With the release of 2.2, I've rediscovered by first old favorite desktop environment - Gnome. I'll talk about some of the specific improvements to Gnome 2.2 over previous 2.x versions in a later issue. Today's GnomeTWEAK (so to speak) is all about how to theme this clean desktop environment.

I started my theme hunt at art.gnome.org. In fact, I didn't need to look any further than just this one site to find several themes I really liked. The site has roughly 60 different themes for Gnome 2 alone. Surf through them and I'm sure you'll find several that you like, as well.

Download these theme files to a location on your hard drive you'll remember. I always use /home/tony/downloads. Then, change directory to .themes in your home directory:

cd /home/tony/.themes

From within this directory, you can ungzip and untar the theme file:

tar zxvf ~/downloads/GTK2-Dirty-Ice.tar.gz

This will extract the file directly into the .themes directory. The new folder in the .themes directory should have the name of the theme itself.

Now, to utilize the theme, click on the Gnome foot in the panel and select Configuration/Gnome/Theme. This opens the themes configuration window. Your theme should be visible within the window. Select it, and you're good to go.

While you're at the art.gnome.org site, check out the Gnome backgrounds, as well. With more than 100 Gnome-oriented wallpapers, you'll surely find one or two that fit well with your new Gnome 2 theme.

Gnome 2.2 is easy to theme. With a good theme site and a few steps, you can give your desktop the perfectly personal look and feel. Isn't that what tweaks are all about?

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Like so many of the pieces in Penguin Shell, today's GnomeCORE is straight from my own experience with Linux. Sometimes that experience lead to fun and interesting discoveries. Sometimes it's just a matter of fixing a problems I've created on one of my machines. The latter isn't always a fun way to come up with Penguin Shell material, but it sure does make for a handy toolkit of problem fixes.

A few weeks ago, Synaptic appeared to go dead on my main machine at work. It would fire off, then just hang and hang and hang. Eventually, I'd end up stopping it with the kill command. In fact, it took the kill -9 command to make it go completely away. That's a hard kill and one I prefer not to use if it's not completely necessary.

Then, I realized that apt had died, as well. I discovered that when I tried to apt-get some updates for the machine. It had the same behavior - start and hang. Again, the system completely ignored the kill command, requiring kill -9. I was a bit baffled as to what caused the problem, but moved on to other more pressing items.

On Friday, I was resolved to fix the problem. I wanted to get those updates and neither apt nor Synaptic was working. With a little concerted thought, I realized that there's a connection between the two programs in Red Hat - the RPM database. apt in Red Hat is, in fact, rpm-based. Since Synaptic uses the rpm-based apt in Red Hat, it seemed like a good connection. Though I didn't remember exactly what caused the original Synaptic problem,, I had an idea what it might be.

When the rpm database is accessed, the system writes a lock file to prevent multiple simultaneous access. Given all the related problems, I started to suspect that I had stale lock file on the rpm database. Knowing that the lock files for the database begin with __db, I entered the following command as root:

rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*

This uses the rm command [remove] with the [f]orce option to delete any __db files in the /var/lib/rpm directory. In short terms, the command will remove any lock files on the rpm database. I fired up apt and made the updates without so much as a hiccup.

From all I can ascertain, I created the lock file on the last successful access to the rpm database then, when something went wrong, used the kill -9 command to shut it all down.

There is, of course, a lesson here. When you use the -9 option to the kill command, it shuts the program down without any cleanup - straight to shutdown. In other words, I created the lock file when I started apt, then left it by hard killing the app. While that didn't prevent me from restarting apt or Synaptic, it did prevent those programs from accessing the database. Thus, they'd open and hang.

Sometimes the best lessons arise from mistakes. While I'd rather not make them to begin with, there's always a persistent lesson in solving them.

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GnomeFILE

TUTOS - The Ultimate Team Organization Software

http://www.tutos.org/homepage/index.html

"TUTOS (The Ultimate Team Organization Software) is a groupware or ERP/CRM suite that helps small to medium teams manage various things in one place. Its features include personal and group calendars, an address book, product and project management, bug tracking, installation management, a task list, notes, files, mailboxes, and useful links between all of the above."

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Linux Forum
Scribbled by -Glenn-

"Hope the new schedule is agreeing with you. Yeah, I can see where the grind of putting out a daily newsletter can get kinda stressful if it's on top of everything else. All this does is make me appreciate the twice a week newsletters even more.

"I've been receiving them almost from when you started them & have archived a good number of them. You do good work, man.

"Anyway, the reason I'm writing is to ask if you could make an honorable mention about this guy on my Linux-admin mailing list or rather his new Linux forum. He's had it up for about 3 weeks & could use a little more traffic. He's attempting to make it a friendly forum instead of some of these flame-fests one sees around. Since there are so many subscribers to the Penguin Shell I'm sure that traffic will increase if you can give the site a blurb. It just needs a little exposure.

"Have yerself a gawk, it's at:

http://www.goldenrain.net/forum/

"BTW, nice 'Scooter.' I remember them when they first hit the streets. Pretty healthy machines - they even blew me away on my old 'Commando.'"

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Getting Linux on the Desktop

http://www.reallylinux.com/docs/desktop.shtml

"Organizations can beneficially and successfully make the switch to Linux on the Desktop by keeping in mind two core factors. By applying the foundational principals behind two factors, even the most techno-phobic and proprietary software entrenched small sized companies can painlessly move to Linux on the Desktop.

"First is the Human Factor, which includes the psychological issues with change, any kind of change. The human factor also takes into account the challenges of individual biases, whether they are against or for Linux conversion.

"The second essential factor for a positive and efficient conversion to Linux is directly related to the Hardware Factor. As obvious as it is, it can’t be understated that hardware and the planning in relation to hardware plays a substantial role in smooth Linux conversion.

"Addressing both the Human and Hardware factors in relation to your small business will ensure a far easier and more efficient Linux conversion. This article tries to summarize principles and examples of how to realistically apply these two core factors."

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