Wild Jackfield Chase
I decided to make Ubuntu a little bit more “homey” and “user-ish,” I would install some sort of widget engine like Yahoo’s Konfabu-Widgets or Windows Gadgets (soon to be renamed Windows Live Gadgets Premium Super Edition Beta, I’m sure). I found Jackfield which looks pretty nice, but has been the red-headed stepchild of this particular developer’s world (ie, it’s been cast aside for other more important projects, I suppose).
Anyway, I grabbed the sources and have been trying to run the darned thing. I first I had to install SVN and get reacquainted since I’ve been using perforce at work as of late. Well, first I had to figure out if I even had svn installed or not (”svn –version” tells me that I ain’t got nada). So after installing, and grabbing the sources, I tried to run it and it complains about the fact that it can’t import the Image module. Hmmmm….I figure it’s looking for some sort of include file in the python language and off I go hunting for that.
Well, I found that I have three whole versions of python installed and one of them must have the Image module somewhere in there. Yet even more hunting and I find that I may be able to use /etc/environment to hold the PYTHONPATH variable. I tried and it didn’t seem to do much, but I bet I need a restart.
That’s one of the things I absolutely LOVE about linux thus far: immediate shut downs. The Windows has worked for the longest time is that it seems to really thing that the user is beneath it. “Oh, so you want to shut down huh? Well you’ll just have to wait till I’m done shredding the hard drive to death. So there!”
This is one aspect of Windows that I’ve always despised. 95, XP, and yes, even the much loathed Vista have this very problem of treating the user like a 2nd class citizen. I absolutely hate shutting down my XP box because it’ll usually take 5 or 10 minutes to actually go from me pleading with it to shut down to it actually shutting down. And forget about starting up. Once you go down that road, you may as well login, go grab a coffee, play some foosball, catch up on your soaps, and maybe go for a walk before even thinking about launching a program. WTF, indeed.
Anyway, Ubuntu has thus far been absolutely delightful in this regard. Granted I haven’t “crapified” my Ubuntu install with little widgets (like Jackfield) or other normal memory-suckers like I have with my standard Windows installs.
Yeah, I know, I’ve been rather tied up and haven’t had time to work on Jackfield. If you run into problems, let me know and I can probably talk you through the installation process, until I make it easier…
Thanks Stuart, I’ll let you know. I’m going to give it a go this weekend (hopefully).
I was actually looking at your blog for suggestions to replace Yahoo! Widgets on my Ubuntu desktop, but I did notice that you hate how long Windows takes to shut down. I have shortcuts on my desktop for a normal reboot, normal shutdown, and then for Super Fast Shutdown and Reboot (a freeware program - http://www.xp-smoker.com/freeware.html). You will have to use normal shutdown or reboot if you’d had changes to the system that you want to save (like positions of new icons on your desktop, etc.), but the Super Fast versions work great and always happen within 2-3 seconds, as far as my experience goes. =)