Like many of my articles, this is a brief tutorial on some useful (to me) tweaks I have added to a new distro. Be advised: this is my first foray back into the world of an Ubuntu-based distro in some 12+ years. Yes, I used Ubuntu in the long ago and far away.
The reason I’m back playing in the *buntu sandbox has to do with a ‘new’ laptop I bought from Dell. This little ‘bugger’ (laptop) is really not happy with arch distros or even Debian distros. However, my new Inspiron is Ubuntu certified! (Which is my normal test for qualifying a laptop for use in the Linux world; oh well, so much for that plan.)
Nonetheless, my Inspiron (problem child) does work well with Ubuntu. Given I like tilers, I thought Pop! OS (a gnome-based tiler) would be fun to use. And, it is. I like it quite a bit; although I have to admit, the OS is a tad resource hungry. But then, memory is cheap and my laptop has 24GB.
The specs on my machine running a bunch of open windows including Firefox, gnome-terminal, geany & calibre…may be found at the end (bottom) of the page.
Moving along to a couple small tweaks I have made on my Pop!OS install, and why I have chosen to add these ‘custom’ features.
Keybindings Viewer
First, I have added a Zenity dialog which provides a listing of my tiling keybindings. In this case, these are native Pop!OS tiling funtions. I use this Zenity dialog (and other similar dialogs) on my tilers, because I am old, feeble and as Winnie the Pooh says:
“When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”
— A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
This is what the function looks like:
The code for the Zenity dialog is simple html:
The keybinding I use is for the F2 key. and is:
zenity --text-info --width=800 --height=766 --html --filename=/home/mark/.local/share/help-files/shortcuts.html --ok-label="Quit"
The next function I added to my install is a rofi dialog that lists all active tasks. Yes, there is already such a function provided natively, I just like mine better. So, now I have two! Yay, me (as my daughter would say).
Workspace Viewers
Here’s what they look like…
Native Pop!OS Workspace viewer:
My rofi pop-up:
Here’s the keybinding to get rofi to work…rofi -modi window -show window -show-icons -sidebar-mode
I re-wrote the rofi .rasi code so that the rofi layout matches my desktop, see:
Conky
The last item I have added (I’m sure I’m not done yet…) is a conky for the desktop. I love knowing what’s ‘going on’ on my machine(s).
Here’s what it looks like:
I will assume you know that you need to install conky and place it in your autostart in order to have it magically appear. You may need to tweak some of the settings to make them work correctly on your hardware also. Here’s the code for the conky:
Remember, like with all of my work, I am able to provide the following assurance(s):
- It is almost certainly going to work until it breaks; although I have to admit it may never work and that would be sad.
- When/if it does break, you may keep all of the pieces.
- If you find my materials helpful, both you & I will be happy, at least for a little while.
- My advice is worth every penny you paid for it!
Here are the specs I promised:
mark@pop-os:~$ inxi -Fxxxz
System:
Kernel: 5.4.0-7629-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 9.3.0
Desktop: Gnome 3.36.2 wm: gnome-shell dm: LightDM 1.30.0
Distro: Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS base: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Inspiron 5493 v: N/A serial:
Chassis: type: 10 serial:
Mobo: Dell model: 0M4FW1 v: A00 serial: UEFI: Dell v: 1.8.0
date: 03/24/2020
Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 39.9 Wh condition: 39.9/42.0 Wh (95%) volts: 13.0/11.4
model: BYD DELL 1VX1H9A type: Li-ion serial: status: Full
Device-1: hidpp_battery_0 model: Logitech Wireless Mouse M510
serial: charge: 55% (should be ignored) rechargeable: yes
status: Discharging
CPU:
Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i5-1035G1 bits: 64 type: MT MCP
arch: Ice Lake rev: 5 L2 cache: 6144 KiB
flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
bogomips: 19046
Speed: 1215 MHz min/max: 400/3600 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 978 2: 913
3: 962 4: 971 5: 1033 6: 929 7: 941 8: 941
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0
chip ID: 8086:8a56
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.8 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa
compositor: gnome-shell resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel UHD Graphics (ICL GT1) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.0.4
direct render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: Intel Smart Sound Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel
v: kernel bus ID: 00:1f.3 chip ID: 8086:34c8
Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.0-7629-generic
Network:
Device-1: Realtek RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet vendor: Dell
driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 3000 bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 10ec:8136
IF: enp1s0 state: down mac:
Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
vendor: Dell driver: ath10k_pci v: kernel port: 3000 bus ID: 02:00.0
chip ID: 168c:0042
IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac:
Device-3: Qualcomm Atheros type: USB driver: btusb bus ID: 1-10:6
chip ID: 0cf3:e009
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 990.18 GiB used: 635.79 GiB (64.2%)
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Silicon Power model: SPCC M.2 PCIe SSD
size: 953.87 GiB speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: rev: ECFM22.5
scheme: GPT
ID-2: /dev/sda type: USB vendor: Generic model: SD MMC MS PRO
size: 30.09 GiB serial: rev: 1.00 scheme: MBR
ID-3: /dev/sdb type: USB model: Kindle Internal Storage size: 6.22 GiB
serial: rev: 0401
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 59.10 GiB used: 15.00 GiB (25.4%) fs: ext4
dev: /dev/nvme0n1p4
ID-2: swap-1 size: 2.03 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/dm-0
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 68.0 C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 0
Info:
Processes: 285 Uptime: 3h 53m Memory: 23.26 GiB used: 3.67 GiB (15.8%)
Init: systemd v: 245 runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 9.3.0 alt: 9 Shell: bash
v: 5.0.16 running in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.0.38
You must be logged in to post a comment.