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My Customized Desktop Panel

2009, November 18 - 2:57pm — vyvy

I have just installed Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, and have spent some time to customize my Xfce panel. I have used GIMP to create a snapshot of my panel, split it into two (since the panel is too wide, with 1440 pixels), and attach them here.

I configured to use only one panel, with a height of 34 pixels at the bottom of the screen.

The Left Part

The left part of the panel consists of the items below (from left to right):

  1. Xfce Menu. Only shows the icon to save space.
  2. Places. For fast access.
  3. Launcher for Firefox. I use Firefox often.
  4. Launcher for Chromium. I use Google Chromium often too. Add the repository with a simple sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chromium-daily
  5. Launcher for Xfce Terminal. A must-have for hardcore GNU/Linux hacker!
  6. Separator. A Line.
  7. Task List. I configure it to 'Never group tasks'.
  8. Separator. A Line.

The Right Part

This part is much more dynamic and interesting.

  1. Weather Update. I can access the weather details and forecast in a few clicks. Handy information for me before hanging clothes outside!
  2. Dictionary. I have also added the web service with URL http://dictionary.sina.com.hk/p/word/{word} for English <-> Chinese translation.
  3. Notes. The 'physical' sticky notes I used did not stick well on the edge of my monitor. I resort to this 'soft' sticky notes for the moment. Bad thing is that it has to occupy some display area and not all notes are visible anytime.
  4. Governor Plugin. I use the 'ondemand' governor most of the time to save power and reduce the heat generated. Will use 'performance' governor sometimes when I'm desperate. :p
  5. CPUFreq. Shows the current CPU frequency, in GHz.
  6. System Load Monitor. Shows monitors for CPU, memory, swap, and uptime respectively.
  7. Free Space Checkter for /tmp. I have modified /etc/fstab to mount /tmp as tmpfs with this line: tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0. The capacity of tmpfs in my box, mounted with 4GB RAM, is 2GB. It's sufficient but it's better to monitor its space usage, as I often use /tmp to hold temporary files when compiling software, hold temporary ISO images during disc burning, etc.
  8. Network Monitor. The maximums for incoming and outgoing are set to be 200 kBytes/s and 50 kBytes/s respectively.
  9. Sensor plugin. sensors-detect found that I need to use the it87 module, but the module will not load successfully under Karmic Koala due to 'ACPI: I/O resource it87 [0x295-0x296] conflicts with ACPI region ECRE [0x290-0x2af]' as found in dmesg. To workaround with the problem, edit /etc/default/grub by assigning GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_enforce_resources=lax", execute sudo update-grub2, and reboot the box. I configured it to show M/B Temp, CPU Temp, and the temperatures of two hard disks.
  10. Workspace Switcher. I use 6 workspaces, shown in 3 rows here.
  11. Notification Area. The volume control and IBus input method framework are always accessible here.
  12. Orage Clock. Line 1: %R, with font Sans 10. Line 2: %d-%b, with font Sans Bold 10.
  13. Action Buttons. To lock the screen with just one click.

Your comments or suggestions are welcomed.