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Install GNOME Shell in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick

Ryan — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 20:46:32 +0000

GNOME Shell is a component of GNOME 3.0 which is the next generation of the GNOME Desktop Environment scheduled for release in April 2011. With the release fast approaching you may be eager to give it a try on your current Ubuntu 10.10 installation.

There are currently two ways to install GNOME Shell. The easiest method is to install the gnome-shell package in the Ubuntu repository. Unfortunately the latest version supported in Ubuntu 10.10 is 2.32 which will give you a good taste of what to expect, but is outdated compared with the latest development releases (2.91.x series will become the official 3.0 stable release). The second method is to build from source. This will give you the latest version but is slightly more complex. If you are comfortable with the command line it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle.

Method 1: Install Old (2.32) Version from the Repository

GNOME Shell is in the Ubuntu repositories by default, simply install it with apt-get. Unfortunately this will give you the outdated 2.32 version.
$ sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

Alternatively you can install the gnome-shell package from the Ubuntu Software Center.

Method 2: Build Latest (3.X) Version from Source

The following steps will give you the latest bleeding edge version of GNOME 3. This will NOT break your current GNOME 2 installation, but simply install GNOME 3 and its dependencies along side your current packages. You will be free to switch between GNOME 2 and 3 at will.

1) Install Dependencies

Run this command to install the GNOME Shell dependencies.
$ sudo apt-get install curl libtiff4-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev libcroco3-dev xulrunner-dev mesa-utils mesa-common-dev libreadline5-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libwnck-dev librsvg2-dev libgnome-desktop-dev libgnome-menu-dev libffi-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgconf2-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev gtk-doc-tools gnome-common git-core flex bison automake build-essential icon-naming-utils autopoint libvorbis-dev libpam-dev libgcrypt-dev libtasn1-dev libtasn1-3-bin libgnome-keyring-dev libupower-glib-dev libxklavier16 libxklavier-dev xserver-xephyr python-dev libpulse-dev libjasper-dev jhbuild libgtop2-dev libsqlite3-dev libproxy-dev libdb-dev libproxy-dev libcups2-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev

2) Download the Source

Get the script to setup your jhbuild environment.
$ wget http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell/plain/tools/build/gnome-shell-build-setup.sh

Make the script executable.
$ chmod +x gnome-shell-build-setup.sh

Execute the script. This will install jhbuild.
$ ./gnome-shell-build-setup.sh

3) Build GNOME 3

This command will download the latest source code and build GNOME 3. GNOME Shell includes 40+ packages that need to be downloaded and built. This can take a significant amount of time to complete so be patient.
$ jhbuild build

4) Keep GNOME 3 Up to Date

You are running the bleeding edge version of GNOME 3 and because of this the code in the git repositories will be constantly changing. To test the latest changes after your initial insallation simply run the following command. This automatically update your local copy of the source code and rebuild if there are any changes to GNOME 3 package or its dependencies.

$ jhbuild build

Starting GNOME Shell

Alt+F2 and enter:
$ ~/gnome-shell/install/bin/gnome-shell –-replace

Stopping GNOME Shell

To exit and return to your default Gnome 2 hit Alt+F2 and enter:
debugexit

Troubleshooting

If you are using an NVIDIA graphics card and are having problems with speed.
Fix Slow Animations in GNOME Shell for NVIDIA Graphics Cards

This guide will walk you through the steps necessary to download the source code and build the GNOME 3 package. It is helpful if you run into any problems.
Build GNOME Shell

Remove the envelope icon from the Gnome indicator applet

Ryan — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 19:09:31 +0000

In Ubuntu it can be difficult to customize the indicator applet which by default contains the sound, battery, Bluetooth, and empathy icons.

If you don’t use empathy and want to remove the icon there is no simple option to change. Since this is a default indicator icon you must completely remove the indicator-messages package to make it disappear.

$ sudo apt-get purge indicator-messages

Once you have removed the package you can log out and back into your account to see the changes take effect. Alternatively you can remove the indicator-applet and then add it back to the Gnome panel.

Add new fonts to your Ubuntu system

Ryan — Tue, 18 May 2010 06:40:03 +0000

Whether you work with the GIMP to create graphical content, OpenOffice to write documents, or anything in between, chances are that you will need to supplement the basic installed fonts on your Ubuntu system. There are a couple ways to go about this. If you don’t alrady have a font to install you can use Synatcic or apt to search for and install one.

Open System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager and do a search for ttf. This is the TrueType file extension but it can also be used for other types such as FreeType. This should net you a ton of useful fonts results to install.

Alternatively you can use apt.
sudo apt-cache search ttf sudo apt-get install <font package name>

A wide variety of fonts can also be found across the internet from various sources. If you downloaded a specific font, or have a collection of fonts you would like to install, follow these steps.

If you want the font available to only your user.

Make a “.fonts” directory within your home directory.
mkdir ~/.fonts
Copy your font(s) to this directory.
cp font.ttf ~/.fonts

If you want to make the font accessible to all users.

The system fonts are stored in /usr/share/fonts, make a sub-directory within this for your personal fonts.
sudo chmod mkdir /usr/share/fonts/myfonts
Copy all your fonts to this directory.
sudo cp <font-name.ttf> /usr/share/fonts/myfonts
Change the permissions on the files so the system can use them.
sudo chmod -R 755 /usr/share/fonts/myfonts/*
Now update the system cache.
sudo fc-update -fv

Your fonts should now be available to all your programs. If a program was open while you were installing a font you may have to restart it in order to access the new fonts.

Share a remote filesystem over SSH

Ryan — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:25:24 +0000

You may already be familiar with NFS and Samba for sharing files over a network. While these are both great distributed filesystem solutions, they require extra configuration and setup overhead in order to get them to work. If you want quick and easy access to a remote filesystem then SSHFS may be your best shot.

SSHFS (Secure SHell FileSystem) is a file system for Linux capable of operating on files on a remote computer using just a secure shell login. It is based on sftp (SSH File Transfer Protocol). Setup is easy on the server side, since most servers support SSH out of the box there is nothing to do. On the client side, mounting the filesystem is as easy as logging in with SSH. The end user can seamlessly and securely interact with remote files as if they were local to your machine.

Advantages of SSHFS over NFS/Samba:

Utilizes SSH and is therefore very secure.
Allows secure access to remote filesystems outside of your local network.
Requires no special configuration on the server side.

Disadvantages:

Slightly slower, although the difference is fairly small.
Does not show filesystem usage statistics.
Requires a user account on the server side.
Not a true distributed file system, single point to point sharing.

Setup

The first step is to install SSHFS.

In Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt-get install sshfs

or in Gentoo:

$ sudo emerge -av sshfs-fuse

Create the mount point on your local machine. This is where you are going to access the remote filesystem.

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/share

Your user must have permission to access this mountpoint.

$ sudo chown ryan /mnt/share

Start Sharing

Now use the sshfs command to mount the remote filesystem. If the username is different on the server you are connecting, use the “username@host:” format, otherwise you can simply specify “host:”.

$ sshfs ryan@fileserver:/remote/share /mnt/share

If you are not using keys with SSH you will be prompted for a password.

ryan@fileserver's password:

Once you are finished you can easily unmount the filesystem.

as regular user:

$ fusermount -u /mnt/share

or as root:

$ sudo umount /mnt/share

Configuration

You can add an entry for this share to /etc/fstab to make the mounting process more seamless.

sshfs#ryan@fileserver:/remote/share /mnt/share fuse user,noauto 0 0

user – allow any user to mount this share.
noauto – stop the shared directory from being automatically mounted at startup.

If you want it automatically mounted, ensure that your SSH configuration uses keys and not passwords so it doesn’t ask for a password at startup. Once keys are in use you can safely remove the noauto option.

With fstab updated you can now mount the share as a normal user with this simple mount command. Again, if ssh is configured to use passwords you will still be prompted for one.

$ mount /mnt/share

Enable syntax highlighting in vim with Ubuntu

Ryan — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:34:16 +0000

Many distributions have syntax highlighting in vim enabled with their default installation. In Ubuntu as well as other Debian based distributions, this is not the case. By default Ubuntu installs the vim-tiny package which does not support syntax highlighting or many other advanced features.

You can see by following the chain of symlinks that in the default installation vim calls vim.tiny.

$ which vim

/usr/bin/vim

/usr/bin/vim -> /etc/alternatives/vim -> /usr/bin/vim.tiny

If you want additional features including syntax highlighting you need to install the vim package.

$ sudo apt-get install vim

Now vim uses vim.basic which is what we want. This version supports all the advanced features.
/usr/bin/vim -> /etc/alternatives/vim -> /usr/bin/vim.basic

The last step is to actually enable syntax highlighting.

To enable it for a single session go into command mode and enter this command:

:syn on

Make these changes permanent for every vim session by opening or creating the .vimrc configuration file in your home directory.
/home/username/.vimrc

Insert the following lines.

if has ("syntax")
        syntax on
endif

How to SSH into Ubuntu LiveCD

Ryan — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:08:44 +0000

The ability to remotely SSH into a machine running an Ubuntu LiveCD can come in handy in many situations. The LiveCD supports a large variety of hardware and can be used to troubleshoot system problems on a machine where you have limited or no access. A user with limited skills can easily setup remote access and allow a trusted friend to troubleshoot the system from another location.

The first thing to start the process is to open a terminal. Follow these menus:

Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal

In the terminal install the ssh server on your LiveCD system.

$ sudo apt-get install openssh-server

The server is started automatically after installing.

To login remotely, you’ll need to set the password for the default ubuntu user.

$ sudo passwd ubuntu
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully

You should now be able to login to the system running the LiveCD. But first you need to find the IP address of the machine so you can connect to it.

The ifconfig command will list your network interfaces and along with it your IP address.

$ ifconfig

eth0      ...
          inet addr:192.168.1.1  Bcast:192.168.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          ...

The inet addr entry is your IP address which you need to log into the LiveCD system. As you an see above the IP address begins with “192.168” which indicates that the IP address is only valid on the local network. It was an address assigned to the machine by the router. This is fine if you plan on logging in from another machine on this local network.

If you need to access the machine from outside your local network you have a couple of options. The first is to remove any router between you and the Internet. This should give you a valid IP address which is accessible from outside your local network. You may also be able to access your router’s administration panel and tell it to pass SSH traffic to the IP address of the LiveCD system. You will then use the router’s IP address instead for the next step.

If your IP address already begins with something other than “192.168” then you are safe as well. You should be able to access the LiveCD system from any location, local or not.

Using the IP address from the previous step you can now log into the LiveCD system as the ubuntu user. Use the password you created earler.

$ ssh ubuntu@

Add Ubuntu medibuntu repository

Ryan — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:52:18 +0000

The Medibuntu repository (Multimedia, Entertainment & Distractions In Ubuntu) contains packages that cannot be included into the Ubuntu distribution for legal reasons. Some of these packages include Skype Acrobat Reader, Google Earth, and multimedia codecs.

Add Medibuntu to your sources.list. Make sure you specify the correct version of your distribution. This example uses Intrepid Ibex (Ubuntu 8.10).

# wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Then add its GPG key to your keyring.

# apt-get update && apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && apt-get update

Now you should be able to install packages in this repository.