I’m glad I did because Unity is now actually a nice usable desktop. Especially if you value your screen real-estate and, on my ageing Samsung NC10, I certainly do.

It’s clearly geared towards novices though and, if you’re an experienced Linux user, that probably put you right off trying it. After using it for a while though I’ve found, that with a few choice tweaks, it’s not far from the desktop I’ve always wanted in Linux.

Making The Launcher Not Suck

Tasty tasty buttons of wonderment

If you use a web browser full screen, the first thing you might notice is that the lovely Ubuntu launcher on the left keeps appearing whenever you head for the back button. We can’t have that. Install CompizConfig Settings Manager (hereafter CCSM) if you haven’t already. Head straight for the Unity plugin under Desktop. I’ve decided to solve the problem by upping the edge reveal timeout to 1000, long enough for me to click the back button and move my mouse out of the way, but you could also disable the launcher reveal edge entirely. If you’re wanting to access it quickly (and you’re a geek so you will) then you can always hit the keyboard shortcut (the Windows key/super/meta by default).

Another problem with the panel is that it’s not very effective for switching running applications. Windows don’t always seem to show up there and, when they do, they’re grouped under one application icon and there doesn’t appear to be any way to change this. Worse, if you want to focus a window for one application without focussing another you’re going to find it highly fiddly since this launcher raises all application windows for that application.

I happen to quite like Expose so the Compiz equivalent has become my primary way of switching windows without using any extra precious screen space. If you’re going for a similar approach you’ll want to make it happen quickly, so find the Scale plugin under Window Management in CCSM and change the shortcut. I use the menu button (you know, that one between Alt Gr and Ctrl that nobody uses). Quick access from a key right next to my touchpad.

Test your settings thusly:

unity --reset

Focus-Follows-Mouse

This is CCSM again. General Options at the top and uncheck Click to Focus. Alt+Click should now raise a window and you can also use the window decorations. Nicely, clicking on the panel at the top of the screen seems to focus any maximised window that’s dumped its titlebar there. This is exactly what you want for focus-follows-mouse and it’s nice that it’s there without any further fiddling.

The major annoyance though? That panel at the top. The application menu lives there so you’ve no hope of activating the menu unless there’s a path from the window to the top bar that doesn’t touch another window. If the window loses focus, you haven’t got the menu.

I’ve got into the habit of hitting F10. You can customise this in the CCSM Unity plugin we saw earlier (perhaps the menu key, if you haven’t already assigned it to Scale) but I quite like F10. Fairly convenient on my netbook (your mileage may vary) and seems to make sense usability-wise because it’s at the top of the keyboard and the menu is at the top of the screen.

You could also install a MacOS X style dock if you’re that way inclined, but I can’t help you there. Well, I probably could. I won’t.

The Dash Sucks

Best not to look at it

Not much you can do about it at this point. This is essentially impossible to configure unless you fancy opening up the source code. That’s far outside the scope of this post, obviously. You can edit menu items with alacarte though and, if you start using it as an alternative to Alt+F2, it’s not that bad. I don’t know why it insists that all we want to do with our computers is browse the web, view photos, read emails and listen to music but at least it obeys application defaults.

I find it slow and awkward to browse, so the best approach is just don’t look. Close your eyes, hit your launcher shortcut, type what you want, wait a second (annoyingly) and hit enter.

Maybe it’ll be fixed in Precise Pangolin.

LibreOffice Global Menu

apt-get install lo-menubar

Next!

Get Your Taskbar Back

One slightly silly thing that Unity does is whitelist a set of applications that can use the notification area (or “taskbar”, if you prefer). Want to choose your own IM app (or anything else that uses the taskbar)? Open up a terminal and:

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['all']"

Fix Your CPU Scaling

I found my laptop, with Ubuntu, likes to drop its CPU governor to “conservative” when I unplug it. This would be fine except it’s a bit too right-wing for my tastes, keeping my CPU locked at 800MHz. I’ve decided I can see the advantages to this and have chosen not to fiddle it, instead I’ve put a CPU indicator in the panel that allows me to switch if I want.

apt-get install indicator-cpufreq

Make It Blue!

Everybody likes blue, nobody likes orange. This has been determined by science.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/themes
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ambiance-blue-theme gnome-tweak-tool

Gnome Tweak Tool is there so you can switch to your nice new blue theme.

Things To Love

• The global menu bar is a lovely idea for netbooks. The extra screen space saved really makes a difference and it feels so neat and efficient.
• That sound indicator is actually really clever. It looks as though you’re tied in to Banshee with it but you can also install other audio apps and it’ll control those. I was pleasantly surprised to find it works with Spotify.
• The battery life indicator has a setting (available just by left-clicking it) that can show how much time you have left on battery right there in the panel.
• Take a moment to look at the menu in the far top-right you use for shutting down. I had system settings pinned in my launcher for ages before I actually stopped to look at this thing and notice it’s in there. Also has your attached devices and update notifications.
• It’s pretty. I know, but I’m a sucker for attractive UI design.

Unity, depending somewhat on how you like to interact with your PC, might well be ready to be your desktop. Don’t just install the live CD and get angry at it for five minutes, take some time to find out how you can tweak it. You may have to adjust your working practices slightly but it’s a surprisingly usable desktop for not-novices.

I’d actually recommend Linux Mint for novices, oddly enough. But that’s another post. Maybe.

Earlier: Skype and PulseAudio

Skype and PulseAudio have never really seen eye-to-eye on my netbook. Maybe if you have some kind of magical super computer that can manage more than 1.6GHz you don’t have this problem, but for us mere mortals it’s a pain.

PulseAudio is hammered into Ubuntu pretty hard by 11.10. Removing it, as I have discovered, tends to break certain things and leaves you entirely without any method of volume control. Yes, I know you can hack something together with keyboard shortcuts, but I like the little speaker icon. So PulseAudio is something I’ve grudgingly learned to live with.

Skype is not quite so grown up. In fact, I believe this applies to any kind of microphone usage where PulseAudio is immediately infected with a nasty case of “the stupid” and gobbles your CPU leaving none left for the application actually doing the recording.

Audio devices? What audio devices?

So then along came pasuspender.  ”pasuspender skype” used to be a lovely way to set PulseAudio aside to one corner so it wouldn’t get in the way of Skype using the proper audio devices. Except the latest version of Skype (or the latest version of PulseAudio, hard to say) broke it. Skype no longer displays a list of sound devices if you have PulseAudio, it just sees PulseAudio and (if you suspended it with pasuspender) makes no noise whatsoever. See this blog post for Skype’s poor explanation of this horrific behaviour.

Sub-optimal, I’m sure you’ll agree.

But further down that blog post, (in the comments, since Skype employees are rarely as helpful as the users) you’ll find this little gem:

===================== WORK-AROUND =====================
set PULSE_SERVER to 127.0.0.1 and run Skype. PulseAudio doesn’t listen on TCP by default, so 127.0.0.1 is a good choice for most users – it will get an instant connection refusal and fallback to ALSA.You can also add a shortcut in GNOME to do this instead of using the command line. Drag-copy Skype to your panel, then in its preferences use a command:
/bin/sh -c “PULSE_SERVER=127.0.0.1 skype”

Probably worth noting in some FAQ/HOWTO. This is much better option than uninstalling PA completely.

Oh, those audio devices!

There you have it. This gets my “dirty hack of the week award”, if such a thing were to exist. You’re telling Skype there’s an audio server it can talk to on 127.0.0.1 (there isn’t) and it promptly goes to look for PulseAudio at 127.0.0.1, doesn’t find it and just uses the proper audio devices (127.0.0.1 is running PulseAudio, but not listening on the network by default). You’re basically lying to Skype, saying its friend’s outside, and shutting it out in the cold.

Thanks, lamieur!

You monster.

So load up alacarte, change the Skype entry to run this:

/bin/sh -c "PULSE_SERVER=127.0.0.1 skype"