Synapse and Zeitgeist Engine

Some of you might not have heard of the Zeitgeist Engine. In short, it is a service that logs the users’s activities and events (files opened, websites visites, conversations hold with other people, etc.) and makes relevant information available to other applications. Applications can plug in to this engine to gain access to your recent activities and do wonder with it. Synapse is one such application. It allows you to search your recently opened files/folders/applications quickly and easily.

If you are using a new computer, a freshly installed Ubuntu or your distro doesn’t have zeitgeist pre-installed, the first time you use Synapse, you will find that it returns limited search result. This is because very few events have been logged by Zeitgeist yet. The good thing is, the longer you use your computer, the better Synapse will be.

To install in Ubuntu:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:synapse-core/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade #lucid only

sudo apt-get install synapse

Once installed, you can activate the application in Applications -> Accessories -> Synapse.

The usage is exactly the same as Gnome-Do. Press “Ctrl + Space” to activate the launcher. Type in the search term and press Enter to execute the commands.

You can also scroll left/right to define the nature of the search, such as Actions, Applications, Documents, Audio, Internet etc.

Pressing up/down button will show more results for the current search.

In the backend, you can change the keyboard activation shortcut and the theme.

Synapse also supports plugins. You can use Synapse to search for applications, play songs in Banshee/Rhythmbox, check words in dictionary, run terminal commands, lock screen etc. One thing though, there is no means for you to install new plugins at the moment.

Conclusion

Synapse uses Zeitgeist which is a completely different approach from Gnome-Do. It will take some time, especially Gnome-do lovers, to get used to it. The functionality is also quite limited at the moment, but taking into account the amount of data that zeitgeist logs and the different permutations of tips/tricks that can be done with it, given time, I am sure Synapse will become a very useful and powerful tool. This is provided the developer of Synapse continues to grow the product. What do you think?

Synapse @ Launchpad | Synapse homepage

Kupfer

Visually, this is the most basic of the three. There’s little in the way of fancy graphics, but it’s still a capable launcher, and quite a bit more.

As you would expect, you can begin typing application names to launch them, but Kupfer can handle several other kinds of input such as web addresses and dictionary lookups. Kupfer comes with a full collection of plugins to greatly expand what you can do with it.

Kupfer has arguably the best plugin collection of the bunch. Particularly useful to me was the fact that it was the only one with Chromium support.

To decide which action is taken on your input, you begin by entering the text such as a program name or web address. Hit Tab to move to the second panel, and the down arrow will let you scroll between the options implied by your text.

The main problem I had with Kupfer is that while I’m sure the plugins are quite useful, it’s not often clear exactly how to USE them. There’s very little documentation available for Kupfer, so you’ve mostly got to figure it out though trial and error.

Launchy

Next on our list is Launchy. It’s more visually polished than Kupfer and also includes several alternate skins. One of the most interesting aspects of Launchy is that unlike Gnome Do and Kupfer, it can also run on Windows.

Launchy comes with much more configuration than Kupfer, however it does not include as large a collection of plugins built in. More plugins can still be found at their website if you’d like to move beyond what’s provided.

The Weby plugin is particularly useful, allowing access to customizable web searches for many of the most popular sites such as Google, Wikipedia, and IMDB. Usage of these plugins is similar to Kupfer. You begin by typing the keyword (such as google or imdb), then hit Tab to get the prompt for your search term.

While this makes sense once you get used to it, it seems less likely that a user would think to hit Tab in these cases than with the 2-pane horizontal approach taken by Kupfer and GNOME Do.

Launchy did seem to hit a snag on my Lucid test machine when switching skins. After pulling up the Mercury skin, Launchy’s graphics bugged out and required a manual deletion of the config files to get working again.

GNOME Do

The most well known of this bunch is GNOME Do. It’s probably the first name that comes to mind for most Linux users when they think of an application launcher, and for good reason. We’ve covered GNOME Do on MakeTechEasier once or twice because it’s always been a useful and well designed application.

Regarding configuration, GNOME Do is right up there with Launchy and also includes a good plugin suite.

Much like the other two, the Tab and arrow keys are used to choose options in both panes. GNOME Do can intelligently choose actions based on the the context of your query. In this example, I’ve entered “gimp” into the text area, and GNOME Do has realized that it’s already running, so the options presented are related to what I might want to do with a running program.

The biggest down side to GNOME Do is that there do no appear to be any additional plugin or theme packs outside the ones in the base install.

Conclusion

Kupfer is mostly very simple and flexible, but it lacks visual appeal. Also, the lack of documentation makes it difficult to learn to move beyond the basics. Launchy has the benefits of being is highly configurable and multi-platform capable, but the lack of useful plugins in the default install left it less capable than both the other alternatives. Ultimately, GNOME Do still stands on top and gives the best overall capability on a Linux desktop. It’s flexible, intuitive, and offers a fair amount of room for customization. That’s not to say that Kupfer and Launchy don’t have their place. This is Linux, choice is good.

For those of you who like to keep their installations lean and swift, installing software can be a problem at times. There’s lots of useful software out there, but some can be really bloated and slow, while others are small themselves, but have large or many dependencies.

This is especially true for Gnome-Do. When you install Gnome-Do, Evolution get installed along as a dependency. If you are using Ubuntu (or GNOME), where Evolution is already pre-installed, this is not an issue. However, if you are using other distro, like Linux Mint, or other desktop managers, then you won’t want to install the bulky Evolution just to use Gnome-Do.

Luckily, there is a solution for this. The trick is to install an empty Evolution package and make Gnome-Do think that Evolution is already installed on your computer.

Note: Please keep in mind that if you already have Gnome-do and/or Evolution installed, there’s no need to follow this set of instructions. Also, by using this dependency you will break anything that relies on the real dependency. There is nothing to worry about if you’re not using Evolution in the first place though.

Download the .deb file that will serve as the substitute and place it on your desktop.

Double click on the deb file to install.

If for some reason that double-clicking of the deb file doesn’t work, open a terminal and type the following:

cd /~Desktop
sudo dpkg -i libevolution5.0-cil_2.2.2-2_i386.deb

After that, just follow the instructions here to install Gnome-do normally.

Don’t forget to change the lines you need to paste into /etc/apt/sources.list if you’re using Ubuntu 9.10.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu karmic main

Or if you’re using Ubuntu 9.04:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

As you can see, you can save quite some space by using a substitute dependency.

Installation of Gnome-Do with full Evolution package:

Installation of Gnome-Do with substitute Evolution package:

Credit for the substitute dependency: Juan Frias

One thing is different though, Gnome-Do Docky is intuitive and can automatically add items to your dock based on your search pattern.

To install (or upgrade to) the latest version of Gnome-Do, you need to add the repository to your sources.list.

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following lines to the end of the file. Save and close the file.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

Update the repository

sudo apt-get update

If you have already installed Gnome-Do, type

sudo apt-get upgrade

to upgrade to the latest version.

For a new install, type

sudo apt-get install gnome-do

To make sure that the Docky works properly, you will need to have a compositing manager in your Desktop. If your computer supports Compiz, you can proceed on to launch Gnome-Do. If not, you will have to turn on the metacity compositing manager.

Turn on metacity compositing manager (only if Compiz does not work in your computer)

In the terminal, type

gconf-editor

Navigate to Apps->Metacity->General. On the right, scroll down till you see the compositing manager option. Put a check in the box beside it.

Close the window.

Activate Gnome Do (Applications->Accessories->Gnome Do)

On the window that shows up on the centre of the screen, click on the arrow button on the top right corner and select Preferences. Click on the Appearance tab. Under the theme dropdown bar, select Docky.

You should now see the dock appear at the bottom of your desktop.

There are several features found in the Docky that are worthy mentioning:

• Drag and Drop items onto or remove from the Dock (files, folders, and applications from the menu)
• Drag and Drop items into folders on the dock, as well as the trash can.
• Image previews of items which support it
• True parabolic zoom (can be disabled)
• Click animations
• Intuitive resizing by dragging on the dock separator
• Adding and removing “Statistical Items” (items which Do considers relevant to you) from the dock by dragging the left and right edges
• Window indicators (supports advanced window indicators)
• Advanced window management features via the Window Manager plugin for GNOME Do
• The ability to make Docky Automatically Hide when not being hovered.
• A full frontend to GNOME Do
• Add items to docky from GNOME Do searches

Using Gnome-Do within the Docky is no different from its past version. You just need to press Win + Space (some call it Super + Space) button to activate the Gnome-Do, follow by typing your command/search phrase. However, instead of Gnome-Do appearing at the centre of screen, the search bar now appears at the bottom of the screen, where the Docky is situated.

Adding/removing items to the docky is as simple as dragging and dropping your application to the dock. There is another way though. When you perform a search on Gnome-Do, you can add the search result to the dock by clicking on the + button at the left corner.

If you have activated the Window manager plugin within the Plugins section, you will be able to perform actions on your Docky via the context menu (mouse right-click).  The context menu interaction with the application is intuitive and changes according to the app. This is somewhat similar to the AeroPeek feature in Windows 7, but in a different form.

Other changes to Gnome-Do

Other than the dock, this latest version of Gnome-Do also comes with more plugins and fixed a large number of bugs. New plugins include create tinyurl from Gnome-Do, accessing various Google services, such as Docs, Gmail contact, Calendar, search, Gcalculate etc, and many more.

All in all, there is a great improvement over the previous version. If you have not download/install/use it, then you better grab it now.

You can read more about the Docky at its wiki page. What is the best features that you like about the latest version of Gnome-Do? Will the Docky replace your default dock?

Image credit: Docky wiki

The development of GNOME Do is inspired by Quicksilver and GNOME Launch Box. As such, you will find many features to be familiar. Once you installed it, you can easily summon the search box via “Super+Space” shortcut key. Simply type the name of the application or file that you want to locate and GNOME Do will find the match and display it on the left pane. On the right pane is the action that you can take with that file you have located.

For example, type in “Rhy” and the “RhythmBox Music Player” will show up on the left pane. On the right pane shows the “Run” action. Simply press Enter to load the RhythmBox Music Player. To make things even easier, you can give a command to play song from RhythmBox, just type “play [name of the song]” and press Enter.

Other than searching for files only in your system, GNOME Do also allows you to find online contents and execute more tasks via the use of plugins. The plugins database can be found here. Personally, I find that the Firefox, Twitter, Google Calendar and GNOME Terminal plugins have been particularly useful.

Oh yes…did I mention that GNOME Do runs on KDE as well?

[GNOME Do]