Contents

• 1 HOWTO: Lightweight eyecandy with adesklets
  • 1.1 Requirements:
  • 1.2 Installing adesklets
    • 1.2.1 First method
    • 1.2.2 Second method
  • 1.3 Configuration
  • 1.4 Beryl

HOWTO: Lightweight eyecandy with adesklets

Update 4/01/07 ~ Thanks racoq

Hello everyone, since I don’t like gdesklets (it’s too heavy for the hardware), I’ve decided to find a more lightweight alternative for gnome. So I present in this small guide how to install and run adesklets on Gnome, KDE, and XFCE. This guide is tested in breezy and dapper.

Requirements:

• Internet connection
• Universe repository enabled

Installing adesklets

First of all you will need to get the adesklets package by typing the following command in the console:

Code:

sudo apt-get install adesklets

This will install the adesklet package and all related packages.

Important Note
I advise the upgrade to 0.6.1 or upper, since some important bugs like memory leaks were addressed, for that see the following link:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=126227

After that, you need to download a valid desklet to use in adesklets, this can be done by two ways:

First method

Go to http://adesklets.sourceforge.net/desklets.html, and download a valid desklet, if you want to see weather information try downloading the weatherforecast package

You will need to extract the package, and copy it to your home directory for instance:

Code:

tar -xvjf weatherforecast-0.2.0.tar.bz2 mv weatherforecast-0.2.0 /home/”you home name account”

Second method

Run the folowing command and adesklets will automatically give you the option of downloading and installing the adesklets using an graphical user interface:

Code:

adesklets -i

Configuration

Either way. assuming that you’ve chosen to go by the first step, go to your home directory and do:

Code:

cd weatherforecast-0.2.0 ./weatherforecast.py

That batch will ask you if you want to register this desklet, say ‘r’ (you want to register).

This will create the file .adesklets in your home directory and it will fill it with instructions, for running weatherforecast each time adesklets is executed.

After that you need to know your city code, so go to weather.com and type your city name:

Click on your city in the search results, and he will display the weather information, copy the link and copy the reference between “/local/” and “?from=”, see the following example:

http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/local/POXX0035?from=search_city

For my city the weather.com code is POXX0035.

After that do inside weatherforecast directory:

Code:

sudo gedit config.txt

and replace the location default code with your code for instance i’ve did for my city:

Code:

‘location’: ‘POXX0035’

After that to run your adesklet do:

For Gnome:

Code:

adesklets –nautilus

For KDE:

Code:

adesklets –kde

For Xfce:

Code:

adesklets –xfce4

For Enlightenment:

Code:

adesklets –e16

If you want that adesklets load at boot time, in Gnome you can go to System > Sessions, KDE and XFCE have equivalent ways of doing that, and add one of the previous lines to startup.

If you want to download and install another desklet you can do something similar what I’ve did to install the weatherforecast desklet, all desklets include a config.txt, and a python batch file for registering the desklet.

The following scenarios were tested in a AMD k6-II 450 Mhz, with 256 MB RAM: – Ubuntu (Gnome), and it worked fast. – Kubuntu (KDE), and it worked fast. – Xubuntu (XFCE), and it was even faster.

So you can take your own conclusions

Beryl

Note for BERYL users

Some users of Beryl have been experiencing transparency problems with desklets. Since there isn’t yet a solution, I found a workaround. This workaround was based on the Feisty instructions available at the Beryl project homepage. If you have any file already loading beryl-manager please remove it, or don’t load it.

Create the following file in your home directory

Code:

nano startberyl.sh

after that fill it with the following info:

File:startberyl.sh

#!/bin/sh adesklets –“your DE abbreviation” sleep 4 beryl-manager

and save the file.

The trick here is to run adesklets before beryl, and make a sleep of 4, in order to adesklets to load before beryl-manager. Pay attention if you have more applications in the startup, you should include then in that file, for instance in my system, i also load amsn at startup so my startberyl.sh file is:

Finally i had this script in my autostarted applications (In my XFCE system, Applications > Settings > Autostarted Applications)

This workaround worked on my Xubuntu Feisty system. In other systems the you may have to adjust the time of the sleep if it isn’t enough to do the trick.

Adesklets its the only desklets program, prepared to be installed in either Gnome, KDE and XFCE, without installing “half system” (like it would be required if you wanted to install gdesklets in another DE than Gnome).

I’ve uploaded the following screenshot, taken from Xubuntu Feisty, for people who want to see adesklets in action, before installing it.

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27255&d=1173737807

Hope this guide is useful to you!