Unsettings: Tool To Disable Global Menu, Overlay Scrollbars And Tweak Unity

12:25 AM

unsettings disable global menu overlay scrollbars

Unsettings is an Unity tweak tool that comes with some unique features, like: disable the global menu and overlay scrollbars or easily add applications to the systray whitelist. Besides these, the application also comes with features found in other Unity tweaking tools such as changing the Unity launcher look and behaviour, change the theme (icons, GTK, Metacity or cursor) and fonts and more.

Configuration options available in Unsettings (for version 0.04):
  • Launcher look: change launcher size, opacity, visibility (always visible or autohide), autohide animation, reveal trigger, edge responsiveness, urgent animation, launcher animation, blacklight
  • Dash: set Dash size, blur, enable or disable apps available for download and recently used apps
  • Panel: set the opacity, enable / disable opaque if maximized, set the applications available in the systray whitelist
  • Change fonts, hinting and antialiasing
  • Windows: enable / disable overlay scrollbars, global menu, click to focus, auto raise (as well as the delay) and change automaximize value
  • Desktop: set the number of vertical and horizontal workspaces, show / hide various icons on the desktop like the home, computer, trash or network icon, configure the next monitor pressure (for multi-monitor setups)
  • Change GTK, Window, Icon and cursor themes.

Using Unsettings, the changes aren't applied immediately and you'll have to click the "Apply settings" button for this which is a good thing as it prevents accidental changes. Also, please note that changing some settings like enabling / disabling the global menu, overlay scrollbars and others, requires you log out and then log back in to see the changes.

Unsettings also comes with options to save and load saved profiles as well as to reset all the Unity settings to default (that's another unique feature, not found in other GUI tools). The reset settings to default feature, however, doesn't work correctly in version 0.04 (I've reported the bug HERE, hopefully it will be fixed soon), so do not use it for now. I'll update the post when the reset settings option works correctly. You can, of course, manually set everything back to the default settings.

Here are some more Unsettings screenshots (under Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin):

unsettings screenshot

unsettings screenshot

unsettings screenshot

unsettings screenshot



Install Unity tweaking tool Unsettings in Ubuntu


Unsettings is a brand new tool so use it carefully! To add the Unsettings testing PPA and install it in Ubuntu 11.10 or 12.04, use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:diesch/testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unsettings

Note: I've only tested it with Unity 3D (with Compiz).

If you encounter bugs, report them @ Launchpad!

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Install GNOME Shell Global Menu In Ubuntu Via PPA

7:11 PM


Because I've got many requests for this, I've uploaded GNOME Shell Global Menu to the WebUpd8 GNOME 3 PPA.


For those who haven't seen it already, here's Global Menu for GNOME Shell in action (old video):





Before installing it, please read the following notes:
  • Global Menu for GNOME Shell is currently in alpha! 
  • It only works with GTK applications (it may not even work with all GTK apps), so it won't work with Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Java or even Qt apps;
  • it can crash GNOME Shell and you'll encounter bugs, including a bug that causes the windows for which the menu has been hidden to display a small gap where the menu used to be (this can be somewhat avoided by using a theme for which the gap is smaller, like Elementary for the titlebar and Zukitwo or Evolve GTK);
  • it may not work at all ;
  • I didn't create separate packages for each component, it's just one package that provides all the files. So if later on, GNOME Shell Global Menu will be uploaded to its official PPA, you'll have to remove this package.

So use it at your own risk!



Install GNOME Shell Global Menu in Ubuntu 11.10 via PPA



1. If you've previously tried to install GNOME Shell Global Menu from source, make sure you've completely removed any installed files:

sudo rm /usr/bin/gnome-globalmenu-manager
sudo rm -rf "/usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/GlobalMenu@globalmenu.org"
sudo rm /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/libglobalmenu*
sudo rm /usr/lib/gtk-3.0/modules/libglobalmenu*
sudo rm /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.globalmenu.manager.service
sudo rm /etc/profile.d/globalmenu.sh

2. Then, to add the WebUpd8 GNOME3 PPA and install GNOME Shell Global Menu, use the commands below:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/gnome3
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome3-globalmenu

3. Restart GNOME Shell (press ALT + F2 and enter "r") and activate GNOME Shell Global Menu extension using GNOME Tweak Tool, then log out and log back in. This is required and it won't work without logging out! If it still doesn't work, try a system restart.


Tip: if you want to launch an application without Global Menu, use the following command:
GTK_MODULES= APPLICATION-NAME

For example, to launch GIMP with the menu in its window and not on the top panel, use:
GTK_MODULES= gimp


For installing GNOME Shell Global Menu from source, see our initial post: Get A Global Menu In GNOME Shell



Remove GNOME Shell Global Menu


Simply disabling the extension isn't enough to get the menus back. You must remove GNOME Shell Global Menu:
sudo apt-get purge gnome3-globalmenu

(in the command above I've used "purge" so that /etc/profile.d/globalmenu.sh is removed too)

Then log out and log back in.

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GNOME Shell Global Menu - Instructions For GNOME Shell 3.2

7:08 PM

A quick update for those of you who want to use a global menu in GNOME Shell: WebUpd8 reader Micah got GNOME Shell Global Menu to work with GNOME Shell 3.2, so I've updated the original instructions in our post: Get A Global Menu In GNOME Shell (there are instructions for both GNOME Shell 3.0 and 3.2 - Fedora and Ubuntu).

GNOME Shell Global menu
GNOME Shell Global Menu running in GNOME Shell 3.2 (Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot)


In case you've missed it, here's the GNOME Shell Global Menu video I've recorded a while back:




Thanks to Micah (and also to Brian Baker and Marius-Andrei Danila - Micah fixes are based on their comments)!

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Get A Global Menu In GNOME Shell

4:39 AM

GNOME Shell global menu

Remember Gnome2 Global Menu? It's an applet that adds a global menu (the menu is displayed on the top panel) for Gnome 2 that wasn't very active for a long time because Ubuntu built its own global menu. But it's back!

Gnome Global Menu is currently being ported to GTK3 and an alpha version is already available for download so you can get a global menu in GNOME Shell. Here's a video with the new Gnome Global Menu running in Ubuntu 11.10 (with GNOME Shell):





The new GTK3 Gnome Global Menu only works with GTK applications (both GTK2 and GTK3) - so don't expect LibreOffice, Firefox or Qt applications to work, at least not yet. Also, it doesn't work with all GTK applications yet - I've only found one for now: Shutter, but there might be more.


GNOME Shell global menu

Here's a Fedora 15 screenshot too:

Fedora 15 globalmenu screenshot



Install Global Menu for Gnome Shell (Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux)


Gnome Shell global menu is available in AUR for ArchLinux users but if you don't use Arch, it will take quite a few steps to get it working. I've tried to make a how-to for Ubuntu / Fedora (tested in Ubuntu 11.10 with Gnome Shell 3.2.0 and Fedora 15) but there are quite a few things that could go wrong so you need to have some knowledge about compiling applications to get it working. Before proceeding, you obviously need to install build-essensial, etc.

Important: GNOME Shell Global Menu is currently in alpha so expect to find lots of bugs!

Let's get started!

1. Install Gnome Global Menu dependencies and Git:

For Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install git-core valac-0.12 libvala-0.12-dev libgtk-3-dev gobject-introspection libgirepository1.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev autotools-dev automake autoconf intltool libtool

For Fedora:
sudo yum install git vala-devel gtk3-devel gobject-introspection-devel gtk2-devel autogen automake autoconf intltool glibc-devel libtool


2. Get the latest Gnome Globalmenu via Git:
git clone git://github.com/gnome-globalmenu/gnome-globalmenu.git

3. Switch to the Gnome 3 branch and get the code:

cd gnome-globalmenu
git checkout gnome-3


4. Compile and install Gnome Shell Global Menu:

autoreconf --force --install --verbose
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make GTK2_MODULES_DIR=/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules GTK3_MODULES_DIR=/usr/lib/gtk-3.0/modules GLIB_COMPILE_SCHEMAS=/bin/true install
sudo glib-compile-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas

If you get an error about Vala not being version 0.12, remove Vala 0.10 and make sure 0.12 is installed (step 1).


5. Fixes:

For GNOME Shell 3.2: (Ubuntu 11.10 or Fedora 16)
sudo ln -sfv /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/libglobalmenu-gtk2.so /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/libglobalmenu-gtk.so
sudo sed -i 's/3\.2\.0/3\.2/' /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/GlobalMenu@globalmenu.org/metadata.json

For GNOME Shell 3.0.2 (Fedora 15):
sudo sed -i 's/3\.2\.0/3\.0/' /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/GlobalMenu@globalmenu.org/metadata.json
sudo ln -sfv /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/libglobalmenu-gtk2.so /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/modules/libglobalmenu-gtk.so

6. Now open GNOME Tweak Tool (install it in Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool) and enable the Global Menu extension. For GNOME Shell 3.0.x, you also need to restart GNOME Shell or log out and log back in.

To test if the installation was successful, close all running Gedit instances and run the following command in a terminal:

gnome-globalmenu-manager & GTK_MODULES=globalmenu-gtk gedit

Gedit should now use a global menu.


If you got this far and it's not working, it's most probably something to do with the Gnome Shell version in the GlobalMenu extension metadata file, so here's what do check/do:
  • Is the extension displayed in GNOME Tweak Tool? If it is, it should work. If it's not, it is indeed the version in the metadata file that's causing this
  • Go to /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/GlobalMenu@globalmenu.org and make sure the Gnome Shell version inside the metadata.json file matches your Gnome Shell version. After making modifications to this file, make sure you restart Gnome Shell and check Gnome Tweak Tool to see if the extension shows up.

7. Optional: if you want to have Gnome Shell Global Menu to start automatically at login for all the supported applications, run the following commands:

sudo cp ~/gnome-globalmenu/globalmenu.sh /etc/profile.d/
sudo chmod +x /etc/profile.d/globalmenu.sh

Then log out and log back in.



Removing GNOME Shell Global Menu


To remove it, use the commands below:
sudo rm -rf "/usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/GlobalMenu@globalmenu.org"
sudo rm /etc/profile.d/globalmenu.sh

Instructions based on ArchLinux forums and Aur Package - thanks! A big thanks also to Erkka Juhaninmäki for the tip!

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