Doing it with Gnome-Do
I heard about Gnome-Do a while back and I thought, "Oh no! not another dock creator for Linux to emulate the Mac look", there are many who have been there and failed, so I left it alone for a while. In my never-ending quest for the perfect desktop, I finally installed* it a while back. And now I am completely hooked.
So what is Gnome-Do, to explain its usage lets take a simple example - how do you open Eclipse IDE in your desktop? You click on the main menu icon, hover onto the menu category and then click on Eclipse. That is a minimum of 2 mouse clicks along with some mouse movement.
Now if you are like me, and don't like to leave the comfort of your keyboard and you have Gnome-Do installed all you need to do is press Super (the Windoze key) + Space and type "Eclipse" (you may get the Eclipse icon even as you type "e + c"), as soon as the icon is highlighted press [ENTER] and voila Eclipse appears on to your screen.
You can do the same for Firefox, click on Super + Space -> Type "Fire" -> Press [ENTER]. Thus any application on your system can be launched with a few keystrokes. Now, that is convenient! No need to create desktop shortcuts and no need to even touch the mouse to launch applications.
There are some neat plugins available for Gnome-Do as well, for example the Google Search Plugin, no need to open the browser, just launch Do (Super + Space) -> Type "Search Google" -> [TAB] -> Search String -> [ENTER] -> Select from search results -> [ENTER].
The Locate File Plugin is great as well. Launch Do (Super + Space) -> type "Locate" -> [TAB] -> type file name -> [ENTER] -> Select file and press [ENTER]. Plugin installation is also a breeze and can be done with a few clicks.
Finally, for all the dock lovers, Gnome-Do also comes in with a dock manager called Docky. If you like docks you can set Docky to be always visible and get a Mac like look, or set it to auto-hide.
With Gnome-Do, you have no excuse for a cluttered desktop, no need for desktop shortcuts and no need to have quick-launch icons. Just press Super + Space and do it!
* Gnome-Do is available for all Linux distros, it works with KDE as well. To install on Ubuntu just type "sudo apt-get install gnome-do".
Filed under: Linux
