Gnome goodies: add hardware sensor in panel. add stock indicator in the panel.

Today we will add two more applets to the gnome panel. You might want to look into the past article about gnome applets that were configured before. Okay, let's start by installing an applet that will show hardware temperature.

There is a nice package, psensor and it can be install as easy as

$ sudo apt-get install psensor
$ psensor

So just launch the application from the terminal, then see the screenshot below.



On the left, I have configured three temperature to be plotted. Because hardware in different computer are different, so you can enable plotting for different hardware. On the right, it is the psensor preferences, and I have enabled checkbox for Launch on session startup and Hide window on startup.

Next, we will install a stock applet as a favor for a friend. Because in debian, this is not available and now we will download from ubuntu repository. Point your browser to https://launchpad.net/~ce3a/+archive/ubuntu/indicator-stocks/+packages and download latest version of indicator-stocks. As of this writing, I'm installing indicator-stocks_0.2.4-0ubuntu1_amd64

user@localhost:~/Desktop$ sudo dpkg -i indicator-stocks_0.2.4-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb 
Selecting previously unselected package indicator-stocks.
(Reading database ... 321688 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack indicator-stocks_0.2.4-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking indicator-stocks (0.2.4-0ubuntu1) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of indicator-stocks:
 indicator-stocks depends on libappindicator0.1-cil; however:
  Package libappindicator0.1-cil is not installed.

dpkg: error processing package indicator-stocks (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.13.3-2) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.57) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.22-1) ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.13-1) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 indicator-stocks

As you can read above, there is a dependency problem during installing indicator-stocks. So just use apt-get install for the remaining package. It should be simple process to resolved that using apt. So it is finally installed, check the screenshot below. You can configured a few symbols, it is from finance.yahoo.com.



That's it, from the past and in this articles, I hope your desktop should present as much information as possible.

Gnome goodies: common keyboard shortcut. Remembering state of num lock.

If you have been using linux and there is a key on your keyboard with windows logo, it is known as Super key. This super key will be widely used in gnome 3. Today, we will learn some of the commonly used keyboard shortcut. You can also find other keyboard shortcut in gnome-control-center keyboard shortcut.

Keyboard Shortcut	Description
Super+Up	Maximize window
Super+Down	Unmaximaze window
Super+Left Arrow	Fill half to the left side of the screen
Super+Right Arrow	Fill half to the right side of the screen
Super+click then move	Move window anywhere on screen
Super+m	To bring up a message tray at the bottom of the screen.
alt+tab	switch between applications
alt+`	switch through window of current applications.
super	bring up a new apperance known as activities overview
drag application to dash	this is to add an application which you used often to the dash so you can easily accessed.
drop application to grid	remove application from dash by dragging from dash and then drop into the grid
ctrl+alt+up arrow	switch to the workspace above
type in a file window	To quickly search for file in the file windows.
alt+PrintScn	take a screenshot of the current window only.
shift+PrintScn	select a specific area of the screen.

Not sure why each time of operating system reboot, the state of num lock on keyboard get forgotten. This is really quite puzzling considering gnome has been evolve for so many cycle. But that's okay, we will learn to configure gnome so that it will remember the state of num lock between system boot. Let's launch dconf-editor and expand in the tree in such path. org -> gnome -> settings-daemon -> peripherals -> keyboard. Check remember-numlock-state and check the screenshot below.



With this article, I hope you navigate better in gnome-shell environment.