How To Install And Use gDesklets On Ubuntu 8.04

Version 1.0
Author: Oliver Meyer <o [dot] meyer [at] projektfarm [dot] de>

This document describes how to install and use gDesklets on Ubuntu 8.04. Taken from the gDesklets page: "gDesklets is a system for bringing mini programs (desklets), such as weather forecasts, news tickers, system information displays, or music player controls, onto your desktop, where they are sitting there in a symbiotic relationship of eye candy and usefulness. The possibilities are really endless and they are always there to serve you whenever you need them, just one key-press away. The system is not restricted to one desktop environment, but currently works on most of the modern Unix desktops (including GNOME, KDE, Xfce)."

This howto is a practical guide without any warranty - it doesn't cover the theoretical backgrounds. There are many ways to set up such a system - this is the way I chose.

1 Installation

Let's install the needed packages.

sudo apt-get install gdesklets gdesklets-data

2 Usage

Gdesklets is available in the GNOME applications menu.

During the first start you'll see this window.

This is the gdesklets shell - here you can enable your preferred desklets and adjust some settings.

2.1 Enable A Desklet

It's very easy to enable a desklet. If you've found a desklet that you want to use simply double-click on it, move the mouse cursor out of the gdesklet shell and drop the desklet on your desktop.

Each desklet has its own configuration options - right click on a desklet on your desktop and click on "Configure desklet".

Please note that some desklets can be combined so that they look like a single big desklet.

2.2 Disable A Desklet

Right click on the desklet that you want to remove and click on "Remove desklet".

3 Autostart

In order to start gDesklets automatically everytime you log in into your system we have to add gdesklets to the session-startup-programs. The session settings are available in the GNOME system menu.