Linux Mint 18 on the Thinkpad X140e

Got fed up of Unity... It is pretty nice, but, definitively not my cup of tea, besides, it is a bit too much of a heavy load for the little X140e...
So, today swapped SSD and installed LM 18 XFCE onto the little lappie.
The WiFi card isn't recognized upon installation, you have to either use Ethernet or, lucky me, a USB external one, that got recognized without an issue.
After making the actual install, and, just to be safe, installing the whole batch of the first updates, go to System > Driver Manager and enable the built in WiFi card, reboot, and presto, all is golden.

Unity-less (Once Again...)

Well, guess is time so say good by to Unity...
I've tried, I really did... And I said this same thing before...
But it is definitively not my thing... No matter how I try, I still hit a wall on a daily basis, something small, stupid, but it breaks the work flow...
Everything looks like I'm going back to Cinnamon.

The Unity Desktop

Another desktop screenshot...
This time on the T60p, showing the hyper trendy Papirus Icons.
The Linux Desktop look sexier and sexier...

The Unity Desktop

The current Desktop on the X140e, or I should say, the Moka icons beauty (specifically, the Faba Mono)!
Changed the GTK theme aswell, this is the "Ambiance-Minimal" which works amazingly well on Xenial.

The Unity Desktop

The hunt for the perfect Ubuntu/ Unity theme (on Xenial) continues...
This time Arc Black Ubuntu, a dark, yes, but not as dark as the theme I was testing a week ago or so: OSX Arc Shadow.
The icons are still the Moka magnificence.
Like I said, this new theme is not as dark as the previous, it seems it has just the right amount of darkness... The later had a couple of problems dealing with web forms, you know, black text on black background, which made things rather annoying to deal with.

Xenial Wallpapers

Guess I could say that any of those, I mean the stock ones, are my cup of tea...
On Trusty at least, there was one wallpaper (see screenshot) that IMHO was rather good, and I've used it a lot.
Now on Xenial I don't get to stay on any of the stock wallpapers, all of them are sort of boring.

Not So Global Menu for VLC on Xenial

There is a glitch with the Global Menu and VLC on Xenial.
When you stop a movie (it only happens on video files), all the menu options are reproduced on the VLC window as well.

The Unity Desktop

Well, a modern one, I guess...
Sort of a solarized palette... Seems like the cool kids nowadays replaced their Fuzzy Eco desktop backgrounds for these solarized, sometimes flat, images.
I'm Ok with that.
The image is, for what I Googled, from an upcoming video game or similar.

The Unity Desktop

I've mentioned this theme before:

Numix Touch Flat

I love it a lot, but, there are two things that don't make this an amazing theme (for me, of course)...
It doesn't have top rounded corner windows, and it has the damn "black spaces" plaguing, most of all, Gedit.

(Notifications of) Updates, updates, updates & more updates...

Getting this annoying updates notification all the time...

My Weather Indicator Story

So, the other day I was looking for something here on OE10, and I've noticed some of the old screenshots, most of those had an applet to show the temperature around here. I really miss those... Is nice to go back and be able not only to see an old screenshot of a desktop from halcyon days, but also get to know the temperature at that moment.
Getting one up & working became a necessity!
After a bit of Googling and after adding it repository, installed "My Weather Indicator":

colossus > sudo apt-get install my-weather-indicator
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  account-plugin-windows-live empathy-common folks-common gnome-contacts
  gstreamer0.10-nice gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-x
  gstreamer1.0-nice guile-2.0-libs libavahi-gobject0 libfarstream-0.1-0
  libfarstream-0.2-2 libfolks-eds25 libfolks-telepathy25 libfolks25 libgc1c2
  libgupnp-igd-1.0-4 libhdb9-heimdal libkdc2-heimdal libmeanwhile1
  libmission-control-plugins0 libnice10 libntdb1 libpurple-bin libpurple0
  libtelepathy-farstream3 libtelepathy-logger3 libupstart1 libzephyr4
  linux-headers-3.16.0-30 linux-headers-3.16.0-30-generic
  linux-image-3.16.0-30-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-30-generic
  python-ntdb signon-plugin-password telepathy-gabble telepathy-haze
  telepathy-logger telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  geoclue-hostip gir1.2-geocodeglib-1.0 gir1.2-json-1.0 libgeocode-glib0
  python3-dateutil python3-requests-oauthlib python3-tz
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  geoclue-hostip gir1.2-geocodeglib-1.0 gir1.2-json-1.0 libgeocode-glib0
  my-weather-indicator python3-dateutil python3-requests-oauthlib python3-tz
0 upgraded, 8 newly installed, 0 to remove and 14 not upgraded.
Need to get 4,269 kB of archives.
After this operation, 17.2 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

Ok, so, 17 MB... What a hell!! But...
Anyway, installed it, and then problems started for good.

It crashed upon starting it a couple of times, not the best way of starting things...
In the end, it did started, but didn't update any weather at all, so changed the source of weather info to Weather Underground, and restarted the program... well restarted is just a saying... After that My Weather Indicator refused to start at all.
Digging a bit, I found this:

colossus > ./my-weather-indicator
(my-weather-indicator:12951): Gtk-WARNING **: Theme parsing error: unity.css:29:40: Missing opening bracket in color definition

#####################################################
System: Linux
Machine: x86_64
Node: colossus
Release: 3.16.0-76-generic
Version: #98~14.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jun 24 17:04:54 UTC 2016
Platform: Linux-3.16.0-76-generic-x86_64-with-Ubuntu-14.04-trusty
My-Weather-Indicator version: 0.8.1-0extras16.04.1
#####################################################

****** Requesting timezone identificacion
1
***** refreshing weather *****
--- Updating data in location 0 ---
****** Updating weather
****** Calculating rawOffset
-------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------
Underground Weather Service url: http://api.wunderground.com/api/87582/conditions/forecast/lang:EN/pws:1/q/-34.5873579,-58.3915699.json
-------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./my-weather-indicator", line 69, in
    mwi = MWI()
  File "/opt/extras.ubuntu.com/my-weather-indicator/share/my-weather-indicator/myweatherindicator.py", line 143, in __init__
    self.load_preferences()
  File "/opt/extras.ubuntu.com/my-weather-indicator/share/my-weather-indicator/myweatherindicator.py", line 369, in load_preferences
    self.update_weather()
  File "/opt/extras.ubuntu.com/my-weather-indicator/share/my-weather-indicator/myweatherindicator.py", line 158, in update_weather
    self.update_menu(i)
  File "/opt/extras.ubuntu.com/my-weather-indicator/share/my-weather-indicator/myweatherindicator.py", line 682, in update_menu
    weather = self.weatherservices[index].get_weather()
  File "/opt/extras.ubuntu.com/my-weather-indicator/share/my-weather-indicator/wundergroundapi.py", line 225, in get_weather
    weather_data = self._get_weather()
  File "/opt/extras.ubuntu.com/my-weather-indicator/share/my-weather-indicator/wundergroundapi.py", line 165, in _get_weather
    gvff('low', i, parsed_json)['fahrenheit'],
TypeError: string indices must be integers
And that's when I gave up on it:

colossus > sudo apt-get remove my-weather-indicator
[sudo] password for esteban:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  account-plugin-windows-live empathy-common folks-common
  gir1.2-geocodeglib-1.0 gir1.2-json-1.0 gnome-contacts gstreamer0.10-nice
  gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-x gstreamer1.0-nice guile-2.0-libs
  libavahi-gobject0 libfarstream-0.1-0 libfarstream-0.2-2 libfolks-eds25
  libfolks-telepathy25 libfolks25 libgc1c2 libgeocode-glib0 libgupnp-igd-1.0-4
  libhdb9-heimdal libkdc2-heimdal libmeanwhile1 libmission-control-plugins0
  libnice10 libntdb1 libpurple-bin libpurple0 libtelepathy-farstream3
  libtelepathy-logger3 libupstart1 libzephyr4 linux-headers-3.16.0-30
  linux-headers-3.16.0-30-generic linux-image-3.16.0-30-generic
  linux-image-extra-3.16.0-30-generic python-ntdb python3-dateutil
  python3-requests-oauthlib python3-tz signon-plugin-password telepathy-gabble
  telepathy-haze telepathy-logger telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  my-weather-indicator
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 14 not upgraded.
After this operation, 16.3 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

And then the repo:

colossus > sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:atareao/atareao
 Applications from atareao
 More info: https://launchpad.net/~atareao/+archive/ubuntu/atareao
Press [ENTER] to continue or ctrl-c to cancel removing it

The Unity Desktop

Been a while since the last Unity Desktop Post around here...
So here it goes...
Using my own customized version of Ambiance, with the enhanced (at least IMHO) Launcher that I stole from a beautiful theme named Numix Touch Flat.

A Spiffy Gnome Look

The page has a new, well, look... A flatter, more modern one.
It seems like all the themes I've become a fan of were lost on the migration, at least at the moment.

Xenial Xerus: Dark Stripe On Horizontal Launcher

As we all Linux/ Ubuntu/ Unity dwellers already know, ever since Xenial Xerus release, you can place the Unity Launcher on the bottom of your screen.
I've tested that right away after the install, and I like it a lot, but, I couldn't help to notice (take a look at the picture on the left) that there is a strange and ugly looking dark "stripe" (or, I don't know, faux shadow, maybe?) if you choose to use the Unity Launcher horizontally.
The same stripe (or whatever) disappears on the Launcher if you place it vertically...

Upgrades During The Weekend

Took last Sunday to make some changes on the GF lappies.
Her Windows lappie, the Lenovo N585) was dog slow, so I pulled the HDD out, slapped another one I had around the house, and loaded a brand spanking new Windows 7 onto it.
Also, took the T410 and replaced the Linux Mint 17 install with a brand spanking new of Xenail, wiht Unity!
She loved it the interface, go figure, and the Desktop Environment choice of colors, go figure...
Also, of course, she loves the fact that now can use the Jam Trance Mini bluetooth speakers with the lappie.
Installing and setting up the Linux lappie was a breezy, ITOH, the Windows...
MF, what a drag! It took hours and more hours and more hours to setup, install updates, get shit done... Not to mention countless effing reboots...
Anyways, anything for the GF!

The Unity Desktop

Well, here is a little screen shot I took a couple of days ago while testing Ubuntu 16.04 on the Thinkpad T60.
The Unity Launcher can now be placed on the bottom, and of course, the Global Menu can be set to "Always visible".

The most important settings used on the screen shot, that is, those that make the Unity desktop truly, truly useful are these two gsettings strings:


gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Launcher launcher-position Bottom
gsettings set org.compiz.unityshell:/org/compiz/profiles/unity/plugins/unityshell/ launcher-minimize-window true

In Praise of Defaults

That is, regarding themes...
Simply put, the more I test and test different Unity themes (mostly flat ones), the more I like the default "Radiance".
Right now, along with that theme, the other two I'm using are:

• Yosembiance

• Yosembiance-Atomic

Like I said "Radiance" is great, an amazing theme, except for two small things, that I find annoying...

Not completely flat:
Something that I find strange, to say the least, since the unfocused windows are totally flat and look great.

Launcher "Pills":
The launcher has a thin, small rectangle around the icons, a so called "pill".
Even tho the default icon theme (ubuntu-mono-dark) looks rather nice, those god damned pills make then look ugly.

Despite those two things, I think that the default (once again) look of the Terminal on "Radiance" is pure gold.

A Coarse, Ugly Theme Killer

Even tho this isn't the Flatabulous theme -it is actually the Ambiance Touch for Willy theme- this is exactly the same problem on Evolution that I mentioned on my previous post.
Maybe it isn’t a theme problem but an NVIDIA/ Nouveau one...

Flatabulous: Near Perfect Flatness

Lately I've been hunting down flat themes for Unity (after all, I have to keep myself trendy, right?)
One of the best I've found is Flatabulous.
I like it a lot, specially because it's border-less (the Terminal's screenshot on the developer's site looks ultra hip & cool IMHO), it's flat (duh!), looks elegant and nice.
But, I've also found a couple of nasty bugs that ruin the whole thing, the whole experience.
There is one large "black hole" or space on Gedit when there is only one tab open (see screenshot).
Another small horror happens on Evolution's main window, on the section with icons for Contacts, Calendar, Taks, etc (no screenshot for that at the moment), it looks rough, with thick black borders that look from another planet on the whole theme vibe.
A minor gripe, and this is just me, I guess, is that the windows are really square.... I like the top corners of my windows to be rounded, but, hey, I like I said, that's just me...

Nouveau Glory

 Taken last Saturday, an external monitor connected to the W530, thru VGA. using the Nouveau driver for the NVIDIA card.
Not that many problems doing so, just a little bit of plug and play, with a minimal configuration needed.