Tag Archives: ubuntu

New Diodon release and how to disable unity lens or indicator

Projects,

After a testing phase of two weeks and fixing the rough edges a new release 0.4.0 of Diodon is now available in the stable ppa.

So if you want to get the new version with its new Unity Lens up and running, here are the commands to install it:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:diodon-team/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install diodon

During the testing phase the question came up whether there is a way to disable the Unity Lens and/or indicator?
Firstly, I have to say currently there is no easy way to disable such. In the future, a plugin system is planned where each feature such as the indicator or unity lens can be installed independently. However for now there is a workaround.

If you want to disable the Unity Lens you can simply remove the file diodon.place with the following command:
sudo rm /usr/share/unity/places/diodon.place

Logout and login again and the Unity Lens should have disappeared. Note when a new version of diodon is installed, you might have to redo this step.

There is also a way to disable the Diodon indicator by changing the gconf setting /apps/diodon/show_indicator:

  • Press Alt+F2
  • run gconf-editor
  • browse to /apps/diodon
  • disable show_indicator

The indicator should disappear straight away.
If desired you can even disable indicator and unity lens. Diodon can than still be used with the hotkey Ctrl+Alt+V.

Call for testing: Unity lens for Diodon

Projects, ,

The diodon unity lens has made it into the trunk and therefore is now available in the daily ppa. Before it will be released it needs intensive testing. So go for it and grab it.

But before you start here are some instructions. Please remember that this code is in development state and therefore should not be used on a production system:

So let’s start with the installation by running following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:diodon-team/daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install diodon

After diodon is installed you have to logout from unity and login again. Now the Diodon Unity Lens should appear in the Launcher. Either use the mouse or press <Super>-v to show the dash for diodon.

That should be all you need to know. Oh wait, when you want to build from source, note that the Unity Lens is not built by default but needs to be enabled during compilation. Use following commands to do so:
bzr branch lp:diodon
cd diodon
./waf configure --enable-unity-lens
./waf build
sudo ./waf install
diodon

Looking forward to read your comments on what you think of the Diodon Unity Lens.

After updating to Natty: Why has Diodon stopped working?

Projects,

The question has been raised why Diodon is not running anymore after updating from  Maverick to Natty. If you have encountered the same problem I hope the following explanation will clear it up.

So in Maverick Diodon is linked against several libraries such as libdbusmenu-glib.so.1. This library has been updated in Natty and is there available as libdbusmenu-glib.so.3. This is actually not a problem as there are different debian packages available for Maverick and Natty which link to the different libraries.

However a problem can be raised when updating from Maverick to Natty. During the update process Ubuntu disables all 3rd party apt installation sources including the Diodon ppa. So the system will get updated but the correct Diodon version for Natty won’t be installed. This means the old Diodon Maverick binary, which is linked against libdbusmenu-glib.so.1, is still on the system. As this library is not available on Natty, however, it can not be started anymore.

To get around this, the Natty Diodon ppa needs to be configured and the Natty Diodon version installed. This can be done with the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:diodon-team/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install diodon

So this way Diodon should be up and running again.

Diodon available for Lucid

Projects,

As Diodon has some dependencies not available per default in Lucid there was so far no package for it. However as Lucid is a LTS version and some user would still like to use Diodon on their machine I have some great news from you ;):

After some dependency fiddling and adjusting code a new Diodon version 0.3.1 is available which can now be built on Lucid as well (Note: ppa:sao/backports is needed however).

Find a package in the official Diodon ppa.

PPA für Backports

Projects

Es kommt doch noch häufiger vor als einem lieb ist, das man eine neue Version einer Library oder Applikation benötigt, die erst im Ubuntu Entwicklungszweig vorhanden sind, aber nicht in der aktuellen Version.
Von solchen Versionen mache ich dann oft doch noch einen Backport um diese auf meinem System zu testen. Um diese Backports auch der Öffentlichkeit zu Verfügung zu stellen, habe ich ein Backport PPA eröffnet. Von Zeit zu Zeit füge ich diesem PPA Backports aus verschiedenen Bereichen hinzu. Was alle Backports aber gleich haben, ist, dass diese aus einem offiziellen Ubuntu Repository erstellt wurden und daher weniger Probleme verursachen sollte.
Aber Gewähr dafür kann ich natürlich nicht geben.

Um Pakete aus dem Backport Repositroy zu installieren, muss folgender Befehl ausgeführt werden:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sao/backports

Jetzt fehlt nur noch eine apt-get update und es kann los gehen ;).