How to Get Unity like Taskbar in Mate Linux Desktop

Mate is a Linux Desktop that is getting increasingly popular these days because it looks like the original Gnome 2.x desktop that so many people like but is no more available now. Read my post if you want to know how to install it on your Ubuntu machine.

 

However, people who have used Unity desktop (default in Ubuntu) like this one feature very much -- the title bar of a maximized application merges with the OS task bar giving more space to the application! The name "Unity" also signifies the same. How cool will it be if such a feature is also available in Mate.. yes it is!

Step 1

Run this command on a terminal:
sudo apt-get install mate-netbook

Step 2

Right click at any empty space on your task bar and select "Add to Panel...". From the list that opens up find and select "Window Picker" and click on "Add" button and then "Close" button.

Step 3

Run this simple command from terminal:
mate-maximus -m &

"mate-maximus" is a background daemon that handles the application windows you open and hides their title bars to give you more space on the desktop.

Step 4

Now we will add the above daemon to our Startup Applications list so that it starts up on every login and handles any windows we open. Just open System >> Preferences >> Startup Applications menu path and add this command "mate-maximus -m" (without the quotes obviously) to the list.

Step 5

Nothing. Try starting any application like Firefox and maximize it if not already. See how the title bar is not there. Instead there is an icon for the application in the widget we added to the taskbar. There is also the name of current application and a close button to close it right next to it!

It is very straightforward to do though I would expect a smoother way to do it from Mate developers. I hope that will be added in next versions of it. This feature is called "Maximus" in Mate as you might have already noticed in the command name.

I hope I was able to describe the process well. Please remark/criticize in the comment box. Take care :)

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To Install Ubuntu.. Just for this Twitter App!

I love Ubuntu Linux so much that it has become an integral part of my computing life. But let us admit -- Windows is still the OS to install when you want to play some REAL video games with some seriously high-end graphics! Hence, the trouble. But the fact is that it’s totally worth it if you don’t have an app like Polly in Windows :)

I have been using Polly (a Twitter app) since some time back and I have got very much accustomed to updating my 3 different Twitter accounts from a single app. But then came the Harddisk-ocalypse and I found my disk space lowering down to a few GBs. I was forced to reinstall my OS partitions with only a Windows 8 (as opposed to having Windows 7 + Ubuntu 12.04 as before this situation).

Now the problem is that since Twitter changed its former API many of Twitter apps have started failing in a row -- like dominoes. The ones that can handle multi-accounts + new API and other things are not free. So, as obvious I could not find a free Twitter app of the level of Polly for Windows anyways.

So, I installed a copy of Ubuntu 12.04 in Oracle Virtualbox on my Windows 8 and installed Polly in it. The only problem with this method is with the enormous amount of resources the Ubuntu in Virtualbox eats up on my system. But being a blogger I regularly need to update my twitter accounts and a desperate guy will choose any option that gets him closer to what he wants right?

Now if anybody wants to know how to install Polly on Ubuntu. This is the command line for the terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:conscioususer/polly-daily && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install polly

Just answer on the terminal as indicated and it will get installed. The program name is “polly”. On first start it will run a wizard setting up access to your Twitter account. Enjoy tweeting! :)

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Easily Convert from Different Number Systems to Decimal

In the world of computers we can use many Number Systems-- the most popular being binary, decimal, octal and hexadecimal. In this tutorial I will teach you how to manually convert from binary and hexadecimal systems to decimal. You will not need any calculator to do this because it is an easy process.

Binary to Decimal

Binary is the number system used by our computers internally. They don't understand our human languages. We need to tell them, for example - a is 1001010, b is 110010, etc. (this is just example and a is not 1001010!). Basically binary number system means two numbers: 1 and 0. Any numbers created using these two digits are called binary numbers.

Let us see a simple diagram that explains the arithmetic to convert binary digits to a decimal number that we understand.

Bits 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
     1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1
     + + + + + + + +--> 2^0 x bit 0 =>   1*1 =   1
     | | | | | | +----> 2^1 x bit 1 =>   2*1 =   2
     | | | | | +------> 2^2 x bit 2 =>   4*1 =   4
     | | | | +--------> 2^3 x bit 3 =>   8*0 =   0
     | | | +----------> 2^4 x bit 4 =>  16*1 =  16
     | | +------------> 2^5 x bit 5 =>  32*1 =  32
     | +--------------> 2^6 x bit 6 =>  64*0 =   0
     +----------------> 2^7 x bit 7 => 128*1 = 128
                                               183 (Decimal)

The binary number we use here is 10110111. Here the trick is to simply multiply the n powers to 2 with the binary number (that is 1 or 0 whatever is at the bit location). The numbers in italic above beside the "Bits" is the ordinal of the bits (0 or 1) as placed in the binary number-- backwards. Simply multiply as shown and add the numbers to get the decimal number equivalent of the binary number.


Hexadecimal to Decimal

The hexadecimal is the most popular number system in the world of computing after decimal (octal was replaced by hexadecimal as the most popular number system a long time back). The digits used are 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F. The digits A to F signify the numbers 10 through 15 respectively.


Digits 3 2 1 0
       4 6 8 9
       + + + +---> 16^0 x digit 0 =>    1*9 =     9
       | | +-----> 16^1 x digit 1 =>   16*8 =   128
       | +-------> 16^2 x digit 2 =>  256*6 =  1536
       +---------> 16^3 x digit 3 => 4096*4 = 16384
                                              18057 (Decimal)


The hexadecimal number we take here is 4689. The trick is similar as in the case of binary to decimal conversion. This time we use n powers to 16 (hexadecimal means 16).

In both the conversions above the maroon numbers are like constants that you can easily memorize. Especially in the case of binary multiplication is so simple-- just with a 1 or 0! How easy can it get? You won't need a calculator to do such conversions anymore ;)

Hope you liked this small tutorial. If you did plz share with your friends too! Till then goodbye :)

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