Day Five

Posted on 14 Nov 2008 at 15:01

My shiny desktop infatuation continues, and the level of customisation I glimpsed yesterday has spurred me into finding how deep this actually goes. I start with the inbuilt search, which is rubbish, and swiftly find an alternative. Let me introduce "Gnome Do". As with Mozilla's Ubiquity project, Gnome Do lets you type simple commands into an interface and perform a range of tasks on the fly, from searching and opening applications, to posting messages to Twitter, sending emails, searching definitions and checking maps. What's really cool is that it's expandable through plug-ins, so its use is limited only by the imagination of the community.

In a fit of manic experimentation I grab a couple of widgets from the internet and strip everything else from the desktop to see if I can run with only Gnome Do for a while. For the next few hours I apply myself to the task with a lunatic's energy, and as I'm banging commands into the terminal I realise I'm actually having fun. Ubuntu has encouraged me to experiment. I've started using my brain in a way I haven't for a very long time. Ubuntu has reminded me why I like computers in the first place.

Next: Day Six

Back to "My life with Linux"

Author: Stuart Turton