Gnome Shell GDM Greeter in Wheezy

I've been wondering for a while when the Gnome Display Manager Greeter was going to be updated to the Gnome Shell theme that's used in Fedora. I noticed a reference to the greeter.gsettings file in a recent thread at the Debian forum, and decided to have a look at it. For some reason, the Gnome Shell Greeter is not the default. Edit /etc/gdm3/greeter.gsettings so it looks like this to get the Gnome Shell look.

# session-name='gdm-fallback'
session-name='gdm-shell'

Here are some screenshots I ripped off from the internet to illustrate before and after:

VirtualBox on Wheezy

I recently bought an InnoTab children's tablet computer. Despite the fact that it runs Linux, and I run Linux, I couldn't get the free games and eBooks that the manufacturer offers because their software only runs on... Windows.

I managed to install the software in Wine, but it couldn't access the USB connection.

Something recently (hey, I'm old and I can't remember what it was) reminded me of VirtualBox, and I decided to give it a go.

I found VirtualBox in the Wheezy repository, and it brought along some dependencies called qt (the GUI) and dkms (kernel modules- something technical: I'm a Debian user- better not admit that I haven't got a clue what they do!).

The Debian Wiki page is aimed at Squeeze (the current stable), so not very useful for Wheezy. Of course if you're reading this after Wheezy becomes stable, the Wiki may be more useful, so use your judgement.

However, I found a helpful guide here, and found it was quite easy to get a virtual machine running Windows XP running on Debian Wheezy.

(Guest Machine > Settings > Storage > Empty: Add your installation CD (or ISO) here.)

The only tricky part was getting USB connections working. I needed to download the Extension Pack for the version of VirtualBox in the Wheezy repository (which is not the latest version- at the time of writing, 4.1 compared to 4.2).

After that, this guide helped me get USB connections working.

(I sometimes find that a year or so later, these guides have disappeared. As a permanent record, the steps are:

• Configure USB support in virtual machine settings
• Add USB filter
• Install Virtual Guest Additions from the Virtual Machine Devices tab
• Add your user to the VirtualBox group in Users and Groups)

Download BBC iPlayer content on Linux

My wife informed me last night that I'd missed the start of a new series of a program I like on the BBC. I checked the BBC iPlayer site and found that the episodes I'd missed were still available. I didn't have time to view it right then, so I was intrigued to see a download link which offered an install option for the BBC iPlayer Desktop, which claims to let me download content and watch it later on, but upon clicking it nothing happened.

Apparently there is or was a Linux version of the BBC iPlayer. While Googling it I came across Get_iPlayer, a Linux command line program that downloads content from the BBC web site, but without the 30 viewability limit that iPlayer apparently imposes.

There's a useful tutorial at christopherdowning.co.uk.

The Get_iPlayer website says:

The BBC may at some point choose to effectively protect their streams with DRM or some ‘effective technological measure’ in which case get_iplayer will no longer be a useful tool for those streams.

So it may not work forever.

There are of course some legal and moral issues in downloading BBC content in a fashion that the corporation never intended which now follow:

ZZZZZZ

Too boring, read it on the web site.

Change Autoremove Status of Package

Sometimes in Debian you install something, find you don't really want it, uninstall it and then find stuff you do want is marked for autoremove. Here's a good tutorial on how to change the autoremove status in Debian using apt-mark.

Update: the command, if the YouTube video ever disappears, is:

# apt-mark unmarkauto

A look at Gnome 3.6 beta

Gnome 3.6 beta has been out for a while, but not available for testing without compiling the software, so I was pleased to see that a live image is available- basically running on an alpha release of Fedora 18.

I was familiar with what was coming from a post at As far as I know. There are descriptions of changes with screenshots there, so I'll just add a few personal comments.

The new message tray is a big improvement. The jiggling small icons which are so hard to click on have become fixed, large icons. The new triggering mechanism seems a bit coarse, but an improvement is planned.

The centralised search bar in Activities Overview, now minus application icons, really emphasises the way to use Gnome 3: not by searching through a screen of icons (which, after all is really a Windows 3 paradigm), but by entering the first letter or letters of the application you want to launch. I'm finding this a much easier way to launch applications than by searching though menu items.

The new Nautilus looks very good. Gnome is about minimalism and I like minimalism. There's been a lot of negative comment on the new file manager because of lost features. When I first heard about the dual pane feature of Nautilus being dropped, I was at first concerned, because I use it a lot. However, I listened to the justification given and it seemed reasonable: a new "move to" feature largely removes the necessity for a dual pane, and if you do want to compare files in two locations, side by side view is easy in Gnome 3.

Gnome 3.6 really looks like being something approaching what Gnome 3 should be. As a Debian user, I'm sad that it's Gnome 3.4 that's going into the next stable release. Debian Stable Gnome users will be missing improvements in Gnome 3.6 that see the desktop get into its stride after some initial stumbling steps.

Remove the Firefox title bar

Gnome 3 applications will eventually lose the title bar in full screen mode. Firefox is working on the change, but until then, free up valuable screen real estate with the HTitle Firefox extension.

Remove the Opera title bar

The title bar in Gnome 3 is redundant: a waste of valuable space on modern wide screen monitors.

Gnome 3 applications will eventually lose it: the Gnome browser Epiphany already has.

Opera users can get rid of it by right clicking on the tab bar and unchecking "Show border", as described on My Opera.