Apparently, my panel shadow = a desktop icon?!

So, I recently did a clean install of Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. It went really smoothly, done and dusted in less than half an hour! As it turns out, I probably didn't have to do it...

One of the main reasons I decided to do a clean install was because no matter what I did, if I had desktop effects turned on, I couldn't get a drop shadow on my panel. I know, pretty obsessive-compulsive, that just the lack of a single drop-shadow would make me reinstall, but hey. You should know by now how desperately perfectionistic I am when it comes to my desktop!

Today, I learned that I probably didn't need to do it at all.

One of the first things I noticed about my new install was that icons showed up on my desktop when I mounted external drives. Since I usually have Conky sitting on my desktop, I don't like icons because they don't play nice with the Conky window. I know there's a way to turn off desktop icons with gconf-editor, but I couldn't remember what it was, and I couldn't be bothered to look it up, so laziness prompted me to install Ubuntu Tweak. I had Ubuntu Tweak on my last install and found it really helpful, so I figured there was probably a setting in there to turn off desktop icons. And I was right; in fact, "Desktop Icons" have their own shortcut! But look what happened when I went to turn them off:

Icons on

Icons off

For some insane reason, when I turn off desktop icons, my drop shadow disappears! Which begs the question: if I had tweaked that setting in my old install, would I have got my drop shadow back? And whose bug is this? Compiz? Gnome? Ubuntu?

So for the time being, icons are "turned on," but I've unticked all the options in Ubuntu Tweak, so it effectively doesn't show anything.  How this will interact with Conky, I don't know, since I haven't updated my Conky yet.  I will keep you updated...

If you haven't tried Lua/Cairo yet, you're missing out!

Wow. So, it's been a while, huh? Well, don't you worry, I've been busy. I started teaching myself Lua, so I could do some scripting with the new Cairo bindings.

I've done a little Getting Started Guide over at the Conky Blog, and I've done some scripts, which are posted over at Conky Hardcore. If you haven't tried it yet, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!!! Here are some screenies to whet your appetite :)

From Screenshots

From Screenshots

From Screenshots

From Screenshots

...All done with Conky, and only Conky :)

...Mostly to show off :)

Well, there's not really anything innovative in my latest Conky; I was just trying to get something that was easily adaptable to all wallpapers. There are two versions:

From Screenshots

From Screenshots

...a light version and a dark version.

Both make use of the following:

• Santana font
• Sax Mono font
• Token icons (slightly modified in the "light" version)
  
• Grassy grass wallpaper (sorry, no attribution)
• Hd Multi Colored Lines wallpaper

One small problem with Conky 1.7.2, through no fault of its own

So Conky 1.7.2 was released on Monday...Among the new features is $desktop (and a couple similar functions), which I was excited about particularly because I thought that if you combined it with the $if_match variable, you might be able to create a different Conky on each workspace!

So I dove straight in and started testing the $desktop variable with

Desktop ${desktop}/${desktop_number}

which should output "Desktop 1/4", etc. Uh, except that it didn't. It only gave me "Desktop 1/1". On every desktop.

First thing I did was treble-check the syntax, since I'm notorious for screwing it up (!), but it was right...So what was the problem? I decided to test and see if ${desktop_name} worked, but realised that my desktops didn't have names, and I didn't actually know how to name them!

A quick Google search later, I came up with this bug over at Launchpad. It's an old one, but I still seem to be getting the same problem: whilst running Compiz, all of my desktops are "Desk 1", despite the fact that hovering over the desktop switcher on the panel shows them all having different names. If I turn off desktop effects, no problemo, and the Conky ${desktop} variables work fine.

I guess I'll just have to do without for now, as I care for my eye-candy more than knowing my desktop name!

If any of you clever clogs out there aren't using Compiz and want to have a go with the "different Conky for each desktop" idea, do let me know how you get on!!!

EDIT: As it turns out, the root of the problem with desktop names actually has to do with how Compiz controls your desktops. Compiz actually uses "virtual desktops", all drawn on the same "actual desktop"...The default Compiz settings (if you use desktop cube) are

Horizontal Virtual Size 4
Vertical Virtual Size 1
Number of Desktops 1

It would appear that Conky only sees that "one" desktop rather than the four virtual ones. It's unclear at this point whether adjusting some of these values will allow you to use the $desktop variable and still have your lovely spinning cube...