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Only a Sith deals in absolutes. I will do what I must.
- Obi Wan Kanobi
- StarWars III - Revenge of the Sith

New start menu for Ubuntu - Deskbar

I love to use the keyboard. I hardly touch the mouse while doing my most routine tasks. My routine tasks involve opening a program or starting a movie. Using the keyboard to navigate through the start menu and spot the program takes more time than just using the mouse. If the program is not installed then it takes even more time since now I have to open the explorer go to the right folder and then open it. What if it is a movie file? Now with Ubuntu's new Deskbar applet (at least I saw it for the first time on Ubuntu 8.10), things are much easier. I hit Alt + F3 and simply type in the few letters of the program or file I am trying to work with. Almost instantly, you get a list of useful programs and files matching those letters and more useful actions. This is super. Sometimes, I have to open a folder containing all my logs. I don't want to open a specific log. So using the deskbar, I type in “log” and there comes up all my files. I then select log, press the right key and there I have “open location...”. This is great. I hardly use the start menu anymore. It is all Deskbar for me. Why don't I have one of these on Windows? ;)   Monday, February 02, 2009 at 11:03 PM. Comments: 0. Details Post/View comments

Scheduling shutdown in Ubuntu

To make it simple to schedule tasks use gnome-schedule. This little GUI application manages all “crontab” tasks (wow!). The application is available in Synaptic Package Manager. Here is a screenshot of gnome-schedule. Although it is quite simple to add tasks and programs that you want to schedule, scheduling shutdown is a little tricky. It turns out that only the root can schedule the command “shutdown -h now”. I tried using root (sudo) to give shutdown permission but couldn't get scheduled shutdown to work. So, to schedule shutdown, type “sudo gnome-schedule” on the terminal. The gnome-schedule application opens up to accept root tasks. The command line to use is “/sbin/shutdown -h now”. Configure the task to use this command and you are done.   at 10:58 PM. Comments: 1. Details Post/View comments