Whoa! Changed my login screen!

Whoa! This is awesome! I just changed my login screen...but it took a bit of terminal maneuvering. here's what I did:

Found a sweet looking login screen here.
Then tried to install it in my usr/share/gdm/themes directory like it says in the page, but found I didn't have "permission" to do so through my GUI (clicking and dragging and such). Figured I'd have to use the terminal, and that wonderful "sudo" command to get there.
I unpacked the download into a folder on my desktop called "Blueswirl" and then copied that to my home directory. Then I had to use this command in my terminal:

sudo cp -r Blueswirl /usr/share/gdm/themes

How did I know to do this? Well, I had to look long and hard (actually, I lucked out, found it on my first try!) and finally found the commands I needed here.

Then I just went to Applications > Settings > Login Window and then selected my newly installed theme as the only one to be used. (note, this is how I did it in Xubuntu - the login preferences are located similarly but differently in Kubuntu and Ubuntu)

And now I got a pretty snazzy lookin' login screen!

Fixed my panels in Xubuntu!

Yeah, so in going back into ubuntu yesterday and today things were working great, had the correct resolution as well as Beryl working again (somehow it had gotten switched off as the desktop manager...not sure how that happened). So all that was going wrong were the missing panels in Xubuntu. I figured that was an easier problem to fix, and after doing a search in the ubntu forums, I found a discussion which linked here.

Basically I opened a terminal and typed in "xfce4-panel" which opened up my panels again. Then I went to Applications > Settings > Sessions and Startup Settings. Wherein I unchecked the box under the Advanced tab which said "Launch KDE services at startup" - I had that checked alongside with the one which said to start the gnome services at startup. Those aren't really compatible, I don't think, and that's where the problem was.

Xubuntu! DVD sound! Yay...then not so 'yay'...

Well, I decided to try out Xubuntu. I used the "sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop" command to get it and install it. No problems there. Then I tried it out. I had heard that it is supposed to use less CPU power - and man it flew! And Beryl worked on it as well! Whoa! Loved it. Highly recommend Xubuntu!

Aaaaannnnnddddd...I was playing with the audio controls in Xubuntu and found where a video volume was turned all the way down. So I thought to myself, 'Self, this might be why you have no audio with your DVDs.' And I was right! I tried my handy Star Wars Episode III after adjusting the volume and I had sound! And then moving the DVD screen aroudn with Beryl was just awesome.... So cool....

So the world was great...and I had to play with more settings...

now Xubuntu has no panels (so therefore no real controls), Beryl isn't working...and life is sad. You can read exactly what I did in this thread where where I'm begging for help.

Kubuntu works fine...so I may use it to try and uninstall Xubuntu...I'm praying that works. If not, I may be reinstalling ubuntu (and Xubuntu!) all over again...

Kubuntu on Ubuntu

Well, not sure how familiar you are with Ubuntu, but there are a couple of different "strands" of it out there, if you will. Ubuntu is the primary one, based on the gnome GUI (graphical user interface - how you tell the Linux Kernal what to do, basically). But there is also Kubuntu, based on the KDE GUI. It's got a different look and feel, and certain programs run on one which don't run on another GUI (Beryl can do some awesome stuff with gnome, but it's not compatible with KDE...oh well).

Well, the other night I downloaded the Kubuntu interface. When I boot up I can go to "options" and choose which GUI I want to use for that session. Pretty cool. This afternoon I'm probably going to down load Xubuntu, a GUI based on the Xfce GUI. It seems to be a little more streamlined - it seems to demand less of your computer. I'll let ya know what I think.

The only problem with downloading these different GUIs is that the latest one you've downloaded becomes the splash screen when you first boot up. So if you just downloaded Kubuntu (like me), it says "Kubuntu" when you boot up now, instead of "Ubuntu". But I finally found a way to change that. The guide I mentioned in my last post has a little section on it here.