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Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Gnome Pie Application Launcher Sees New Release

Gnome Pie 0.6 (and 0.6.1 quickly after, to fix a nasty bug) was released recently, bringing new features such as half and quarter pies, a new simple theme along with other interesting changes and bug fixes.

For those not familiar with Gnome Pie, this is an application launcher inspired by a World of Warcraft addon called OPie.

The app consists of multiple "pies", each being triggered by a keyboard shortcut or mouse button you set. Each pie has its own role: applications, bookmarks, main menu, multimedia (play/pause/previous/next), a pie that allows you to control the focused window (maximize, close, etc.) and so on.

You can create new pies or delete the already existing pies so you have full control on what each pie does. Furthermore, you can choose from 10 Gnome Pie themes.

That's not all! You can even access a pie from a dock (and even from the desktop), such as Plank or Unity Launcher:

A pie launched from the Unity Launcher, with "automatically select the best pie shape" option enabled

To do this, simply drag and drop a pie from the Gnome Pie settings to the dock.

Changes in Gnome Pie 0.6/0.6.1:

it's now possible to have half and quarter pies. You can select the shape yourself or let Gnome Pie do this automatically, depending on the mouse cursor position on the screen;
users can now define a maximum number of slices per pie. If there are more, you will have the possibility to scroll through the pie with your mouse wheel or Page-Up & Page-Down;
a new simple theme was added and it's best used with the new half pie layout, when opening pies from a dock (the theme doesn't have labels or a center graphic);
updated existing themes;
Gnome Pie has a new icon;
added option to warp the mouse cursor to the pie center;
Bug fixes:

the faked background transparency for desktop environments without compositing works now close to panels and when the mouse moved while opening the pie;
an old bug has been fixed which caused Gnome-Pie to hang at 100% CPU usage occasionally;
a bug has been fixed which caused tree view items to have no icons in the settings menu;
fixed invisible drag and drop icons;
fixed delayed mode being re-enabled if the pie was opened once before being configured;
fixed quick action getting activated when the user clicked outside activation range;
it's now possible to save trigger modes (delayed, turbo, etc.) even if no binding is defined;
changed WM_CLASS which enables launchers to track windows properly;

Below you can watch a video in which Simon Schneegans, the Gnome Pie developer, presents the new features in Gnome Pie 0.6.1:

Gnome-Pie 0.6.1 from Simon Schneegans.

Gnome Pie should work on most desktop environments but note that in GNOME Shell, the app doesn't show up in the tray, which means you can't access its preferences directly - however, there's a workaround for this issue: simply launch Gnome Pie twice and the second time, its Preferences dialog should show up instead of launching the app a second time.

Install Gnome Pie in Ubuntu or Linux Mint

To install the latest Gnome Pie in Ubuntu 15.04, 14.10 or 14.04 / Linux Mint 17.1 or 17 and derivatives, you can use its official PPA. Add the PPA and install Gnome Pie using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:simonschneegans/testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-pie

If you're not using Ubuntu / Linux Mint, you can download the Gnome Pie source via GitHub.

Once installed, launch Gnome Pie from the menu / Dash and then use CTRL + ALT + A to launch some applications, CTRL + Alt + B for bookmarks, etc. You can find all these keyboard shortcuts, change them or create new "pies" in the Gnome Pie Preferences (which you can access via its AppIndicator / Notification Area icon).

Xfdashboard: GNOME Shell Like Dashboard For Xfce

Xfdashboard is a GNOME Shell like dashboard for Xfce: it displays an overview of the currently open applications, allowing the user to switch between them, an application launcher / finder as well as a workspace selector.

Xfdashboard features:

windows view: shows all windows of the current workspace (with live previews) - you can use this to switch between applications / windows or close them;
applications view: it's like a menu, showing all installed applications with categories, etc. - using this view, you can launch applications or add them to your favorites (which will add a shortcut in the quicklaunch / left panel);
favorites: you can add application shortcuts to your favorites - the shortcuts will be displayed in the left panel, just like in GNOME Shell. To remove an application from the favorites, drag and drop it onto the application icon (first icon from the top) - the icon should turn into a delete icon while dragging one of the favorites;
search view: when you start typing, a search view is displayed, useful to quickly find and launch an application;
workspace selector: shows each workspace with live window previews in their stacked order. Note that the live previews might not work if you're using a window manager that doesn't allow this, such as Xfwm4 (in that case, only non-minimized windows of the current active workspace will be updated and the application icon will be displayed for the other windows). You can switch between workspaces by using the mouse wheel (in which case Xfdashboard won't be closed) or by simply clicking on a workspace (in which case, Xfdashboard will be closed);
theming support.

Here are a few more Xfdashboard screenshots:

While Xfdashboard was created for use under Xfce, it can be used in any desktop environment however, it has a couple of Xfce dependencies: xfconf and garcon.

The application is great for those who want the GNOME Shell Activities functionality (or at least most of it) under a light desktop environment such as Xfce, but there are two things which need to be improved: in my test, Xfdashboard was a bit slow when searching for applications and also, its design needs some improvements in my opinion. The latter might be solved by using a theme since Xfdashboard supports theming, but I couldn't find any themes for it. I see that the app is under heavy development so hopefully these will be solved soon.

For how to use Xfdashboard, see THIS guide. You may also want to check out the Xfdashboard Xfconf settings, which are documented HERE.

Note: to quit / close Xfdashboard, either select a window or start an application or simply press ESC (if you've entered some text in the search box, ESC will clear the search so in that case, you need to press ESC twice to close Xfdashboard).

Xfdashboard video

Below you can watch an Xfdashboard demo video (also includes some hints on how to use Xfdashboard - make sure the video annotations are enabled) I've recorded in Ubuntu 14.04 - Xfce session:

(direct video link; for more videos, subscribe to the failsdownloads YouTube channel!)

How to install and set up Xfdashboard in Xubuntu 14.10, 14.04 or 13.10 / Linux Mint Xfce 17 or 16

Xfdashboard can be installed in Xubuntu 14.10, 14.04 and 13.10 (as well as Linux Mint Xfce 17 or 16) by using the Xubuntu Extras PPA. To add the PPA and install Xfdashboard, copy/paste the following commands in a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/extras
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xfdashboard

Arch Linux users can install Xfdashboard via AUR: stable | git.

For other Linux distributions, grab the source code from the Xfdashboard GitHub page.

Once you've installed Xfdashboard, you need to set up a way to launch it:

A. The easiest way is to search for Xfdashboard in the Xfce menu and drag and drop it to the panel - you can then simply click its icon to launch Xfdashboard.

B. Some of you will probably prefer to launch it by using a keyboard shortcut so below you'll find instructions for how to set up a keyboard shortcut in Xfce to launch Xfdashboard:

1. Open the Xfce Settings, select Keyboard and click on the Application Shortcuts tab:

2. Click "Add" and in the window that pops up, enter "xfdashboard" as the command, then click OK:

3. Next, you'll be prompted to press a keyboard shortcut which will be used to show Xfdashboard:

Here, enter the keys you want to use and you're done (important: make sure that the key combination you've set isn't already in use!).

C. Of course, using a keyboard shortcut or a launcher aren't the only ways of activating Xfdashboard. For instance, you can get a complete GNOME Shell "feel" by opening Xfdashboard using hot corners: you can assign commands to screen edges / corners under Xfce by using Brightside.