December 05, 2010

Sexify Your Linux Desktop

I have been playing with beautifying my Linux desktop, and I think I've made pretty good progress, in large part thanks to three little apps: adeskbar, synapse, and Emerald Theme Engine.

aDeskBar provides me an OS X style "kicker" (as its called in KDE).  Its really light-weight, and easily customizable. 

Synapse is like KeyLaunch or Gnome-Do, both of which provide ready-access to apps via a quick-key.  Very useful stuff.  A simple press of Ctrl+Space and you can type any app in and it will launch.

And, then there's the Emerald Theme Engine, which is glorious and beautiful.  I am fond of it, in particular. 

To be frank, I have been using Linux for almost fifteen years now... and I will tell you, a great many of the applications I had encountered many moons ago have either disappeared or have matured into marvelous creations.  I'm fairly sure I have used aDeskBar back when it sucked, but neither Synapse or Emerald are known to me. 

So, its pretty cool to see Emerald in action -- its the epitome of theme engines.  In fact, it contains many different rendering engines.  Even better, most of the really awesome themes available from the various Gnome theme sites, are for Emerald.

Synapse is a rocking replacement for Gnome-do, which as near as I can tell, is the chief replacement for Gnome-Do.  Gnome-Do was basically an experiment, and was never developed to its full potential. 

Between Synapse, aDeskBar, and Emerald, I have achieved a right-sexy desk-top.

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