The GNOME Do That You Do!

I still don’t know the full story about this GNOME Do program, but so far it’s the best thing… besides slice bread…  you just can’t beat that!  I’ve heard about this package when Fedora 9 was released.  I installed it on my laptop, but never really learned, nor took the time, to understand how it works.  Recently, there was a blog post (LifeHacker) that highlighted the new “Docky” theme, which gives your Linux box a certain popular MAC component.  I’m not going to take a sip of the hateraide, this Docky component is awesome and it’s given my Fedora 10 a new lease on life!

Installing GNOME-Do

The popular distributions have it in their repos, such as: openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.  The only problem is some of the repos do not have the latest version yet – v0.8.0.  That version has the whole “Docky” thing.  Simply use your distro’s text installer; mine is YUM.

YUM install gnome-do

You can always install it manually, using the source files, but this is no easy task if you’re a Linux newb.  It requires other packages, such as: bzr, glib-sharp, glib-, gtk+-2.0, and much more.  I had the toughest time finding some of the dependent files.

Social Media to the Rescue

I posted a “call for help” on Identica and Matthew Schick came to my rescue.  He had it working, from source, and he even made some RPMs.  I quickly downloaded his RPMs and they installed without any issues.  So; visit his site to get the latest version.  Thanks Matt!

• http://www.excentral.org/fedora/10/
  • flickrnet – required
  • gnome-do-plugins – optional
  • gnome-do – required

What Does GNOME Do, Do!?

Beats me!  Ha-ha!  You’ll have to check out the web site for detailed informaton on that.  Besides the whole Docky thing… you call it up by using WINDOWS+Spacebar on your keyboard (it can be changed in the preferences).  Once the GNOME Do console/window is up you then type in a document you’re looking for… a program you want to run, etc.

In order to run it, for the first time you can either type in “gnome-do” in your terminal or use the one-time run window (ALT+F2).  Once it’s running you can go into preferences and have it automatically start on login.

That’s the extent of my knowledge.  If you know more, please post a reply and share your experience with GNOME Do!

Audio Review of Gnome Do

ProductiveLinux, episode #20 has a very good review of this new version of Gnome Do.

Related Posts:

1. Kill Then Reanimate Your GNOME Panel
2. Proprietary Setup in Linux
3. Open Source + nVidia + WoW = No Playtime
4. Silence
5. Compiling Linux Apps from Source