I’ve been a long time KDE user. KDE 3.5 was fast and efficient. KDE 4.0 was abysmal, but KDE versions 4.1 onwards were somewhat usable. Unfortunately I added a couple of Kubuntu PPA repositories, and ended up with a KDE 4.2 system in which Plasma crashed once every 3-4 hours. Fed up and craving stability, I retreated to GNOME, expecting to make my way back to KDE in future.

I’ve always hated several things about GNOME:

• The file picker. It’s slow, and a UI disaster.
• Gnome-panel. I think it’s ugly, an inefficient use of screen real estate, and not nearly customizable enough.
• Nautilus. Too slow, ugly.
  

On the other hand, Canonical put all of their integration effort into GNOME (as opposed to KDE) , and they’ve done some really nice work. So, here’s a recipe for “fixing” (most of) the UI problems I mention above. Screenshots and discussion follow. This assumes you’re on a Ubuntu 9.04 install.

NOTE – see update 1, at end.

• Open a terminal. Type: sudo apt-get install gnome-do awn-applets-python-extras awn-applets-c-extras dolphin dontzap
• Type: awn. Right click on the panel that pops up, go into dock preferences, and enable “Automatically start AWN”.
• Type: gnome-do. The default hotkey combo is windows+space. Press it, and the gnome-do window will pop up. Click on the little down arrow in the upper right, choose preferences, general, and choose “Start GNOME Do at login”.
• Type: sudo dontzap –disable
• Now you’re ready to clear house. Type: sudo apt-get remove gnome-panel nautilus
• Ctrl alt backspace to restart GNOME. Make sure this page is bookmarked, so that you can continue.
  

Here’s how I’ve customized AWN. The numbers in the image match the numbers below:

1. MiMenu applet. This is the application menu, places menu, and a couple others rolled into one. There is at least one alternative menu applet that’s worth a try.
2. File Browser Launcher applet. I installed the one from the AWN plugins wiki, as it has a prettier icon; Link. Right click on it once you have it, preferences. Set File Browser to Dolphin. I have my Left Click set to open my home folder.
3. Launchers (Launcher / Task Manager applet). Just a few frequently used apps. (Note the arrow under the firefox launcher, indicating that it’s already open.)
4. Launcher configured to point at /usr/bin/xlock – a useful one click way to lock your screen.
5. Task Manager (part of the previous). By default, these icons flash and move like OSX does, but you can configure them of course to be still if you don’t want the visual distraction.
6. Mail applet. This can do GMail out of the box. It’s extremely handy.
7. Cairo Clock applet. Self explanatory. There’s a decent calendar when you click on it.
8. Notification Area applet. This is the systray. It does a good job of conserving space.
9. Weather applet. I find it useful.
10. Quit-Log Out applet.
    

A few things to point out here:

• Switch mode using the buttons at the top. I like columns a lot.
• Turn preview on and off using the preview button. Off of course means better performance.
• Change icon size using the slider bar on the bottom.
• If you click to the right of the breadcrumbs, a location bar appears. You can type a file URL directly into that. KDE’s ioslaves work, so you can for example use a url of the form: fish://user@myremote.server.com to open a view onto a remote location.
• The first time you launch Dolphin it will be a little slow. Subsequently it will load fast. This is because the first time the QT library needs to be loaded into memory. If you want to eliminate this, check out this tutorial on prelinking.
  

I really like this setup – it’s stable, well integrated, and more usable than either Kubuntu in its current state or GNOME by default. I recommend trying it out. You can always revert by reinstalling gnome-panel and nautilus, and removing the above.

• Gnome-DO – Documentation, themes, and additional plugins.
• AWN – Documentation, themes, and additional plugins.
  

UPDATE 1 –
The steps above break the desktop. If you want icons on your desktop but still want to get rid of gnome-panel, follow these steps to disable gnome-panel instead.

• Open gconf-editor
• Navigate to desktop –> gnome –> session
• Click once on the ’session’ folder
• In the right pane, double-click ‘required_components_list’
• Select ‘panel’ and click ‘Remove’
  

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