2 posts tagged “desktop art”

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Desktop Experiments

Jun 18, 2007
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Hi All

Here I go with some more desktop experimentation ; with a little help from some of our Ubuntu users, I found the color gradient secret. Of course, downloading and applying wallpaper is as easy in Linux as it is in Windows. The only thing I have not seen in Windows is the color gradient additive to desktop wallpaper(it might be in some versions of Vista).

Screenshot24

The top half of the section gives the user the ability to apply a single color or color gradient to the desktop: however, before it can be applied to a downloaded wallpaper, the wallpaper file itself must be changed.

Most of the time, the wallpaper I have seen comes in a jpeg file. The one pictured (called Alien One, by Steve Hayhurst) is just such a file, so in order to change it, I opened the file up using the GIMP, went into the layers option --> transparency -- > add alpha channel. Then I select the entire picture, go to layer -- > transparency --> alpha to selection. This makes the picture somewhat transparent so that color gradient will enhance it.
After completing this process on the GIMP, I saved the file as a .png(portable network graphics) So in the instance of the Steve Hayhurst file, the effect of this process changes the above image to this.

Screenshot25

Once again, this is just a little experimentation or playing with the software, that I sometimes do just for giggles.

Cheers!

Current issues with my system

Jun 15, 2007
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Hi All

Currently, the main issue I am having is some slowdowns when loading the applications(such as Mozilla, Abiword, Open Office etc). The issue started occuring a few weeks ago, sometime after installing java; that might have something to do with it.

Of course, the idea behind XFCE is to have a thin OS that won eat up a lot of systemrecourses. I will get some help from the forums. In the meantime, I will display a snapshot of the desktop itself

Screenshot22

On the top panel, I have the XFCE menu, Firefox, Gaim, CPU monitor, and Mozilla Suite. The bottom panel, has the 4 desktop areas and the camera for taking screenshots. The camera can be useful for displaying more discriptive content.

The icons I have are a game called Dodgindaimond(which I might remove), files, the terminal and Thunderbird mail client. Most of the time, you can drag and drop icons from the main menu or you can right click and make a launcher. Of course, it has been awhile since I have done that.

One odd thing on this issue. At one point, I closed X and restarted and both panels were gone and I could not start them back up unless I went to the terminal and started them. When the panels were gone, my system was traveling at Warp 9! Therefore, I suspect, the slowdown issue may have something to do with the Xorg.config file. Again, I will post a resolution at a later date.

Still working on Bash. For info on Bash, consult Linuxcommand.org. Its a good starting point.

Cheers

PatrickXFCE.

Update; thanx to another Ubuntu user, I have found a temporary solution. I went to the terminal and typed in killall xfce4-panel and that seems to have stopped the slowdowns. In fact, I have 4 tabs open in Firefox with no signs of any slowdows at all. The user named "Happy Man" said this.