I've installed Ubuntu on my netbook twice today (don't ask). Probably like the rest of you, part of installing Ubuntu involves going through and changing all of the moronic settings that Gnome comes with as default. This includes changing the default terminal background from white to black, changing font sizes, setting toolbars to "icon only", setting up hotkeys, etc.

It was getting a little annoying to do all the time, so I finally went through gconf-editor and found the settings I change, and wrote up a script to do all of them at once. Figured I'd post it here, not only so I can use it later, but so you can derive from it if you wish. It's pretty simple, just using the command line utility "gconftool". Here it is:

gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false
gconftool -s --type string /apps/metacity/general/action_double_click_titlebar toggle_shade
gconftool -s --type string /desktop/gnome/interface/toolbar_style icons
gconftool -s --type string /apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_font "Bitstream Vera Sans 9"
gconftool -s --type string /apps/metacity/general/titlebar_font "Bitstream Vera Sans Bold 9"
gconftool -s --type string /desktop/gnome/interface/monospace_font_name "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono 9"
gconftool -s --type string /desktop/gnome/interface/document_font_name "Bitstream Vera Sans 9"
gconftool -s --type string /desktop/gnome/interface/font_name "Bitstream Vera Sans 9"
gconftool -s --type bool /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/allow_bold false
gconftool -s --type bool /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/use_theme_colors false
gconftool -s --type bool /apps/gnome-terminal/global/confirm_window_close false
gconftool -s --type string /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/foreground_color '#FFFFFFFFFFFF'
gconftool -s --type string /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/background_color '#000000000000'
gconftool -s --type string /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/palette "#000000000000:#AAAA00000000:#0000AAAA0000:#AAAA55550000:#00000000AAAA:#AAAA0000AAAA:#0000AAAAAAAA:#AAAAAAAAAAAA:#555555555555:#FFFF55555555:#5555FFFF5555:#FFFFFFFF5555:#55555555FFFF:#FFFF5555FFFF:#5555FFFFFFFF:#FFFFFFFFFFFF"
gconftool -s --type string /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/scrollbar_position hidden
gconftool -s --type bool /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/default_show_menubar false
gconftool -s --type int /apps/metacity/general/num_workspaces 4
gconftool -s --type string /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/switch_to_workspace_1 "<Control>F1"
gconftool -s --type string /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/switch_to_workspace_2 "<Control>F2"
gconftool -s --type string /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/switch_to_workspace_3 "<Control>F3"
gconftool -s --type string /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/switch_to_workspace_4 "<Control>F4"
gconftool -s --type string /apps/nautilus/icon_view/default_zoom_level small
gconftool -s --type bool /apps/nautilus/desktop/computer_icon_visible true
gconftool -s --type bool /apps/nautilus/desktop/home_icon_visible true
gconftool -s --type bool /apps/nautilus/desktop/network_icon_visible true
gconftool -s --type bool /apps/nautilus/desktop/trash_icon_visible true

I'll probably keep editing this article and adding new things as I find them.

Xubuntu has been rethinking their default applications for their next release, Karmic. Personally, I think it’s great, but not just because of the topic of this article.

They are considering Exaile for their new default music player, and it looks like it’s winning! This isn’t the first time Xubuntu has considered Exaile. I can’t remember how long ago it happened the last time, but for understandable reasons, Listen was chosen instead. Exaile was an infant at the time, and was missing a lot of the features that should be standard in a player.

Now, however, with Exaile 0.3 progressing the way it is, I believe it can make it. I’ll keep my fingers crossed!

Next Tuesday (July 28th) starting at 14:00 GMT (7:00 am MST) the Exaile team will be hosting the very first Exaile bugday. Our goal will be to hammer out as many bugs as we possibly can. SiDi has set up a Launchpad Group that will have it’s own branch (based from the 0.3 trunk) so that people wanting to participate will be able to commit their changes.

In order to attend, please join our IRC channel at irc.freenode.net/#exaile. Even if you don’t plan on fixing any bugs, it should be a good time (that is, if you’re a nerdy Exaile user).

If you have questions and are too lazy to get on IRC, please email our mailing list: exaile-users@googlegroups.com

Exaile development has been very active in the past few weeks. We are working very hard to make our August goal. As well as picking up mathbr as a developer, we’ve had quite a few contributors adding/fixing a lot of things. If you’re like me, this screenshot makes you drool (click on it to get a larger view):

The super sexy contextual information panel you see on the left there is being done by Guillaume Lecomte. The new rating widget you see in the popup menu was done by Steve Dodier. Steve has been submitting patch after patch getting things fixed and new things added.

Exaile 0.3 is looking better than ever. I’m excited!

Don’t worry, we’re still here, and still hard at work. I thought I would give an update since it’s been quite a while since the last one.

We’ve decided that we’re going to shoot hard to get a 0.3 release ready for the August Ubuntu feature freeze. This may mean that 0.3 doesn’t have all the features that 0.2.14 had, but I feel that it’s got enough. However, as a trade off, 0.3 will have a lot of other features that 0.2.14 never had.

Currently, there appear to be a lot of people already using 0.3. User contributions to Exaile itself are higher right now than they’ve ever been. There are currently 27 user contributed or developer written plugins in the repository.

One of our awesome users contributed a patch that enabled rating tracks by just clicking on the appropriate star in the playlist, much like Rhythmbox does. I’ve tried to do this myself a few times and have never had much success. Gone, now, is the old rating dropdown, which leaves us with a lot of free space in the upper right of the UI. We haven’t even discussed what might go there, but perhaps an equalizer interface would be useful (please please please don’t take this as law, we really haven’t said so much as two words about this).

Mathias Brodala has been a friend of the project. Initially, he did German translations, and then he was given the job of being the translation manager. Recently, he’s been learning Python and contributing with code. Mathias, I didn’t even know you knew how to program. What a pleasant surprise :)

Anyway, that’s it for today. Things are moving along quite nicely. Hopefully we can make our August goal.