Fixing the not quite transparent panel issue

In the process of trying out new themes for my Ubuntu system I came across the elementary theme from the Elementary Project (theme files came from their PPA on Launchpad), which I find I rather like, except for one thing. My top panel in GNOME should be pretty transparent but there are some sections that show a very visible background. It doesn’t happen much,  just for a few applets, namely the GnoMenu, timer and the clock applets. That’s bugged the daylights out of me, but I finally found a solution for the problem.

While perusing the newer (to me) posts on the Jovial June Screen shots thread on the Ubuntu Forums user TheNessus asked koleoptero about the problem that he had on his system with a theme that koleoptero made.

I’m using your gtk theme but cannot make the panel transaprent, it only makes parts of it transparent, but not the applet backgrounds as well. Dunno..

koleoptero knew just what he was talking about, and told TheNessus

Yeah you’re right. You have to go into the theme’s folder/gtk2.0/ , open the gtkrc file, find the panel line that sets the default panel background and comment it out (add a # at the beginning). It’s easier than it sounds. The panel part has a whole title saying it’s the panel part. After that reload the theme.

As TheNessus pointed out in the very next post on the thread, the file in question is the panel.rc file. I fired up Synaptic, did a search for the elementary theme, and found it in /usr/share/themes/elementary. Since I needed to edit it as root to apply the fix I simply copied that entire folder to ~/themes so I could make the edits without messing up the original file or finding my changes replaced when the theme gets updated. The first thing I did with my copied folder was to rename ~/.themes/elementary/elementary to peng_elementary (both the theme folder and the file got that name to help tell it apart from the original elementary theme components), and I then edited the file to change line 3 from

Name=elementary

to

Name=peng_elementary

This is just to let it show up in the theme customization dialog so I’d be able to tell exactly which components I’m dealing with. Then I edited ~/.themes/peng_elementary/gtk-2.0/Apps/panel.rc to comment out the line setting the panel background. While every theme may have it in slightly different locations you want to look for the panel.rc file in either [theme_root]/gtk-2.0 or [theme_root]/gtk-2.0/Apps. On line 7 I changed

bg_pixmap[NORMAL] = "/Panel/panel.png" # Disable for normal panel backgrounds.

to

#bg_pixmap[NORMAL] = "/Panel/panel.png" # Disable for normal panel backgrounds.

Then save the file and close your editor, then open System > Preferences> Appearance. If you’re changing the appearance you now use I’d select another theme, then close the Appearances window, just to make sure your system loads in the edited files. Reopen Appearances, select the theme you’re editing, and click the Customize button. In the Customize theme dialog stay on the Controls tab and select the modified theme you created.

Close the Customize dialog and click the Save As… button. Give the theme a name that will let you know it’s your modified theme, save it, and close the Appearance window. Voilà! You have gotten rid of the non-transparent backgrounds behind your panel applets.

You may notice that my modified elementary theme doesn’t use the traditional elementary icons. When I was customizing the theme I also switched from the elementary icons to the Mac4Lin icons because I’m not 100% thrilled with all of the elementary icons. One of these days I want to create a mashup icon theme to use some elementary icons and some Mac4Lin icons. Unfortunately Mac4Lin’s icon theme is set up to allow compatibility with older style GNOME icon themes so updating it to make it work with the current GNOME icon theme specifications is very tedious process.

Looking around: Considering other Linux distros

I was checking out the news at Google News today when I came across an article on Datamation called Break your Ubuntu Addiction: Three Strong Distros. I’m not looking to ditch Ubuntu like I did Firefox a couple of years ago, although some of the recent edicts from Mark Shuttleworth and company (I know there are probably some glaring examples in the last six months or so but the only one that comes to mind is the decision to move the traffic lights to the left for lucid and Shuttleworth’s statement that Ubuntu isn’t a democracy) have left me feeling I may want to look around, just to consider some GNU/Linux alternatives.

The article on Datamation looks at Meips, Fedora and PCLinuxOS, and I’m seeing a preference to KDE as the desktop environment over GNOME, but I have to say that I tried KDE briefly back when I was making the switch from Windows and I wasn’t entirely thrilled with it. Plus I’ve used GNOME for the last couple of years and I’m really used to how it works so if I switch distros I’ll probably stick with GNOME .

My question to you guys: Have you ever tried Meips or PCLinuxOS? If you have, what of you think of them? There’s a wealth of info about Fedora but I don’t really know much about the other two.

[HOWTO] Quick Tip: Opening Adobe Illustrator files in Linux

A couple of weeks I was looking for a good graphic of the LA Dodgers’ logo to use as a “bug” for wallpapers I make from images from Dodgers games and I found a nice pack of vectors for all the MLB teams. There was just one problem. It was an Adobe Illustrator image file with an .ai filename extension. How the hell do you open those in Linux? After doing a bit of searching I found ai2svg, a script that converts .ai files to .svg files that Inkscape can open without a problem.

Today I was checking for updates to threads I follow at the Ubuntu Forums and found some great news from davim in the thread for Gloobus, an app that brings an OSX-style “Quicklook” file previewing to Linux, and found some great news.

You can open adobe illustrator files by changing their extention from ai to pdf, gloobus showld [sic] be able to preview .ai files by treating them as pdf files  what do you think?

Hot diggigity damn! Not only do I get a thumbnail of the image in Nautilus but I was able to import it into Gimp to select just a part of the overall image, such as the Dodgers logo from a page of 40 or so team and league logos.

And for lovers of Gloobus badchoice has asked davim to file a bug to track the feature request.

Yooouge thanks to davim for this incredibly handy tip.

Looking for a Radiance theme that works with Mac4Lin on Lucid? I may have what the doctor ordered.

Back in March I saw articles on OMG! Ubuntu! showing us how nicely Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx” was looking with information on how to get the icons and themes to use while still running karmic. (The secret is to use the theme engine, themes and icons from Matteo Pagliazzi’s PPA.)

I did some hunting around Gnome-Look.org to see if I can find an Emerald theme that uses the buttons from the Elementary theme with the lucid colors, but the buttons on the Elementary elegante (lucid version) Emerald theme don’t work for me. The Pint – Radiance theme by Antonio Serrano is great to go with the Radiance theme, but then I lose the OSX-look that I use Mac4Lin to get.

I ended up making a mashup Emerald theme using the colors of the Pint – Radiance theme, combined with buttons from the Mac4Lin theme as well as from Merman’s great Elementary Modified theme. After showing them to Anirudh, Mac4Lin’s creator, we agreed that they should be shared  with everyone. We know the Menu button doesn’t quite look right but it will have to do for now until I can get the buttons replaced.

There are two versions of the theme available on Gnome-Look.org. The first is the Mac4Lin Radiance 1.0 theme with the “traffic lights” on the left hand side.

http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Elementary+Modified?content=106491

The second is the Mac4Lin Radiance B 1.0 theme for those like me who prefer the traffic lights on the right.

Both themes are now available on Gnome-Look.org for downloading. I had hoped to help Anirudh get Mac4Lin updated to work with Ubuntu 10.04 before lucid was released, but my plate has been so busy lately that I wasn’t able to get the themes on Gnome-Look.org and finish this post until today. I hope these are worth the wait.

Benjamin Humphrey writes a Must Read article for anyone helping in the Ubuntu Community

One of the things I love about Facebook is that not only can I find some great articles but it gives me more information than Twitter does to help me decide if I actually want to click the link and read the article. Today I saw a link to an article on OMG! Ubuntu! written by Benjamin Humphrey. It was actually posted to Facebook twice, and the first time it gave me just enough info to make me want to read the article.

OMG! Ubuntu! writer Benjamin Humphrey shares his thoughts on Ubuntu’s standard of quality: http://goo.gl/fb/FeGmu

Since I’ve been less than wholly pleased with the upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx I was definitely curious to see what Benjamin has to say. His first paragraph was definitely written to grab the reader’s attention.

Ubuntu lives in a special place between Windows and Mac OS X reserved only for Linux: more shine than Windows, less than OS X, resulting in a steaming pile of mediocrity.

While I loved the Ubuntu experience with version 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon I can’t help noticing that the upgrades have left me less satisfied with each new release. It seems the last two upgrade cycles have been especially aggravating, with applications that I use on a regular basis breaking to the point where I have to find some hoops to jump through to get even a good measure of the function that I used before the upgrade. With the upgrade from 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope to 9.10 Karmic Koala I found that iriverter, an app I use every day to convert video files to take on my iriver E100 digital media player, can no longer read files from my DVDs to convert them to the AVI  format that my E100 can play. And now that I’ve upgraded to 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx my beloved Webilder was borked and I’m having problems just booting my system thanks to changes in how the boot screens are rendered on my Nvidia GeForce 6200 video card. (I just realized I haven’t written a report on my upgrade to lucid yet. I think I was trying to chase down bugs first and I’ve been getting some new bugs in the past week that have taken my attention. I’ll try to write my report this week for those who are still looking for it.)

If you think Benjamin’s article is simply the whining of a user who is being asked to take some extra steps to figure out how to do things you’d be wrong. Benjamin does take Ubuntu devs to task on what I think are some pretty boneheaded errors, including the fact that some of the newer “features” don’t work nearly as easily as advertised and the lack of documentation on how to use one of the features that are supposedly a big selling point for this new release.

If you are one of the programmers that help develop software for Ubuntu you should consider Benjamin’s article, Many hands make the light work; few make it shine, a Must Read. If you don’t develop code but help in the Ubuntu Forums you should consider the article as strongly recommended. In other words, if you come under either of those two groups go read the article now.  If you’re someone who is simply a user of Ubuntu you may want to read it as well, if only to make yourself aware of what Benjamin has to say.

If you’re simply considering trying Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx you may want to read it as well. And then find either an Ubuntu 9.10 Jaunty Jackalope Karmic Joala LiveCD or grab the disk image and burn it yourself. It’s not the newest and “best” release but you will find it supported for longer than any of the older Ubuntu releases. That’s right, I’m not recommending Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx to new users. If those of us who have used Ubuntu for several years are having big problems with it, it would be a mistake to use it as your introduction to the operating system.