First results from Cinnamon meta work using UbuntuStudio 13.04

[lukefromdc at hushmail.com]

I've copied this information down and will be experimenting with it shortly

On 06/19/2013 at 8:42 PM, "Len Ovens" <len at ovenwerks.net> wrote:
>
>On Mon, June 3, 2013 10:13 pm, lukefromdc at hushmail.com wrote:
>> Cinnamon and Nemo install easily from Ubuntu's own repos in 
>13.04, but are
>> NOT in Saucy's repos due to conflict with Gnome 3.8 gnome-shell
>> packages. I pulled them into a default UbuntuStudio 13.03 
>install, but ran
>> into quite a few problems that might make it very difficult (at 
>least for
>> me)
>> to make a meta that could create a ready to use install from just
>> installing packages.
>
>You would probably need to add a -settings package. There is a 
>tool for
>making them called ubuntu-defaults-builder. Be warned, it just 
>gives a
>starting point and there are some things you can't use in it... 
>like
>setting up a firefox default home page.
>>
>> The real serious problem is this: all of the default themes 
>included with
>> US won't show which window is highlighted when running Cinnamon!
>
>There seems to be a trend in themes to not make the focused window 
>very
>apparent. I hope it goes away soon as I find it annoying. KDE 
>default is
>that the text in the title bar gets bold or grey :P   It is fine 
>for full
>screen use like most consumers do, but not for production where 
>any number
>of windows may be visible on the desktop.
>
>> I've enclosed two screenshots: an XCFE  UbuntuStudio desktop, 
>and Cinnamon
>> in UbuntuStudio with GNOME theme and the UbuntuStudio menu
>> icon, both with one active window. Only in the XFCE version is 
>the window
>> highlighted!
>
>They both may be highlighted, I would have to see the compared out 
>of
>focus window to know for sure.
>
>You do need to be aware however, that the greybird theme is still 
>under
>development and that the new version will land in this cycle... 
>along with
>xfce 4.12
>
>> The other possible blocker is that I don't know any way of 
>scripting
>> Cinnamon setup as to menu icon (the US icon of course), number of
>> desktops, and
>> what to put in the panel. Also the DE-agnostic menus for US 
>would have to
>> work in Cinnamon when they come out.
>
>Again this would have to be in a settings package. Normally, there 
>would
>be a directory like /etc/xdg/sessionname/ that has the default 
>menu and
>settings in it. Looking through our -settings package may be 
>helpful to
>you for this.
>http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntustudio-dev/ubuntustudio-default-
>settings/UbuntuStudio/files/head:/etc/xdg/xdg-ubuntustudio/
>will let you browse our system settings defaults. There should be
>something similar for cinnamon in /etc/xdg/somedir/ Look for 
>similar file
>name directories as you find in ~/.config/
>
>> Everything else works, menus are default Cinnamon
>> menus. Only way to change those is to use one of the alternate 
>Cinnamon
>> menus, I don't know how to write these as they are in javascript 
>like
>> their gnome-shell ancestors. I can do a little editing in 
>Javascript with
>> these applets,
>> but that's it.
>
>Menus are still moving in cinnamon as gnome shell changes, I would 
>look
>for things to start settling down as it matures. I was able to get 
>our
>menus working in some of the cinnamon menus from MINT. Though they 
>seem to
>only have one depth of menu :P  It was just a matter of finding 
>the menu
>config that was in use at the time. Often not the one I would have
>thought.
>
>I was not that impressed with Mint or Cinnamon (due to it not 
>liking my
>video setup) so I have removed it ... so I can play with fvwm and
>afterstep which is a whole other menu problem... much more 
>configurable
>and not near so automatic as the gnome/xfce/kde user would expect.
>
>> These issues also made me think of the inverse route to this 
>same concept:
>> pulling existing ubuntustudio metas into a default install of 
>Mint, which
>> uses
>> Ubuntu repos and has access to every single Ubuntu package. 
>Wonder if I am
>> trying to reinvent the wheel here?
>
>That's the angle I am working from. It will probably be ready soon 
>in some
>kind of shape. A small app that gives the user a choice of metas to
>install including the menus and kernel. It should give the user the
>ability to add some of the default system settings as well. (like 
>making
>sure jack can run RT ... whatever that will take... hopefully jack 
>will be
>fixed to not need the user in the audio group soon)
>
>> My own desktop evolved down quite a different route, from 
>UbuntuStudio
>> with GNOME 2.32 via early Unity and Gnome-Shell experiments, to
>> Gnome-Shell
>> with Frippery extensions and finally to Cinnamon, ending up very 
>far from
>> anyone's defaults as I rolled back visual changes over the years 
>to keep
>> the
>> appearance I liked so much in 2008. Only thing is, my personal 
>fork may
>> work great, but even if I turned all my themes and text files 
>into debs,
>> there
>> would be hours of manual configuration to deal with after adding 
>them to a
>> default install just like after my 2011 reinstall to change over 
>to 64
>> bit. I was
>
>The trick is to take the contents of your ~/.config/ directory and 
>make
>that the system default. Sometimes you can take a file from there 
>and put
>it in the system directory and other times not. :)
>
>What happens is that the first time you log into an account after 
>install,
>The system defaults are copied into your home .config directory. 
>So to
>test system defaults, remove ~/.config (and maybe ~/.cache) and 
>log in
>again. You may wish to back up this directory first :)
>
>-- 
>Len Ovens
>www.OvenWerks.net
>
>
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