10 Sep

Lubuntu Software Center

Lubuntu right now lacks a Software Center, as his big brother Ubuntu, so Stephen Smally is developing a great app for this. Lubuntu Software Center. You can install and test it executing this on a terminal (the whole line):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lubuntu-desktop/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install lubuntu-software-center

Remember its pre-alpha stage. But I highly recommend using it and, please, report any bug you can find. The developers always thank that kind of actions.

24 Nov

Tuquito Control Center

Ups, I forgot to mention this. There’s a new control center in the town, from the distro called Tuquito maintained by Mario Colque, from Argentina. You can install this if your system is Ubuntu-based (maverick). Just execute this command line in a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:paquetes-tuquito/universal && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install tuquito-control-center

And that’s all. It’s compatible with Gnome and LXDE environments, so it fits perfectly in our Lubuntu desktop. It’s made in Python, HTML5 and JQuery (implemented over WebKit), so it’s light, fast and very customizable.

12 Sep

Eyecandy (again and enhanced)

I’ve updated the Openbox configuration for the default Lubuntu session (3Ddesk zooms much faster now, and screen grabbing capability works again):

  • Changing virtual desktops
  • rotate left: ctrl + alt + left / mouse wheel up on desktop
  • rotate right: ctrl + alt + right / mouse wheel down on desktop
  • showing cube: ctrl + alt + up / select a face: left / right and space
  • Taking screenshots
    • grab entire screen: print key
    • grab only current window: alt + print
    • select area to grab: shift + print
    Enabling these effects and modifications requieres xcompmgr, scrot, kompose (32bit / 64bit) and 3ddesk (32bit / 64bit) and replacing ~/.config/openbox/lubuntu-rc.xml with this. And remember, it’s a configuration system file, so be careful when modifying it. See 3Ddesk in action:

    04 Sep

    Eyecandy (easy and updated)

    For those who think that low-resources systems are not able to have a bit of candyness, I must say they’re wrong. How to do this on Lubuntu? After reading the great Urukrama’s blog about Openbox configuration we can now do some tricks to do that job.

    • install xcompmgr, kompose (32bit / 64bit) and 3ddesk (32bit / 64bit)
    • add these commands to “/etc/xdg/lxsession/Lubuntu/autostart”
      @kompose
      @3ddeskd
      @exec xcompmgr -c -f -F -r 7.4 -o 0.6 -l -11.9 -t -10.4 -I 0.08 -O 0.08 -D 10

    • use this file insted of your ~/.config/openbox/lubuntu-rc.xml

    …and that’s it, we have virtual desktops in 3D, using ctrl+alt+left or right, just like Compiz. That’s all, folks. I hope you like it!