If you’ve “tweaked” Gnome beyond repair, by deleting its settings folders, Gnome can be restored to default looks.

First stop the GDM service

$ sudo service gdm stop

After that login to shell with your username/password and delete following folders in home directory

rm -rf .gnome2 .gconf .gconfd

When done, start the GDM service and login as usual.

$ sudo service gdm start

Gnome should look just like after the fresh install.

I am a huge fan of Gnome Terminator. Terminator is great because it allows multiple terminal instances to be run in a single window.

Since I usually run two or three separate terminal windows, I ofter find myself resizing the main window – so other istances can fit nicely. This can get very boring and time consuming when you need to do something on the fly.

After snooping around the help files, I found this nice little parameter which resizes and positions the Terminator window on my screen.

/usr/bin/terminator --geometry=1024x500+128+200

This command line can be added to Gnome-do or Gnome panel shortcuts, and it works great.

The first two parameters (1024×500) set the width and height, and the other two(128+200) set the padding from left and top of the screen.

Some two weeks ago I stumbled upon a cute little application called “Do” at http://do.davebsd.com. Do helps out in a way that it allows quicker access to programs and it performs a set of actions on those programs, all done from keyboard of course. I decided to give it a try after I saw that it comes with a dock too.

You need to install a lot of dependencies (build-dep works only for older version)

$ sudo apt-get install automake1.9 bzr mono-gmcs libmono-cairo2.0-cil gtk-sharp2 libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libgnome-vfs2.0-cil libgtk2.0-dev libtool intltool gnome-sharp2 ca-certificates bazaar gnome-keyring-sharp-cli gnome-desktop-sharp2 libgconf2-dev monodevelop-nunit

Since the latest version was not yet in Ubuntu repository, I downloaded the source for Do:

$ wget http://edge.launchpad.net/do/trunk/0.8.0/+download/gnome-do-0.8.0.tar.gz
$ tar zxvf gnome-do-0.8.0.tar.gz
$ cd gnome-do-0.8.0
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Compiling Do’s plugins from source did not do the trick for me. Installation was complaining about Banshee. I did not have Banshee installed, but even after installing it I got the same error.
(Hmm… time to dig into wiki)

So the right thing to do was to install plugins using bzr (distribution version control system)

$ sudo apt-get install bzr
$ bzr branch lp:do-plugins
$ cd do-plugins
$ ./autogen.sh
$ make
$ sudo make install

To start Do run:

$ gnome-do &

Dock does not come turned on by default. To get it running hit “Super key + Space”, type “Preferences” and hit “Enter”. On Appearance tab select “Dockey”.

Installed plugins should be enabled as well. Navigate to “Plugins” tab and check the box next to a plugin you like.

On “General” tab make sure that you check “Start GNOME DO at login” option.

You can use drag and drop to add new shortcuts to dock easily. Dock can be resized in width and scaled, which is great.

I have been using Do heavily in past two weeks and it has a thumbs up for sure.