Gnome on Life

How to Increase the Offline Storage Quota for Kindle in Epiphany

Sun, 17 Jan 2016 17:14:00 +0530

You can easily install Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Reader as a standalone web application on Fedora Linux using the Epiphany (GNOME Web) browser via GNOME Software.

However, this comes with one major hurdle: the default offline storage quota for web databases is a measly 6 MB, which you will exhaust almost immediately.

webkitgtk3 used to offer an API called webkit_get_default_web_database_quota, but this was removed from the newer webkitgtk4 engine that Epiphany relies on.

Unity vs. GNOME Shell: The Small Things – Status Tray

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:56:00 +0530

The GNOME Shell status tray is an interesting implementation written in JavaScript. Consequently, it is approachable to learn, write extensions for, and modify. However, one issue that bothered me was focus stealing.

When clicking on a status tray icon and moving the mouse cursor diagonally down toward the open menu, focus would inadvertently switch to the next adjacent tray icon. This was rather jarring, exacerbated by the gap between the panel icon and the popover menu.

FUDCon 2011: Here I Come!

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:04:00 +0530

I am heading to FUDCon Pune this year! I hope to present a talk to help newcomers get started with contributing to open source, specifically within the GNOME project.

Please check out and vote for my session here: Contributing to Open Source (FUDCon Session)

Linux and the Desktop

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 00:38:00 +0530

It’s been a blast—Linux on the desktop never ceases to amaze me.

Dell ST2220T Touchscreen Monitor on Linux

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 12:20:00 +0530

Good news: the Dell ST2220T multi-touch monitor works on Fedora Linux using evdev under Xorg!

Special thanks to Gopal for tracing and testing this. Additional hardware diagnostic info is posted in Red Hat Bugzilla 703118.

Pushing for xchat-gnome 0.26.3

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:49:00 +0530

xchat-gnome 0.26.2 has been tagged, though it hasn’t yet been uploaded to ftp.gnome.org. Instead, I am pushing for an immediate 0.26.3 release—hopefully the final release in the GTK+ 2.x series—followed by xchat-gnome 0.3.0 targeting GNOME 3.

GNOME Legacy and GNOME 3

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 22:02:00 +0530

For anyone who prefers to stick with “GNOME Legacy” (Fallback mode) rather than GNOME 3 with GNOME Shell, you can configure your default session by running:

cd /usr/share/gnome-session/sessions
sudo mv gnome.session gnome-new.session
sudo mv gnome-fallback.session gnome.session

Evolution Evolved

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 18:07:00 +0530

Notable improvements expected with the release of Evolution 3.0:

Migration of local mail storage from mbox to the faster, more resilient maildir format.
Built-in duplicate email detection and removal.
Significant memory usage and leak optimizations.

xchat-gnome and Delays

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 20:35:00 +0530

Apologies for the delay in releasing a new version. I recently relocated to Pune and am searching for accommodation, after which I’ll be setting up broadband internet. Once that is sorted out, I will resume active work on xchat-gnome.

In the meantime, patches and contributions are very welcome!

P.S.: xchat-gnome now has an official mailing list.

xchat-gnome 0.26.2

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:46:00 +0530

I am currently one of the maintainers of xchat-gnome and am working steadily toward releasing version 0.26.2. Track progress on GNOME Bug 602311.

Fedora 13 with Xorg 1.8.x, GNOME 2.30, and "Fixed" Nautilus

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:38:00 +0530

With the release of GNOME 2.30, Nautilus has reverted to browser mode as the default. So long, spatial mode!

In Fedora 13, Xorg now relies on udev rather than hal for automatic hardware detection.

Bonus note: I noticed Totem now remembers the last-played playback position.

Fedora and GNOME keep getting better with time.

Duplicate Emails in Evolution

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:48:00 +0530

Troubled by duplicate emails in your Evolution inbox?

You need the remove-duplicates plugin! It slices, it dices, and it comes complete with its own patch set and Makefile.

Currently, upstream is tracking this effort here:
GNOME Bug 587011 – evolution-kill-bonobo unable to build remove-duplicates

xchat-GNOME Fullscreen

Fri, 08 May 2009 19:56:00 +0530

You love chatting over IRC, IRC is life, and you need your IRC client to support fullscreen mode! Look no further: xchat-gnome requires only a trivial patch to support fullscreen.

For more information, see Fullscreen support for xchat-gnome (GNOME Bug 445638).

Yes, xchat-gnome needs your love!

Receiving Files from Phone to Computer

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 04:18:00 +0530

Duh! To receive files from a phone or other Bluetooth-enabled device to a laptop running Linux, make sure to enable the “Receive files in Downloads folder over Bluetooth” option in GNOME File Sharing Preferences.

Notes: Bluetooth on Fedora

SQLite vs. libgda

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:50:00 +0530

A few things I have learned:

DDL (Data Definition Language) varies significantly from one SQL implementation to another.
It is much easier and faster to maintain an application for a single database backend rather than across many.
libgda is great when you are designing an application specifically meant to manage arbitrary databases.
libgda is overkill when all you need is to maintain a simple, local embedded database.
SQLite is fast, lightweight, well-documented, and backed by an active IRC support community.
Keep database-related code restricted to as few source files as possible.
The SQLite source code is an excellent reference for understanding how to implement commands like .import.
Using Git (or any modern version control system) saves an enormous amount of time.

Evolution Account Editor Accepts Whitespace in Hostname as Valid

Thu, 22 May 2008 19:56:00 +0530

Evolution accepts whitespace in the hostname field. When sending email, it fails due to invalid hostname.

This has now been fixed, thanks to input from Alan Matsuoka.

Reference: GNOME Bug 533465 – Evolution account editor accepts white space in host name as valid

xchat-gnome: Sound Notification

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 13:46:00 +0530

Upon quitting Totem, I heard a ping. This came from xchat-gnome (via the sound-notification plugin). It turns out gnome_sound_play was being used to play the sound, which defaults to the ESD backend:

gnome_sound_play("../../data/message.wav");

ESD has been superseded by PulseAudio in most major distributions. I would prefer moving to a GStreamer-based backend, so I rewrote the code to use GStreamer. However, the ping still didn’t work while I was playing music through Totem.

xchat-gnome: Unchecking "Mark as Away" Does Not Work

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 09:07:00 +0530

Ticking “Away” worked like a charm on xchat-gnome, but unticking it didn’t do any magic.

This turned out to be a bug fixed upstream (GNOME #462031). Grepping the code revealed a rather trivial fix, which on further lookup was part of the Fedora 9 build. I ended up filing a bug report (Fedora #430883).

A package was released with the stated fix, which crashed xchat-gnome whenever one tried to set or unset away: