archives are also supported. Password detection and protection is automatic for arj, zip and rar files.

File Roller
File Roller is a simple and easy-to-use archive manager for the GNOME desktop environment. It has a graphical user interface and can create and modify archives, view the content of an archive and files contained in the archive, and of course extract files from the archive. It supports plenty of archive files such as 7-Zip (.7z), Tar, WinAce (.ace), gzip, RAR, and a whole lot more.

Ark
Ark is an archiving tool for the KDE desktop environment that is included into kdeutils package. It can view, extract, create, and modify archives through its intuitive GUI. Ark can handle different file formats that include tar, gzip, bzip2, zip, rar and lha. If the appropriate plugin from kdeaddons package is installed, it can be integrated into Konqueror in the KDE environment to handle archives through KParts technology.

PeaZip
PeaZip is both a file manager and file archiver that supports its native PEA archive format, featuring compression, multi volume split and flexible authenticated encryption, and integrity check schemes. It also has support for other mainstream formats, with special focus on handling open formats. With PeaZip, users can run extracting and archiving operations automatically using command-line generated exporting the job defined in the GUI front-end. For speeding up archiving or backup operation's definition, it can also create, edit and restore an archive's layout.

FreeArc
FreeArc is a fast and efficient file archiver that is said to work 2–5 times quicker than best programs in each compression class (ccm, 7-zip, rar, uharc -mz, pkzip) while retaining the same compression ratio. From technical grounds, it is superior to any existing practical compressor. Features include:

* AES/Blowfish/Twofish/Serpent encryption
* FAR and Total Commander plugins
* Solid compression with smart updates
* Ability to create self-extracting archives and installers
* Archive protection and recovery

If you know of other free and open-source file archivers for Linux that I fail to include on my list above, feel free to share them with us via comment.

10 Latest Android-Powered Tablet PCs – Can Any of These Take on the iPad?

The iPad may be flying off the shelves with more than 3 million units sold to date, but it doesn’t mean that others aren’t welcome to take a shot at unseating it.

And they certainly are trying. With a slew of Android-powered touch screen devices and tablet PCs unleashed (could someday include the Google tablet) one after another, we may yet live to see the day when Apple would need to be on the defensive.

The question is, which among the current crop of AndPads, including those that would be in consumers’ hands within the next few weeks, is likely to carve a niche for itself in the tablet PC industry? Let’s take a closer look at the contenders:

Archos Internet Tablets - Can you say master of tablet PCs? Not quite done with the Archos 5, Archos 7, and Archos 8 released in September of last year and June this year, the French company last month unveiled its latest offerings in what is getting to be a long list of Archos Android-powered tablets. The five (yes, you read that right – 5) tablet devices all come with the Android 2.2 ‘Froyo’, accelerometers, touch screens in varying sizes, and cameras, to name just a few of their features. The Archos fab five take on the first five slots of this list.

1. Archos 28
With a 2.8-inch resistive touch screen, this midget is apparently the smallest of the lot but there’s still a lot you can do with its 4G of storage, Wi-Fi capability, and a new Archos music application that supports a variety of video and music formats. Browsing on such a diminutive touch screen could still be inhibiting for a lot of people though but at a starting price of $99, it would still spark some interest especially for those who want to browse on the go but don’t want to shell out too much.

2. Archos 32
A tad bigger than the Archos 28 with a 3.2-inch screen, the Archos 32 also has double the storage with 8G and a slightly higher price at $149.99. The built-in camera allows for 720p video recording, which you can then watch on a bigger screen as the device can be hooked up to a TV. Just like the 28, you can surf the net with the 32 but again, it may not exactly be the most pleasant browsing experience.

3. Archos 43
The Archos 43 is slated to take the place of the Archos 5 and with its features, it’s a most worthy successor. Sporting a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor, a camera that can record 720p video, spot-on accelerometer navigation, and a price point of about $199, it has the makings of a cool browsing and gaming buddy.

4. Archos 70
The big boys of Archos start with the Archos 70, a more responsive and more powerful version of the Archos 7 Home Tablet. True, the prices are starting to get a bit steep here with the 70 at $279 but it could be well worth every bang for your buck with a capacitive touchscreen, accelerometer, front VGA camera that supports video chat, and USB ports. At 0.4 inches thick and a weight of just 11 ounces, its lighter and slimmer design is also a plus factor.

5. Archos 101
Last but definitely not the least is the designated “iPad killer” of the 5 latest Archos tablets. This 10.1-incher is only 0.5-inch thick and 0.93-pound heavy, and comes with a 1024 x 600-resolution, capacitive touchscreen, 1 GHz processor, front-facing VGA cam, and USB and HDMI ports. It has a kickstand in the back that allows you to prop it up for viewing and typing angles most convenient for you. At a price of $300, it could well give other tablets a run for their money.

6. Samsung Galaxy Tab
The Samsung Galaxy Tab launched to much fanfare sometime last week. With its 7-inch touch display, it’s a more compact gadget than the 9-incher iPad, losing a few points on the screen size and gaining some on the portability. Powered by the Android 2.2 Froyo (upgradeable to Android 3.0), it runs on a speed of 1GHz (same as the iPad), has twice the RAM with 512MB, and provides for expandable storage of up to 32GB. No final word yet on how much this one’s gonna cost but it could be anywhere from $200 to $400.

7. Toshiba Folio 100
Not to be outdone, Toshiba has also thrown the proverbial hat into the tablet PC ring with the debut of the Folio 100. The Folio’s 10.1-inch touch screen with 1024 x 600 resolution, coupled with more-than-decent technical features under the hood (including NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core processor and 16GB memory) should make for a satisfying web browsing experience. Word has it though that there’s no Android Market on this device, which makes its chances of being a forerunner in the industry highly-doubtful.

8. Dell Streak
The first wave of Dell Streak tablets was officially available in stores only last month and the reviews it got were mixed at best. Sporting a 5-inch touchscreen, it’s one of those devices that fall in the “tweener” category (too big to be a phone, to small to be a tablet), although this one could actually be used for making and taking calls; that is, if you don’t mind putting such a “large” device to your ear. On the upside, it’s capable of pretty much everything you can do on a touch tablet – browse, video playback, social networking, and digital reading – on an 800 x 480 resolution. Initial units of the Streak were running on the Android 1.6 but an upgrade to Android 2.1 has been made available recently.

9. HP Zeen
Don’t look now but HP’s own Android tablet, Zeen, has been spotted in its most primal form. Tech blog Engadget was first to leak out images of the 7-inch touchscreen tablet, apparently retrieved from China, and some basic specs including 800 x 400 resolution, 4G storage, 512MB RAM, and an ARM-based processor. While it’s loaded with the Android 2.1, the applications are leaning more towards Yahoo!, plus Facebook, Barnes & Noble Nook compatibility, and other online video apps. If you think these features aren’t drool-inducing, you might be even more daunted by the package the Zeen tablet comes with: HP’s C510 PhotoSmart eStation printer. The tablet/printer combo will reportedly ship end of September.

10. LG Optimus Pad
Riding on the relative success of its Optimus smartphones, LG has decided to include its Android tablet under the same line, hence we await the arrival of the Optimus Pad hopefully by the fourth quarter of 2010. Unfortunately, mum’s still the word on the device’s hardware specs and we can only speculate on what the Pad brings to the table. In describing the soon-to-debut tablet though, LG does use the words “superior performance”, “lighter”, “thinner”, and with many “firsts.” As to whether the Optimus Pad will live up to these intriguing descriptions still remains to be seen.

This entry was written for Tech Source by John Carl P. Villanueva of Steaming Open Cup blog.

You may also check out our list of affordable Android-powered tablet PCs.

View the original article here

Use Ubuntu/GNOME Desktop as Alarm Clock

Use Ubuntu/GNOME Desktop as Alarm Clock: You may find our Python alarm clock too geeky or complicated, so I thought I should share with you an easier way to use your Linux desktop (particularly Ubuntu and other GNOME-based distributions) as alarm clock. To do this, you will have to install a package aptly called "Alarm Clock".

Alarm Clock is described as the personal alarm clock for the GTK + desktop environment. But other than waking you up on time by making noise, it supports other useful features such as passive window reminders, snooze option, and exception lists for scheduled alarms among others.

In Ubuntu, you can install the Alarm Clock application using the Software Center or via Synaptic Package Manager. For a quick and dirty way of installing Alarm Clock, you may also use the command line:

sudo apt-get install alarm-clock After installation, you can immediately start using the program by going to Applications --> Accessories --> Alarm Clock.


Alarm Clock has a simple interface where you can easily start adding new alarm schedules. The alarm clock icon sits on the notifications area.


Under "Notifications" setting, you will find some useful options. You can set it up to show a dialog window or display passive popup during event, which is good for scheduling reminders and tasks. Advanced option for executing shell script is also included.


Under the sound preferences, you are given a choice to use a custom sound file. So if your idea of waking up is hearing the song Wake Up by Rage Against the Machine or any of your preferred song, simply install this Alarm Clock application.

Sony Ericsson Plans No New Symbian Products

A Bloomberg article reports that Sony Ericsson has no future plans to develop phones on the Symbian platform. Though Symbian continues to be the most widely distributed mobile phone operating system in the world, this marks the second company this year to announce discontinuing Symbian support. The first was Nokia, which stated that while Symbian would remain the default OS in its line of dumbphones, MeeGo would be the only OS to power the company's line of smartphones, moving forward.

“We have no plans for the time being to develop any new products to the Symbian Foundation standard or operating system,” Sony Ericsson spokesman Aldo Liguori said.

Symbian powers Sony's Vivaz phones, though the company has been gradually moving to the Android platform. Motorola and Samsung both left the platform in favor of Android.

Sony Opens Android Developer Site

Sony becomes the first third-party manufacturer to open an Android development site based around the Google TV platform. The development site launch coincides with Sony's demonstration of its first line of Google TV-powered products. Sony is the first television manufacturer to incorporate Google's television search indexing and Internet browsing platform directly into their televisions with four HDTVs in 24-, 32-, 40-, and 46-inch models. Sony has also announced a Blu-Ray player with Google TV onboard that costs around US$ 400.

With Google TV running a modified version of Android 2.2, the platform features its own, specific apps such as a Netflix, CNBC, NBA Game Time, and an Amazon.com app for streaming media, but the platform is also compatible with smartphone apps, which can be downloaded from an Android user's phone onto the platform via the cloud. Google TV apps can also be purchased from the App Marketplace on a desktop and pushed directly to the platform.

There's nothing much to do on Sony's developer site at this time. Developers can register a developer account and then will receive updates when additional tools go live on the dev site. As Google TV gains popularity, expect more sites like Sony's to pop up in the future.