A simple matter of…

Today I had my first real trial of Ubuntu netbook remix (9.10). This is an an Eeepc 1008HA netbook.

Netbook remix has a nice “launcher” which takes over the whole screen and uses large buttons. This is great for me as I can’t use trackpads at all The other big bonus is that “maximus” maximises applications – no border using up valuable space – and of course anything less than full screen on a netbook is pretty small.

First the good stuff – the above elements work very well and intuitively for me (barring it becoming upset with skype once, but I’m more than happy to blame skype for that). All the usual goodness is there “add printer…scanning… pick one… done”. It also looks very nice and neat IMO.

Then came a big test – adding an external monitor. I ensured everything was saved, plugged the monitor in and then selected “System->Display” it showed the second monitor, I enabled it and tada! (If only it had autodetected that it had just been plugged in that would have been even better.

At this point it became clear than netbook remix and external monitor support needs a bit of work. The gnome panel stayed on the 10″ screen, however windows now opened on the 20″ external monitor (as I wanted). However they also opened maximised (not really wanted now that I had 20″ to play with. If I wanted to start a new application, I had to move the mouse onto the netbook screen, click the “menu” button, the launcher would then appear on the 20″ screen so I’d move back there, click the app and it would start on the 20″ screen (as I wanted). Not elegant. Furthermore, if I had the cursor below the top half of the large monitor when I moved it across to the netbook screen it would be “below” the netbook screen and I’d have to move it up – a shame it couldn’t “snap” up or be “scaled” when moving across the boundary between the screens.

The next problems I’ve hit are all panel related. Firstly when running either empathy or pidgin IM clients things are a mess. There is no way to tell if either are running unless you have a window open (since there is no task tray). Secondly I’m sorry but the “indicator applet” icon looks like email to me – I wouldn’t ever have thought to click it until someone told me. Nice idea, badly implemented. It gets worse – it now lists both pidgin and empathy (whether or not they are running). How is one supposed to use this? Normally I just pidgin running and it puts one icon up in the tasktray – that’s it. If you really want to get rid of that icon then it needs to move under that “indicator” icon and so those pidgin/empathy links have to show the status and allow you to start/stop/show-buddies/change-settings.

Next problem – I wanted to run mail-notification (which I’ll have to patch _again_ to include SSL support due to licensing issues). Oh, sorry, there appears to be no way to add applets. So I can’t add that or a computer load applet. A quick search shows up [https://bugs.launchpad.net/window-picker-applet/+bug/248324 this bug] which has just be summarily closed as won’t fix with no explanation. A sorry state of affairs which actually prompted this blog entry since I let off steam this way. It’s now been moved to “triaged”.

Overall, suggestions for improvements:
* autodetect external monitors
* scale mouse position across monitor boundaries
* turn off maximus when number of monitors change (or size)
* allow easy toggling of dual/single screen “mode” (including above)

I’ve been using Linux desktops for almost fifteen years and gnome “simplification” still drives me up the wall. Such as having to resort to gconf to get rid of a keyboard shortcut in gnome-terminal which the built in editor wouldn’t let me. Or the horrific bloated apps – particularly on 64-bit platforms – most processes seem to be gnome crap that I’m not using and have no intention of using.