Shane Fagan » Evolution http://shanefagan.com A blog about Ubuntu, techonlogy, random stuff and opinions Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:44:20 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Evolution backup http://shanefagan.com/2009/09/29/evolution-backup/ http://shanefagan.com/2009/09/29/evolution-backup/#comments Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:56:32 +0000 Shane http://shanefagan.com/?p=439 Continue reading →]]> I was looking into backing up evolution on to ubuntu one so I tried a few things and this is what I came up with by looking at how evolution itself does it.

#!/bin/sh
rm '/home/shane/Ubuntu One/evolution-backup.tar.gz'
evolution --force-shutdown
rm /home/shane/.evolution/.running
gconftool-2 --dump /apps/evolution > /home/shane/.evolution/backup-restore-gconf.xml
cd /home/shane && tar chf - .evolution .camel_certs | gzip > '/home/shane/Ubuntu One/evolution-backup.tar.gz'
evolution

Just replace shane with your home folder’s name. I put it in /etc/cron.daily so it backs up every day. Its only down for a few seconds but its great to have a backup of everything.

Note: It should give out an error that the .camel_certs file isnt there but it still works. I dont know if its needed or not but since its in the script evolution runs I left it in.

]]> http://shanefagan.com/2009/09/29/evolution-backup/feed/ 18 Evolution http://shanefagan.com/2009/09/12/evolution/ http://shanefagan.com/2009/09/12/evolution/#comments Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:48:52 +0000 Shane http://shanefagan.com/?p=410 Continue reading →]]> I complained a while back about evolution being ugly but I fiddled with the UI a little. Nothing that requires any programming just changing stuff from the view options.

Here is the default evolution on a fresh install of ubuntu.
Default Evolution

Here is evolution after I changed stuff.
Simple evolution

I much prefer the simpler version. The only real difference is that I right click to do stuff (like mark as spam).

]]> http://shanefagan.com/2009/09/12/evolution/feed/ 9 Nautilus http://shanefagan.com/2009/05/30/nautilus/ http://shanefagan.com/2009/05/30/nautilus/#comments Sat, 30 May 2009 02:21:56 +0000 Shane http://shanefagan.wordpress.com/?p=172 Continue reading →]]> Nautilus its something linux users (who use Gnome desktop) use every day. Ive started thinking about ways Nautilus can be made better since the announcement of Gnome 3.0 because its so integral to Gnome. I like it but there are a few things that I dislike.
Here are my ideas.
If the folder is large for instance /usr/bin it takes about 20-30 seconds to load that folder on my computer (If you want to know the spec its in a previous post)
I think thats a little bad, to be honest I dont know how you could fix it but I think it should be a lot better.
In vista (I know its shite) windows explorer has a tag editor for songs. So you can edit the track info like the album, title, artist etc. Nautilus doesnt have this and it would be nice to have it.
The backgrounds and emblems thing also needs some added functionality the lack of options at the moment makes it quite useless. Maybe a better colour selector would make it a little nicer. The colour wheel like in the appearance preferences wizard would work a lot better.
Better integration would be good too. If you look at evolution (I know its UI is soo ugly) in the bottom left hand corner you can make a note view the calender etc maybe add that bar to nautilus so you can access your email etc easily.
These are just a few ideas I have some crazy ones. Like playing videos and music inside of nautilus. I know it sounds crazy but I think we have to think outside the box to make Gnome really useful and easy to use.

Zeitgeist (Which I blogged about previously) will have some functionally to add to Nautilus, bookmarking of files and file tagging (Not like what I was complaining about above, this is just to aid in searching etc to be used in Zeitgeist itself) are what will probably be added by Zeitgeist.

Im not a developer of nautilus but id be happy to discuss it with them and maybe help if they want to implement any of the ideas.

Please comment with what you think.

Shane_Fagan

]]> http://shanefagan.com/2009/05/30/nautilus/feed/ 0 Follow up on my gnome 3.0 post http://shanefagan.com/2009/05/03/follow-up-on-my-gnome-30-post/ http://shanefagan.com/2009/05/03/follow-up-on-my-gnome-30-post/#comments Sun, 03 May 2009 13:36:28 +0000 Shane http://shanefagan.wordpress.com/?p=152 Continue reading →]]> I can mark a few of my points as done or at least being done as we speak.
If they replace rhythmbox and totem with banshee it would fix my point about having a unified media player like itunes or windows media player.
Gnome-Zeitgeist has file tags and makes it easier to access applications etc.
Shaking up the desktop look and feel is being tackled on a few fronts by gnome-shell and by ubuntu in recent releases.
Gnome-shell also uses multiple desktops to good effect.
My two other points aren’t being done. Id say that maybe my point about web services integration is a little ahead of its time but I think it would be good to look into. Evolution on the other hand is a nightmare in UI terms and we really should make an effort to make it better.

]]> http://shanefagan.com/2009/05/03/follow-up-on-my-gnome-30-post/feed/ 0