KDE, Gnome and Nautilus

After I bought the new system, I am using Linux(Fedora Core 3) and I have not looked back once. I am configuring the OS to play according to my rules - a daunting but fun task.

KDE vs Gnome

I always used Gnome eariler because I thought KDE was very slow and bloated. But when I tried KDE on the new system, I found how to turn down all the effects that was slowing the system. Even better, I could change the appearnce of the window manager to that of Win 98 - the OS I am most comfortable with.

You can do this using this app...
KMenu -> Preferences -> More Preferences -> Desktop Settings Wizard
Or you could do it the hard way - using the preferences control panel in KDE.

Nautilus vs Konqueror

One thing I still don't like about KDE is its File Manager - Konqueror. I still prefer the simpler and much faster Nautilus. You could write some nautilus scripts to improve the functionality of nautilus - and then it is unbeatable.

Some the scripts I use are given below. To install these script, just create a file with this data, give it the permission 755 and put it in the folder '~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/'. Nautilus looks in this folder for all its executable scripts.

Backuper (By Me)

# Backuper V 1.00.A
# Creates a Backup of the selected file and appends a timestamp to it 
#  in the format '<Filename.ext>_Feb06_20.45.58.bak'
echo -n "cp '$1' '$1_">/tmp/backuper.sh
date "+%b%d_%H.%M.%S.bak'">>/tmp/backuper.sh
sh /tmp/backuper.sh

Open Terminal

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# Open terminal here
#
# Nautilus script that opens a gnome-terminal at the current location, if it's
# a valid one. This could be done in shell script, but I love Perl!.
#
# 20020930 -- Javier Donaire <jyuyu@fraguel.org>
# http://www.fraguel.org/~jyuyu/
# Licensed under the GPL v2+
#
# Modified by: Dexter Ang [thepoch@mydestiny.net]
# 2003-12-08: Modified for Gnome 2.4
#  - Added checking if executed on Desktop "x-nautilus-desktop:///"
#    so that it opens in /home/{user}/Desktop

#use strict;
$_ = $ENV{'NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI'};
if ($_ and m#^file:///#) {
  s/%([0-9A-Fa-f]{2})/chr(hex($1))/eg;
  s#^file://##;
  exec "gnome-terminal --working-directory='$_'";
}

# Added 2003-12-08 Dexter Ang
if ($_ == "x-nautilus-desktop:///") {
  $_ = $ENV{'HOME'};
  $_ = $_.'/Desktop';
  exec "gnome-terminal --working-directory='$_'";
}

Search Here

#!/usr/bin/perl
# Nautilus script that opens the gnome-search-tool(Actions->Search for Files) tool in the
# selected directory.
# 
# Author : Binny V A
# http://www.geocities.com/binnyva
# Copied from 'Open Termianl Here' Script 

#use strict;
#use warnings;

$_ = $ENV{'NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI'};
if ($_ and m#^file:///#) {
  s/%([0-9A-Fa-f]{2})/chr(hex($1))/eg;
  s#^file://##;
  exec "gnome-search-tool --path='$_' --contains=";
}

if ($_ == "x-nautilus-desktop:///") {
  $_ = $ENV{'HOME'};
  $_ = $_.'/Desktop';
  exec "gnome-search-tool --path='$_' --contains=";
}

Filed Under...

• personal
• kde
• gnome
• linux
• shell
• script
• nautilus