OS X --> Ubuntu

I recently bought a new laptop from System 76 with Ubuntu preinstalled. This replaced a 7 year old MacBook Pro. Apple no longer sells 17" laptops and HP and Dell linux laptops are well hidden on their websites. Read on for equivalent linux software to match what I used on OS X.

  • Sticky notes ->  KNotes Xpad
  • System monitor -> GNOME System Monitor and System Load Indicator
  • iTunes -> Rhythmbox, Banshee gmusicbrowser; Tried Rhythmbox and Banshee, random play didn't work as expected. Instead of randomly playing all songs, randomly played a song, then randomly chose another song. It could play the same song more than once before all songs were played. Banshee would periodically crash, fixed by turning off gapless playback.
  • Hex Fiend -> wxHexEditor
  • ttf-mscorefonts-installer for websites/documents that use Microsoft fonts
  • gdebi for a gui to install .deb package files
  • See the previous blog entry for my adventures in getting a PDF file to display inside Firefox without using the buggy Javascript viewer.
  • See the next blog entry for how I got Nautilus file manager windows restored at login.

Controlling Window Placement

Most programs don't restore their previous window location.

The CompizConfig Settings Manager can be used to force windows to a given position.

To start the manager, Alt-F2, ccsm

In the Window Management section, choose Place Windows, then the Fixed Window Placement tab.

In the Windows with fixed positions section, create a new entry. If the program only has one window then the green plus sign can be used to select a window class using the grab button.

If the program has multiple windows, then the window class and title can be used.

To determine the window position, open a terminal window and run xwininfo. Click the window you want the position of and it will display the absolute x, y to enter above.

Updated April 26, 2014: Switched from KNotes to Xpad, added ccsm, xwininfo
Updated May 3, 2014: Switched from Banshee to gmusicbrowser