Note: I figured it out!!! I will write up the solution to the multiple-application-icon problem tomorrow sometime in the near future.

Meanwhile, here's the entry I wrote earlier today:

I'm running GNOME Shell (aka GNOME 3) in Debian Wheezy, and when I go to the applications tab (mouse into the "hot corner," or hit the "super" key, then either click on Applications or just start typing the first letters of your desired app), I had been getting multiples of the same application, one version with a detailed icon, another with a fuzzy, bitmapped icon.

There are quite a few "recipes" on the Web for solving this problem, but most are from 2011, and with GNOME and the distribution in general undergoing a lot of changes, I wasn't optimistic that anything would work.

This easy fix did work for me, albeit temporarily; only in the current session. If you feel like trying it, it's easy enough. Basically open up a terminal and use your rootly powers (I use sudo for that purpose, but you can su to root if you wish) to do the following:

$ sudo update-menus

My multiple-icon problem was cleared up ... until I logged out. When I logged in again, I had multiple icons. I could run update-menus in a startup script, but that's not terribly elegant.

Firefox in CentOS (and by extension Stella) right now is version 10.0.x. I wondered why.

Well, it's because those very-long-term support distros are using the Extended Support Release of Firefox. Read more about ESR here, here and here, and if you want to try the ESR version of Firefox, start here.

My current Debian Wheezy installation is an upgrade from Squeeze, so I was unprepared for what just happened: I'm doing a bunch of installs in between my other work, and I just got around to a traditional Wheezy desktop installation with the GNOME desktop using netinstall image.

I was unprepared for the only GUI package manager to be GNOME Package Kit. No Synaptic Package Manager. Not even the "Sofware Center" ported from Ubuntu that shipped in Squeeze.

Debian Developers, you think GNOME Package Kit is anywhere near as good as Synaptic? It's certainly RHEL-like, as Package Kit is the GUI package manager in RHEL/CentOS.

At least Debian is still shipping Aptitude, unlike Ubuntu.

But no Synaptic? In Debian? Are they kidding? Not counting these five paragraphs, I'm speechless.

Later: The Xfce install of Debian Wheezy DOES include Synaptic. So does the KDE install. I did another GNOME install and confirmed that Synaptic is NOT included. This is quite an omission. The LXDE install of Debian also does not include Synaptic, but that is very much expected.

At the risk of repeating myself yet again, Debian's default installs of Xfce and KDE include the Synaptic Package Manager, but the GNOME install does not. That is crazy.

Given the rumor that Debian is looking at Xfce as the default desktop environment for the Wheezy release, that Xfce seems more "complete" in regard to package management is, in a way, encouraging.

More Debian GNOME install weirdness: Debian has always included the full office suite in just about every default desktop installation. GNOME, Xfce and even LXDE installs have included OpenOffice and now LibreOffice.

What's strange about the current GNOME installation of Debian Wheezy is that it includes not only LibreOffice but also the Abiword word processor and Gnumeric spreadsheet. That's like a double office suite. It's strange to have both.

Debian with KDE: I've done quite a few installs in the last week, and while I'm not sure I could get used to KDE, the desktop in its default installation in Debian Wheezy is very nice. It works great, doesn't require 3D acceleration (like GNOME 3 does), and generally has a lot (a whole lot) of polish.

As much as hating GNOME 3/Shell would put me in good company, I find myself liking it just fine.

I installed Xfce 4.8 on this Wheezy laptop, and while I like that environment well enough, I've pretty much moved back to GNOME in the weeks since.

I'm OK with the hot corner, the virtual desktops that pop up (and go away) on demand and hitting the Windows/Super key to enter command/hot-corner mode.

I have the GNOME Tweak Tool, and I've installed a few GNOME 3 Extensions from the web site. But just a few. Most of the Extensions I've seen are fairly frivolous/unhelpful.

After I installed Wine (not as easy as it should be in 64-bit Debian) and then IrfanView, it took a little doing to get the photo viewing/editing application to show up in the GNOME 3 applications menu, and I still can't get it to show in the applications bar on the left (where it presents as a generic Wine launcher). No problems with that in Xfce, of course, but I can still "hot corner" my way to IrfanView whenever I want. I'm using Fotoxx half the time anyway, so that is less of a problem.

I still love Nautilus and Gedit, and while I continued using the GNOME text editor all of the time and Nautilus some of the time in Xfce, once I determined that the 3D effects in GNOME Shell take CPU when they're under way but give it back soon thereafter, I felt that the productivity boost was (and is) well worth it. Compared to what a Web browser sucks from CPU and memory (and often doesn't give back), GNOME Shell is thrifty.

I am in the process of looking into CentOS-derived Stella, which provides nearly all of the desktop packages and codecs I need day to day. But for my main production machine, I will be sticking with newer systems (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, or "other").

FOSS Force's Chris Hall has a nice post on how he returned to the open-source, not-for-profit (as far as I know) Diaspora social network to find it more populated than the last time he signed in. He's now actively using Diaspora and inviting his Facebook friends to the non-explotative alternative.

It wasn't all that long ago that the KDE desktop environment made a major leap from version 3 to 4, leaving a lot of the old functionality behind without having the new polished enough to keep users happy.

And now GNOME has thrown out its own version 2 bathwater for a new GNOME 3/Shell desktop paradigm in which the window manager is radically different but the critical "furniture" of the environment in the form of applications such as Gedit, NetworkManager, GDM, etc., remain largely the same.

It's going to get worse before it gets better. GNOME is about to pour extra fuel on this particular fire as a very important piece of that furniture -- the Nautilus file manager -- is about to undergo a "dumbing down" to make it more touchscreen/mobile friendly, even though GNOME doesn't appear to run on any mobile or touchscreen devices at this particular point in time.

So do you think GNOME is taking an especially hard pounding for the changes in version 3? Do you think KDE was criticized as much, or more? Did KDE finally acquit itself with later versions in the 4.x series? (I know they never managed to get their office suite back on track.)

And will this all blow over for GNOME, or will the Linux community (and what's left of the BSD-running GNOME community) leave it for dead?

(There's irony; I'm writing this post directly to the web server over sftp entirely in GNOME 3 using Nautilus and Gedit. I've been running Xfce 4.8 quite a bit, but I'm getting more comfortable with GNOME Shell all the time.)

It's nice to say that the very-very-very-long-term-support releases in the Linux world that won't cost you arms and legs -- the RHEL-source-fed CentOS and Scientific Linux -- are there if you want to run the same distribution for years and years.

But that's only true if you can stick with the relatively anemic selection of desktop packages available in the CentOS, Scientific Linux and, by extension, Red Hat repositories.

You soon hit a wall. Applications you use every day in Debian, Ubuntu and even Fedora are just not there.

For me those include the Audacity and Ardour audio editors and the OpenShot video editor (or ANY video editor, for that matter). For others -- and maybe for you -- it could mean Skype (if that's your thing, and it very well might be) or the VLC media player.

And then there's a buttload of codecs and other various (and) naughty multimedia bits that are available but often hard to find.

Read the rest of this post

Hate GNOME 3 or just love GNOME 2 and wish the goodness would continue on and on? Well, that's happening. It's called MATE, and this fork of GNOME 2 is under active development.

So you want to run MATE in Debian Wheezy or Sid (or Linux Mint Debian Edition or Linux Mint Lisa or Ubuntu Oneric)? The Debian/Ubuntu MATE Repository is here for you. And here are the installation instructions.

That page also offers links to the MATE Homepage, MATE Wiki, MATE Forum and MATE/debian blog, the latter of which points to the Ubuntu Precise Pangolin MATE repository.

As I've written in my last half-dozen or so entries, even though the GNOME community is in a state of heavy questioning about it's present and future, I'm still evaluating GNOME 3/Shell. And while I was a GNOME 2 user, my love of GNOME was and is more about Nautilus, Gedit, GNOME Terminal, Rhythmbox, NetworkManager, GDM, etc. than the window manager portion of the overall desktop environment and application mix.

Just as GNOME 3 deserves a full evaluation, so does MATE -- especially if development continues and picks up steam going forward.

Since the GIMP edits JPEG images superbly but obliterates their IPTC metadata captions, and gThumb, my main image editor of the past three years, outputs horrible resized images in version 3.0.1 in Debian Wheezy, I need a new image editing application.

And did I say that I need it now?

I go through many dozen images a day. Shrinking. Cropping. Recaptioning.

The software needs to work.

Yesterday I set up Wine the non-emulator, whatever-it-is Windows-compatible environment in Linux that enabled me to install and run the IrfanView image editor/viewer.

Not that other choices don't exist. There is the KDE app DigiKam.

And a little searching brought me to an app I always meant to try: Fotoxx.

It's in Debian, so I installed it. After a lengthy indexing of my appointed directories, I dug in and started working on photos.

Quality of resized images is great. It will be even better when I tweak the sharpen settings just right.

I can edit IPTC caption data, and though it's a bit awkward, also the byline field.

I wouldn't call it a speedy app, but so far it is getting the job done. With a little practice, I just might have a new photo-editing app.

I'm here trying to get work done, and the Windows XP box I barely used today is totally locked up. The disk light isn't on at all, but nothing is moving on the desktop.

I'm rebooting, but I'd rather just do some f&^%ing work.