 
Step-by-Step Guide to Bodhi Linux

Roger Carter

Copyright 2014 Roger Carter

Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

1 Introduction

1.1 About this guide

1.2 What is Bodhi Linux?

1.3 What you need to know about Bodhi Linux before you begin

1.4 Installing Bodhi Linux

2 First steps with Bodhi

2.1 Preliminary housekeeping tasks

2.2 Some initial tweaks

2.3 Installing some applications: Firefox and Flash

2.4 Installing Nautilus and Gnome Terminal

2.5 Application Launchers

2.6 Using Nautilus and Gnome Terminal

2.7 Running Nautilus as Superuser

2.8 Customizing the Nautilus Icon

2.9 Hidden files

3 Turbocharge your Desktop

3.1 A first look at shelves and iBars

3.2 Hiding desktop launchers

3.3 A second shelf

3.4 A popup shelf

3.5 The Places gadget

3.6 Run Everything

3.7 Edge bindings

3.8 Key bindings

4 Beef up your System

4.1 Office applications

4.2 Media players

4.3 Photo applications

4.4 Dropbox

4.5 Osmo personal organizer

4.6 Skype

4.7 Osmoma Audio Recorder

4.8 eDeb and Chrome

4.9 Get-iPlayer

4.10 Other applications

4.11 Uninstalling applications

5 More power to your desktop

5.1 Update your iBar

5.2 An iBar on the desktop

5.3 The Favorites menu

5.4 Applications name display

5.5 Startup applications

5.6 Virtual desktops

5.7 Different shelves for different desktops

5.8 GTK Themes

5.9 Profiles

5.10 E17 themes

5.11 Starting afresh

6 Maintain and replicate your system

6.1 Aliases

6.2 Updating your system

6.3 Cleaning your system

6.4 Backing up with Remastersys

6.5 Unetbootin

6.6 Running Bodhi Linux from a USB drive

6.7 Future versions of Bodhi Linux

6.8 Conclusion

Quick Start Guide to this Bodhi Linux installation

# 1 Introduction

### 1.1 About this guide

This guide describes how to install the Bodhi Linux operating system on your computer, how to customize it, and how to install the software applications you will want to use (web browser, email client, office applications, photo software, media player, etc). It is a practical step-by-step guide rather than an academic description of the Bodhi system, but at relevant points it will give links to explanatory material on the web.

It grew out of notes prepared for a University of the Third Age (U3A) computer group in the UK, some of whose members wished to migrate to Linux from Windows following Microsoft's decision to cease supporting Windows XP. I hope, though, that it will prove useful to a wider audience, including existing Linux users who are coming to Bodhi for the first time.

Bodhi Linux is highly customizable and can be tweaked in numerous ways. However, a step-by-step guide such as this is necessarily prescriptive, so that by following it you end up with a very specific desktop profile. Don't worry about that. The point is that having learnt how to create and save that profile, you are then in a position to set up your own profile, either by playing around with what you've already produced or by starting afresh. And if you mess things up you can easily restore your saved profile. And as for the various applications that you will be installing as you work through this guide, they can be easily removed and replaced with alternatives.

I should emphasize that this is not an official Bodhi Linux publication, and that I have no connection of any kind with the Bodhi Linux developers. Like Bodhi itself (and indeed most Linux products), it is given away free of charge. However, if you find it helpful and, more importantly, if you like Bodhi and continue to use it, I would encourage you to make a donation to Bodhi Linux to support its further development. The donate link is on the Bodhi Linux home page at www.bodhilinux.com.

### 1.2 What is Bodhi Linux?

Bodhi (rhymes with Jodie) is what's known as a Linux distribution or 'distro', meaning a variant of Linux packaged with a window manager or desktop. All variants of Linux are built on the same essential Linux 'kernel', so they all share a common core. Probably the most popular variant is Ubuntu, and it is from this that Bodhi Linux is derived. There are a number of different desktops (i.e. window managers with added extras) that are available for Linux, and the one that is packaged with the standard Ubuntu distro is called Unity. Bodhi Linux, however, uses instead the Enlightenment window manager, or E17 for short (17 being its current version number).

Enlightenment can be used with other distros, and it has become a firm favourite with many Linux users (including, obviously, me), as it is agile, elegant, and very customizable. However, it is only Bodhi Linux that puts Enlightenment at the heart of its design philosophy. Enlightenment's disadvantage is that it is so customizable that the user is faced with quite a learning curve, but Bodhi's Help system \- 'The Bodhi Guide to Enlightenment' - provides excellent guidance. And hopefully this step-by-step guide will enable you get to grips with it.

Although Bodhi is based on and is very close to Ubuntu, it is not Ubuntu. In particular, it does not have the same software repository. Again, its repository is based on the Ubuntu repository, but it is kept more up-to-date, meaning that the Bodhi developers try to provide the latest releases of the various software applications that you are going to want to install.

Bodhi Linux is currently at version 2, the latest release being 2.4.

**Further reading:** If you want to read a little more about Bodhi and its Enlightenment window manager, go to the introductory section of the Bodhi Guide. You can find it at the Bodhi website (www.bodhilinux.com/) - at the home page, move the mouse pointer over 'Documentation', choose 'Enlightenment Guide', then 'Introduction'.

### 1.3 What you need to know about Bodhi Linux before you begin

Fortunately, you don't need to know much about Linux itself in order to use Bodhi and its Enlightenment desktop, and what you do need to know can be picked up along the way. However, there are a couple of concepts used by Enlightenment that I need to introduce you to right now. These are 'themes' and 'profiles'. I mention them here because you will meet them while you are installing Bodhi on your computer.

**E17 Themes** : These control the appearance of the desktop, including the background, the fonts, and the various gadgets such as the clock. For examples of some of the themes that are available, go to the Bodhi website (http://www.bodhilinux.com/), mouse over 'Resources', choose 'Art Wiki', then choose 'Enlightenment'.

**Profiles** : These control everything about the desktop, including the theme you have chosen, the positioning of its elements, what modules are loaded, and any key bindings and mouse bindings that you may have set. Profiles are very powerful because they store all your customizations; it means that you can try different profiles, with different themes and customizations, secure in the knowledge that you can at any time return to your original saved profile. Bodhi comes with a number of standard profiles from which you can choose, to suit your particular hardware and preferences.

**GTK Themes** : Also called 'application themes', these are not part of Enlightenment, but I mention them here so that you don't confuse them later with E17 themes. GTK themes control the appearance of the windows within which applications run, i.e. their colour schemes and the look of common elements such as scroll bars. For examples, go to the Art Wiki on the Bodhi website and choose GTK themes.

**Note:** I won't be cluttering up this guide with explanations of terms such as GTK. If you would like to know what they mean, search the web, if necessary including 'linux' or 'ubuntu' in your search phrase.

### 1.4 Installing Bodhi Linux

The first step is to create a CD with the Bodhi Linux system on it. For this you will need a blank recordable CD and a computer able to write to it. Assuming you have these, work through the following steps:

1) Go to the Bodhi Linux website (http://www.bodhilinux.com) where you will see two download links at the right, one for 32 bit and the other for 64 bit computers. I suggest you choose 32 bit, which will work on all computers. (Even if your computer is a modern 64-bit machine, there is little to gain from choosing the 64-bit option.)

2) The next screen presents you with two further download options, one for PAE computers and the second for non-PAE. Again, non-PAE will work on all machines. However, in this case it's worth installing the PAE version if your computer will take it, and the chances are it will. All post-2004 computers support PAE, as will the majority of post-1995 machines. So click on the top (pae) download button, and after a few seconds your download will start. It will be a .iso file, meaning that it is an optical disk image. The Bodhi ISO image is small enough to fit on a CD rather than a DVD.

3) You will have noticed that below the Bodhi download button is one labelled 'md5sum'. This leads to a further download that will enable you to check that there are no errors in your downloaded ISO image. I've never had any errors in such images, but if you want to check, there are some free Windows utilities you can use with md5sum downloads - search the Web for 'md5sum on Windows'.

4) Now burn your ISO file to a CD. In Windows 7, if you double-click on your ISO, the Windows Disk Image Burner program should open, and you can burn your image with this. Otherwise you can use one of the free CD burning programs that are available for Windows (and indeed for Linux). I use CDBurnerXP, which runs on Windows XP as well as Vista and 7, and is available at https://cdburnerxp.se/. When you run CDBurnerXP, one of its options is to burn an ISO image. Simply insert a blank recordable CD in the drive, choose this option, browse to the Bodhi ISO file that you've saved, and click the Burn disc button. After a few minutes your CD will be ready.

5) Now comes the moment of truth. Boot up the computer on which you wish to install Bodhi, and immediately hold down the F12 key until the boot menu opens. Insert your CD into the optical drive, and select the option on the menu to boot from this. (If F12 doesn't take you to the boot menu, check your computer's manual for the method to use. Note that a list of the keys you can use at startup should appear on the screen as soon as the computer fires up.)

6) After a second or two the disc start-up menu will appear. Choose the top option to run the live system. The Bodhi splash screen will appear for several seconds, and then the screen will grow dark, and nothing will seem to be happening for perhaps a minute, other than the sound of the CD drive working. And then, if all's well, a menu of profile choices will appear. Breathe a sigh of relief!

[7) If after a couple of minutes nothing happens, and the disc has stopped working, it means that all is not well. If your computer is old, the chances are that it is a non-PAE machine, in which case you will have to download the non-PAE version of Bodhi. If, after you've done this, Bodhi still won't run, it means that Linux has encountered some hardware incompatibility. A common problem encountered on old laptops is to do with ACPI, and to overcome this you will have to turn ACPI off: when the disc start-up menu appears (step 6), press the Tab key to show the start-up options, and at the end of this list add the command _acpi=off_. You should also of course check the md5sum (step 3 above).]

8) Choose the Composite profile, click Next, and then at the next screen choose any theme that takes your fancy, then click Next again. The Enlightenment desktop will appear, with a panel at the left (called a shelf) with various gadgets on it, and on the desktop itself will be more gadgets, including a clock. Don't worry about any of these for the moment.

9) On the live system the network gadget does not run automatically (it does on the installed system), and to connect to the Internet you will have to start it manually. To do so, open the main menu (either by clicking anywhere on the desktop or by clicking the topmost icon on the shelf) and choose 'Run Everything'. At its dialog box type the first few letters of _network_. The blue network applet will appear in the dialog box and will be highlighted, and you can now press Enter to run it. A network icon will appear on the shelf. If you have a wired network (i.e. if your computer is linked by cable to your router), a connection will be established immediately; if you are connecting wirelessly, you should click on the icon, select your router, and enter its password.

**Further reading:** For more information on connecting to the Internet, go to the relevant part of Bodhi's Help system. Click anywhere on the desktop to open the Main menu, choose Bodhi Linux then Quick Start, then click on the first item, 'Connecting to the Internet'.

10) If you wish, you can try out Bodhi at this point to make sure you are happy with it before you install it on your hard disk. To run the web browser that has been included on the CD (Midori), click the second icon down from the top of the shelf.

11) When you are ready to install Bodhi Linux on your computer, double-click the Install Bodhi icon. After some seconds the language selection dialog box opens - choose the appropriate option and click Continue. Press Continue at the next screen (which is a hardware check - don't worry if the Internet connection is crossed out), then at the next dialog box click Yes to unmount partitions. Next, you have to decide whether you want to keep your existing operating system alongside Bodhi on your system. If you don't, tick the box to Replace Microsoft Windows then click Continue. At the next screen click your location on the map, and after that accept the appropriate keyboard layout (you can probably go with the default offering). Next, you must enter your name, then the username you want to give your computer (leave it at _Bodhi32_ if you wish) and a password. Choose 'Log in automatically' (unless your computer is to be used in a workplace setting), then click Continue. Finally, when the computer has finished installing the system (it takes quite a while), you can click Restart.

12) After it reboots, at the Profile dialog box, choose the Composite profile again, then at the Theme dialog box choose 'Bodhi-Theme', if that theme is listed, otherwise choose another. (The selection of themes available on the installation disc varies from one release of Bodhi Linux to another. I will be basing the description in the first part of this guide on Bodhi-Theme, and if it is not available on your installation disc, don't worry: you will be installing it shortly). That completes the first part of your work - you have installed Bodhi Linux successfully.

Notice that the network icon has automatically appeared on the shelf. If you have a wired connection to your router, this will have been activated. If you are connecting wirelessly you should click the network icon to select your router and enter its password.

# 2 First steps with Bodhi

### 2.1 Preliminary housekeeping tasks

There are a few rather tedious tasks to perform before you get to the fun bit of making everything look and behave the way you want it and installing the software applications you will want to use. First off, you need to update your system. You must be connected to the Internet for this to work.

1) Left-click anywhere on the desktop to open the Main menu, then choose Applications, then System Tools, then Terminology. A terminal window opens, into which you can type Linux commands.

**Note:** In future I will write such a sequence like this as 'Main menu > Applications > System Tools > Terminology'. If the desktop is not visible because you have a maximized window open, you can instead open the Main menu by clicking the top icon on the panel, or alternatively by pressing the Menu key on the keyboard (this key is usually on the bottom row, near the spacebar). Each menu in a sequence like this opens to the right of the previous one, sometimes disappearing off the right of the screen. If this happens, simply move the mouse pointer to the right edge of the screen and the menus will shift to the left.

2) The first thing you should do is synchronize the package index stored on your system with the online software repository. Type _sudo apt-get update_ into the terminal, press Enter, then when asked enter your password. The updating will now take place.

3) Next you must upgrade your system with the latest versions of the software that's stored on it. Enter _sudo apt-get dist-upgrade_ , and when asked if you want to continue, press _y_.

4) Typing in your password whenever you want to make an administrative change to your system or to install software is a bit of a pain, so your next job is to disable this requirement. (But DON'T do this in a workplace setting or if people you don't entirely trust are going to use your computer. Without this requirement they can wreck your system!)

a) In the terminal, enter _gksudo leafpad /etc/sudoers_. After entering your password, the sudoers file (which is in the etc directory) will appear in Leafpad (a text editor).  
b) Scroll down to the bottom of this file and type in the following two lines:

# Turn off requirement for password  
bodhi32 ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

The first line is a comment (comments start with a #), and is not essential. The second line must be copied in exactly, with whatever you entered as your username replacing 'bodhi32'. (Your username appears at the top of the terminal window, before the @ symbol.) Note the spaces in this command - there's a space after the username, a space between (ALL) and NOPASSWD:, and a space before the final ALL.

c) Open Leafpad's File menu and click Save. Note that this change won't take effect until you reboot the computer.  
d) Close Leafpad.

5) While you have Terminology open, you should install a small piece of software that is needed to support the download of some of the applications you will be meeting later. Enter:

sudo apt-get install python-gpgme

The installer will check whether you have python-gpgme on your system, and if not it will install it. (When it asks for confirmation, press _y_.) When the installation is finished, close the terminal.

6) You may like to check that the NOPASSWD change you made at step 4 above has worked by rebooting your computer. To do this, click the power switch symbol at the bottom of the shelf and choose Reboot. Hopefully your computer will restart without any nasty messages appearing. However, if you didn't correctly enter the command to turn off the password requirement, it will give some kind of warning, and you should edit the sudoers file in the manner described in (4) above and correct your mistake.

**Note:** In Linux it is possible to work almost entirely from the 'command line', i.e. by entering commands in a terminal as you did above, including installing software using the 'apt-get install' command. Whenever possible we will avoid the command line by using 'graphical' alternatives, i.e. user interfaces involving windows and dialog boxes. If you want to know more about the commands used above, search for the Web for them. (E.g. search for 'linux sudo' and 'linux apt-get'.) If you want to know more about linux commands generally and the use of the command line, go to http://linuxtutorial.todolistme.net/commandline.php.

### 2.2 Some initial tweaks

Now you are going to make a few changes to the look and feel of your system. There will be many more changes to make later on.

1) First, if you are a Brit, set your system to British English. Click anywhere on the desktop to open the Main menu, then choose Settings > All > Language > Language Settings. (Remember: if the final menu in this long sequence has disappeared off the right of the screen, simply move the mouse pointer to the edge of the screen to bring it into view.) At the Language Settings dialog box that opens, highlight 'British English' and click Apply, and then Close.

2) Next, you will probably want to make its windows behave like those of Microsoft Windows. Go to Main menu > Settings > All > Windows > Window Focus. In the Focus Settings dialog box choose the top option ('Click Window to Focus'), then click OK.

[3) If Bodhi-Theme was not available when you selected the theme at the end of the last chapter, install it now. Go to the Bodhi Linux website (www.bodhilinux.com), highlight 'Resources' and choose 'Art Wiki', then, under 'Themes', click on 'Enlightenment', and choose the second (green and white) theme down on the left (called 'bodhi_e17_bodhi'). At the next installation screen, choose Install Now. The installation will take about a couple of minutes, so be patient! When it's finished, you should apply this theme (Main menu > Settings > Theme).]

4) Another change you will probably want to make is to set the font used in the menu system to make it easier for older eyes to read. (These notes were written for retired people in the U3A!) Click on the desktop to open the Main menu, then choose Settings > All > Look > Fonts. Then, at the Font Settings dialog box:

a) Click Advanced.  
b) Click Menu item in the Font Class column, then Enable Font Class at the foot of this column.  
c) Choose Nimbus Sans in the Font column, then Bold in the Style column, then scroll down to 12 pixels in the Size column and click that.  
d) Click Apply, then click anywhere on the desktop to see how your menu looks.

If you are happy with its appearance, fine, otherwise try something different. Leave the dialog box open for the next exercise.

5) Now to change the font used in the title bar of windows. To see how the font used in title bars looks at the moment, open Leafpad (Main menu > Applications > Accessories > Leafpad), and observe what's displayed ('Untitled') in the top orange area. To change this font, back at the Font Settings dialog box click Title bar in the Font Classes column, then click 'Enable Font Class', then 'Ubuntu' in the Font column, 'Bold' in the Style column, and '12 pixels' in the Size column. Click Apply, and observe how the font used in the Leafpad title bar changes. Close Leafpad and the Font Settings dialog box if you're happy with these changes, otherwise try a different font.

6) A further tweak you might like to make at this point is to turn off the bouncy effect that is part of the Composite profile (you may have observed this effect when opening or closing dialog boxes above). Open the Main menu and choose Settings > All > Look > Composite, then at the Composite Settings dialog box, in the Default Style section, scroll down and highlight the final option labelled 'still'. Click on OK. (Of course, you may like the bouncy effect, or you might want to try other effects, in which case you can ignore this step. Don't let my personal preferences cramp your style!)

You'll have realised by now that there is a mind-bogglingly huge number of settings that you can apply to your Enlightenment desktop and its various components, and we'll explore more of these later. For now, we'll complete this initial foray into the possibilities on offer by changing the desktop wallpaper. As with Microsoft Windows, you can choose for your wallpaper almost any picture, including one of your own photos, but let's stick with what the Bodhi website has to offer.

7) a) Run the Midori web browser (click the second icon from the top on the shelf), and type the Bodhi website address (www.bodhilinux.com) into the address bar. Mouse over Resources (centre top of the page) and choose Art Wiki.  
b) At the next screen choose Wallpapers, and then browse through what's on offer and pick one that matches your theme (Bodhi-Theme). This is a green theme with orange highlights, and I suggest the first (green) offering in the Animated Wallpapers section. Otherwise go to the Official section and choose a green theme from there.  
c) Click on your choice, and you will be taken to a larger image of the wallpaper. Right-click on this and choose the 'Save Image As' option, then choose 'Save' at the next dialog box, enter a filename of your choice, and click Save.  
d) Now you must set this image as your wallpaper. Minimize Midori, then click on the desktop for the Main menu and choose Settings > Wallpaper. At the Wallpaper Settings dialog box, click 'Picture...' (towards the top). You should see the image that you've just saved in the list, so highlight it, click Use, then, at the Import Settings dialog box, make sure that 'Fill' is highlighted and click OK. You are returned to the Wallpaper Settings dialog box, where you can click OK. Your chosen wallpaper should now be decorating the desktop.

8) At this point you may want to alter the appearance of the clock. Right-click on it, mouse over 'Clock' and choose 'Settings', then at the Clock Settings dialog box choose Analog, deselect Seconds, then click OK. An analogue clock appears on the desktop. You can resize this (by right-clicking on it again) and choosing 'Begin move/resize'. Or you may prefer to keep the clock digital, as I do, but resized and located at a different spot on the desktop.

### 2.3 Installing some applications: Firefox and Flash

Part of Bodhi's design philosophy is to package on the installation CD a minimal system that will run on any hardware, however old and underpowered, and to leave it to the user to beef it up with whatever additional software they require. Thus Midori is a very lightweight web browser that will run well on any hardware, and the Enlightenment file manager (EFM) is also very lightweight and fast. It is likely, however, that you will want more substantial and capable products, as well as your choice of office software, media players, photo and graphics software, and some additional utilities. You will be adding all these in due course, but for now let's restrict things to an alternative web browser, an alternative file manager, and an alternative terminal.

To compensate for the paucity of software on the installation CD, the Bodhi website provides an excellent 'AppCenter' with a comprehensive range of good software that can be readily downloaded. To view this, open Midori again (or if you have minimized it you should click on its minimized icon which you will see a little way down from the top of the shelf). Return to the Bodhi home page (www.bodhilinux.com), mouse over Resources again, but this time choose AppCenter from the list.

It's worth spending some time perusing what's on offer at the AppCenter, but for now we'll concentrate on web browsers and the Flash plugin. Flash enables you to play videos in your browser, including those from YouTube and, for people living in the UK, BBC iPlayer. Probably the most popular of the browsers on offer is Firefox, and it's the one I generally use. Unfortunately Firefox doesn't always play iPlayer programmes, in particular radio programmes, so when visiting iPlayer I prefer to use Google Chrome (not Chromium), which is better behaved in this respect. (Flash is built into Chrome, whereas it is only a plugin for Firefox.)

If you are going to download and use Firefox, and I suggest you do (as it has several advantages over Chrome, including better video download facilities), then download Flash Player first. To get to Flash, go down to the Internet section of the AppCenter and choose Browser Plugins. You will see Flash listed on the next screen, and you should click on this. At the next screen, click 'Install Now', and, after quite a long delay while nothing seems to be happening, the download will take place followed by the automatic installation of the package.

Install Firefox similarly, by returning to the main AppCenter screen and choosing Web Browsers in the Internet section. Eventually the download and installation will be complete, and you can close Midori. From now on we will be using Firefox. (I'll cover the installation of Chrome in Chapter 4.) Start Firefox now:

1) Go to Main menu > Applications > Internet. You should see Firefox Web Browser listed. If it isn't, it means that for some reason Enlightenment has not updated its menus with this latest addition. If this happens, open the Main menu again and choose Enlightenment > Restart. This will update all Enlightenment menus and gadgets. (Very occasionally gadget icons may go missing from shelves, and restarting Enlightenment will put this right.)

2) Run Firefox. You may notice that it takes slightly longer than Midori to load; this is because it is a more heavyweight product, with more features. Open the Tools menu, choose Add-ons, then Plugins. You should see Flash listed there.

3) Now click 'Get Add-ons'. A page will load, showing some of the add-ons that are available for Firefox. Towards the bottom right of this page there is a link 'Browse all add-ons' - click this. The first page of many pages appears, listing some add-ons. The add-on we want to install is called 'Flash Video Downloader'. Start typing this into the search box at the top right of the page, then click on the link that appears. At the download page that opens for this add-on, click the 'Add to Firefox' button, then at the next dialog box click 'Install Now'.

4) After this add-on installs, you will be invited to restart Firefox, but don't do so yet. Instead type 'lucifox' into the search box, then click the Lucifox link that appears. Again add this to Firefox. After this further add-on has installed, you will again be invited to restart Firefox - do so now, and then click on the Add-ons tab and choose Extensions: you will see that Flash Video Downloader and Lucifox have been added to your system. This means that you can now download YouTube videos (for example).

5) With Flash Video Downloader installed, the large arrow that has appeared at the right of the address bar will turn blue when you play a downloadable video. This means you can click on it to download the video.

**Warning:** Firefox is set to save any downloads to the Downloads folder in your Home directory. That folder does not yet exist, but you will be creating it shortly, in Section 2.6.

**Note:** 'Directory' and 'folder' mean the same thing.

6) With Lucifox installed, a 'Lucifox' item is added to the Tools menu, and from here you can access the Lucifox manual as well as the Catalogue browser. Note that when you download an epub book, it will appear in the Lucifox window but it won't be saved to your hard disk. To save it, you should right-click anywhere on the text of the book and choose Save As.

**Note:** It's easy to remove or disable any of these add-ons, should you so wish. Open Firefox's Tools menu, choose Add-ons to open the Add-ons Manager, then choose Extensions and select those you want to disable.

7) Try out some of this now. Go to YouTube, and pick a video to play. If you don't hear any sound, it means that you will have to adjust the speaker volume: click on the loudspeaker gadget in the lower part of the shelf and drag up the two sliders. Observe that the download arrow to the right of the address bar has turned blue.

8) Now go to the Bodhi Linux website (www.bodhilinux.com) and bookmark it (by opening the Bookmarks menu and choosing Bookmark). Now mouse over Resources and choose AppCenter. We are going to install an email client, so go to the Internet section of AppCenter and click on Email. Three email clients are listed, and the choice is yours. I suggest Thunderbird, which is a companion to Firefox. Make your choice, and at the next screen click on Install Now. The Launch Application dialog box opens, asking you to tell Firefox how to handle this AppCenter task. You need to tell it this once only, and to do so proceed as follows:

a) Click Choose, and at the next screen click on File System.  
b) Scroll down to the 'usr' directory and double-click it.  
c) Double-click the bin directory.  
d) Scroll down to 'apturl' and click on it.  
e) Click Open.  
f) The Launch Application dialog box reappears, with apturl as the chosen application.  
g) Tick the box to the left of 'Remember my choice for apt links', then click OK.

Thunderbird (or whichever email client you chose) will now be installed. It will of course need to be configured for your particular email account, and for help with this you can use Thunderbird's own help system: run Thunderbird, open the Help menu, choose Help Contents, then choose Automatic Account Configuration.

**Note:** In future I will write instructions like those given in steps (a) to (d) simply as 'Navigate to /usr/bin/apturl'. (The first '/' indicates the root (File System) directory. Linux, like the Internet, uses forward slashes to denote directories; Windows, perversely, uses backslashes.)

### 2.4 Installing Nautilus and Gnome Terminal

There is only one widely-used file manager for Windows, namely Windows Explorer. With Linux, however, you are spoilt for choice. As always when choosing software, you have to strike a balance between power and ease of use, and that balance will vary from person to person, depending on your needs. The Enlightenment File Manager (EFM) that comes with Bodhi Linux is lightweight, good-looking, and easy enough to use, but it is lacking in features. Many Bodhi Linux users prefer to use something more capable, such as PcManFM or SpaceFM. The latter is very powerful but rather daunting, and is too complex for beginners, but PcManFM would be a good choice.

My personal favourite is Nautilus, which combines good features with ease of use, and you need Nautilus on your system if you install Dropbox from the Bodhi software repository (more on this later). Nautilus has the slight disadvantage that it is designed to run on the Gnome desktop, which means that it has to be configured to run properly on Enlightenment.

To make full use of Nautilus's features, you also need to install Gnome Terminal \- which is a good choice anyway, as it has more features than Terminology. (Terminology is the terminal that comes with Bodhi Linux - you used it in Section 2.1, when you carried out the preliminary housekeeping tasks.)

If, after using Nautilus and Gnome Terminal, you decide that they are not for you, then you can easily uninstall them and switch to alternatives. And if you are installing Bodhi Linux on an old, slow computer, you may decide to stick with the lightweight Enlightenment File Manager and Terminology, but in this case you should be aware that some of the features which Nautilus provides and which are described below will not be available to you.

**Note:** The rest of this chapter is devoted to Nautilus and Terminal. You don't need to work through all the features described here, and I've marked those that are optional which you can return to later. This is especially true of the final section of the chapter (2.7), which is for advanced users only and can be omitted entirely by everyone else.

You can't download Nautilus and Gnome Terminal from the AppCenter, instead you must use the Synaptic package manager, which gives you access to the entire software repository of some 35,000 packages.

1) Go to Main menu > Applications > Preferences and run Synaptic Package Manager.

2) When Synaptic opens, you will see that there is a toolbar at the top with a 'Quick Filter' box and to the right of it a 'Search' icon. You can use either of these to search for packages; 'Quick Filter' is easiest and fast, 'Search' will find all packages which include your search term in their accompanying description. You can normally use Quick Filter.

3) Type _nautilus_ in the Quick Filter box, and a list of hits is displayed with 'nautilus' at the top. Click the box to the left of it then click 'Mark for installation'.

4) The next dialog box tells you that a number of dependencies will be installed with it. (These include Brasero, which is a useful CD/DVD burning program - you will find it at Main menu > Applications > Sound & Video after the installation is finished.) Click Mark.

5) Click on the 'nautilus-open-terminal' box and then 'Mark for installation'. This utility will integrate Nautilus with Terminal.

6) Now type _terminal_ in the Quick Filter box. A list of terminals appears. (If for any reason this list doesn't appear, use the Search icon in the toolbar.) Click the box to the left of 'gnome-terminal' then click 'Mark for installation', then Mark.

7) Click Apply (on the toolbar), then, at the Summary dialog box, click Apply again.

8) After Nautilus, Nautilus-open-terminal, Gnome-terminal, and all their dependencies have been downloaded and installed (a job that will take a minute or two), click the 'Automatically close' option in the Changes Applied box, then close Synaptic.

Nautilus will appear in the Accessories menu (Main > Applications > Accessories) under the name 'Files', and Gnome Terminal will appear there too. (Restart Enlightenment if for any reason they are not there: Main menu > Enlightenment > Restart.)

Run Nautilus now (from the Accessories menu), and something ghastly happens: it opens in its own (blue) desktop, which you are unable to close!

**Update:** I understand that this problem is to be fixed shortly. If your version of Nautilus does not invoke the blue screen, you can ignore the instructions below and proceed to Section 2.6.

The solution is to kill it:

1) Press Win + space (i.e. hold down the Windows key, usually towards the bottom left of the keyboard, and tap the spacebar). If you have an old computer which doesn't have a Win key, press Alt + Escape instead. The Run Everything dialog box opens.

2) Type _killall nautilus_ into this dialog box and press Enter. Nautilus and the offending blue background will disappear.

The problem is that Nautilus has been configured to run on a different desktop, and we need to edit its launcher. We'll do that in the next section.

**Note:** You can use the killall command in this way to close any application that is misbehaving and refusing to close. However, you should normally type _killall -9_ followed by the application name. The '-9' ensures that all processes (and there may be more than one) involved in running the application are killed.

### 2.5 Application Launchers

These are central to the Enlightenment window management system. They control, amongst other things, which menu (if any) lists an application, and how it runs, and they can also be used to control whether or not an application appears as an icon on the desktop. Application launchers are also known as desktop configuration files, and they have the extension '.desktop'. Thus the Nautilus launcher has the filename 'nautilus.desktop'. We are going to edit it now, not directly but by a nifty tool that Enlightenment provides.

1) Run Nautilus again (Main menu > Applications > Accessories > Files), and don't worry about the blue window that is displayed behind it. (Don't worry either about the long-winded way you have to navigate through the menu system to launch Nautilus. Soon we'll be turbocharging your desktop, and then tasks like this will be accomplished with just a single click!)

2) Right-click on the title bar so that the context menu opens, then move the mouse pointer over the top option ('Nautilus') and choose 'Edit Icon'.

3) At the Desktop Entry Editor that opens, in the Basic tab, change the Name to _Nautilus_ , then change the entry in the Application box to read: _nautilus %U --no-desktop_ (that's a space and two dashes in front of 'no' and one dash between 'no' and 'desktop').

4) Click OK, then close Nautilus and kill the blue desktop behind it (by pressing Win + space to Run Everything, then entering _killall nautilus_ ).

5) Now run Nautilus again, and all should be well.

You will learn more about application launchers in the next section.

### 2.6 Using Nautilus and Gnome Terminal

In this section you will gain some familiarity with Nautilus and the Linux file system, and you will create the folders you are going to need in your Home directory. You will also be using Gnome Terminal, and we begin by customizing its appearance.

Customizing Terminal

1) Open Gnome Terminal (Main menu > Applications > Accessories > Terminal).

2) The colour scheme that greets you can be improved, and to do this you should open the Edit menu and choose 'Profile Preferences'.

3) At the dialog box, click the Colours tab.

4) In the Colours dialog box, untick the 'Use colours from system theme' box, then at 'Built-in schemes' box choose 'white on black'.

5) Click Close, and you will be returned to the terminal window, which should now be much easier on the eye. If you are happy with the change, close the terminal, otherwise return to 'Profile Preferences' and make some more tweaks.

Using Nautilus

Now run Nautilus in the usual way (i.e. from the menu system). It will open in your Home directory, with a single folder (called Desktop) displayed, and also the wallpaper file that you downloaded earlier. The Home directory is where you store all your personal files.

1) Start by maximizing Nautilus, then open the Desktop folder (by double-clicking it). You will see that it's empty. However, if we copy any desktop launchers into this folder, then they will show up as icons on the desktop. Let's copy our Nautilus desktop file here now.

2) Press the F3 key to open another pane in Nautilus, then click on File System in the sidebar (at the left). Now navigate to /usr/share/applications (i.e. double-click the usr folder, then at the next screen double-click the share folder, then double-click the applications folder). Icons showing the files in this folder will appear. These files are all applications launchers, and you could if you wished launch an application from here, by double-clicking its icon. You could also edit the launcher from this screen.

3) You will probably need to return to this directory in the future, and the chances that you will remember the route to it are pretty slim. So let's bookmark it: open the Bookmarks menu and click Add Bookmark. The Applications directory is added to the top of the sidebar, where it can be accessed with a single click.

4) Let's examine our Nautilus launcher. Right-click on an empty space between the icons and choose 'Open in Terminal' from the context menu. (Alternatively you can choose this option from the File menu.) Terminal opens in the /usr/share/applications directory.

5) Maximize Terminal, then enter the command _ls._ A listing of the files in this directory appears, with 'nautilus.desktop' among them.

6) To edit this file:

a) Drag over its filename with the mouse so that it is highlighted, then right-click anywhere within the terminal window and choose Copy from the context menu.  
b) Type in the command _gksudo leafpad_ followed by a space, then right-click again within the terminal window and choose Paste. The filename will be added to the end of the command.  
c) Press Enter, and the contents of the desktop file will appear in Leafpad.

7) You can see in Leafpad the changes you made in the last section: a few lines down there is the command 'Exec=nautilus %U --no-desktop'. The lower entries in this file are not relevant to Enlightenment and can be ignored, though you might like to comment them out. To do so, simply insert a # at the start of each line so that they read:

# [Desktop Action Window]  

# Name=Open a New Window  
# Exec=nautilus  

# OnlyShowIn=Unity;

8) Open the File menu and choose Save, then close Leafpad. You are returned to the terminal window, which you can close.

9) You should still have your Desktop folder open in the other pane in Nautilus (see steps 1 and 2 above), so let's copy our Nautilus desktop file into it:

a) In the Applications pane, scroll down to the Nautilus icon and right-click on it.  
b) At the context menu, choose 'Copy to' then 'Other pane'. The file will appear in the other pane, i.e. in your Desktop folder.  
c) Minimize Nautilus, and you will see that its icon is now present on your desktop. Now you can run Nautilus simply by double-clicking it.

Creating your Home directory folders

Now create the folders you'll need to organize all the data files that you will gradually accumulate in your Home directory. You will certainly need one for downloads and another for documents, and you will probably need ones for photos and other media files. Let's create the first two of these folders now.

1) Restore the Nautilus window (by clicking its minimize icon on the shelf), then click on Home in the sidebar so that one of its panes is showing the contents of your Home directory.

2) Right-click on an empty part of this pane and choose 'Create New Folder' from the context menu. Enter _Documents_ as its name.

3) Repeat this step, this time entering _Downloads_ as the name.

4) Go to the other pane and click on Home to open the Home directory, and double-click your new Downloads folder to open it.

5) You now have the Downloads folder open in one pane and the wallpaper file that you downloaded earlier visible in the other. Right-click on the wallpaper file, and choose 'Move to' from the context menu then 'Other pane'. The file is moved to Downloads, which is where it rightly belongs.

6) Close the pane showing the Downloads folder (by clicking on it and pressing F3), then create in your home directory the other folders you are likely to need. These might be 'Movies', 'Pictures', 'Audio', as well as others. The choice is yours.

**Note:** The remaining steps in this section (7 to 10) are optional and can be ignored.

7) You can if you wish customize the icons of your various folders. If you are going to do this, it's best to bookmark the location of the icons folder first:

a) Click 'File System' in the side bar and navigate to /usr/share/icons/Maxo-ReMix/apps.  
b) Bookmark this folder, by opening the Bookmark menu and choosing 'Add Bookmark'; it will appear in the side pane labelled 'apps'.  
c) To change this name to something more meaningful, open the Bookmarks menu again and choose 'Edit Bookmarks', then change its name to e.g. _ReMix Icons_.

8) To change the icon of the Documents folder, click on Home in the sidebar to return to your Home folder, then right-click the Documents folder icon and choose 'Properties' from the context menu. Then click its icon in the Properties dialog box, and you are taken to the Select Custom Icon dialog box. Click on 'ReMix Icons' (or whatever name you gave your new bookmark) in the sidebar, and you will be taken to the list of ReMix icons.

9) Move down through this list by pressing the down-arrow key; each icon will be displayed in turn at the right. When you find one you like (try gedit.png, for instance), click Open, then Close the Properties dialog box.

10) Your other folders can be assigned icons in a similar way.

Setting Nautilus's Views and Preferences [Optional]

You will sometimes wish to change the way Nautilus displays its file listings. To demonstrate the possibilities, click on File System in the sidebar to show the root directory. The various view options are listed at the foot of the View menu, but you can instead cycle through the possibilities by pressing Ctrl + 1 (i.e. hold down the Ctrl key and tap 1), Ctrl + 2, and Ctrl + 3. If you settle on Ctrl \+ 2 (List view) for this directory, Nautilus will remember this and automatically switch to this view whenever you return here. The same is true for other directories.

You can change the global appearance and behaviour of Nautilus at the File Management Preferences dialog box:

1) To get to this, open the Edit menu, and choose Preferences.

2) One change you might try is at the Views tab, in the 'Icon Views Default' section - set the Default Zoom Level to 66%.

3) Then in the Behaviour tab, tick the box for 'Include a Delete command that bypasses the Rubbish Bin'. (Note though that any files deleted with this command might not be retrievable should you change your mind later.)

4) Click Close when you've finished, and check out your changes.

Searching for folders and files [Optional]

Nautilus has a handy search facility, accessed via the Search icon at the right of the toolbar. The main thing to remember is to start your search at the directory in which the sought folder or file lies. Thus if you are seeking a document or data file that's somewhere in your Home directory, you should start at that directory; if, however, it is somewhere within the root file system, you should start your search at the root directory, i.e. you should click 'File System' in the sidebar before you click 'Search'.

Try this now, by searching for all .desktop files in your file system.

1) Run Nautilus, and click 'File System' in the sidebar.

2) Click 'Search', and enter _.desktop_ in the Search field. After a while all the desktop files will appear, listed with their locations.

Notice that when the search begins, a toolbar opens below the Search field. If you click the green + symbol at the right, a box opens that allows you to specify the file type. It is set to 'Any', but if you click on its arrow you are taken to a range of common types, and if you click on 'Other Type' a huge range of possibilities appears. You'll use this feature in your next search.

Search for all pictures in your Home directory:

1) Click 'Home' in the sidebar.

2) Click 'Search', then enter a dummy term in the Search field, such as _xxx_.

3) When the search begins, click the green + symbol, then choose 'Picture' in the File Type box.

4) In the Search field, delete the dummy term and type instead a single space. This acts as a wildcard, causing Nautilus to search for all filenames.

5) Click the Reload button, and Nautilus will perform the search, locating the wallpaper picture you downloaded earlier.

Connecting to other computers on your network [Optional]

Nautilus makes accessing other (Windows) computers connected to your network particularly easy. Simply click on 'Browse Network' in the sidebar, and after a few seconds the name of any computer which is connected and switched on should show up, and you should have immediate access to the public folders on its file system. (If this access is denied, you will need to go to that computer and check its sharing options at the Network and Sharing Center of the Control Panel. You should also right-click on the Public Documents folder and select Properties, then the Sharing tab, and check the entries here.)

Safely removing USB memory sticks

Linux will read your USB memory sticks (pen drives) just as happily as Windows will. If you insert a USB stick (or any other storage device) in a USB port of your computer, its icon will appear at the top of the Nautilus sidebar, and you can access its contents by clicking this.

To safely remove the USB stick from your computer, you should right-click its icon in the Nautilus sidebar and choose the Eject option from the context menu.

Setting Nautilus and Terminal as default applications

Our final task in this section is to set Nautilus as the default file manager and Gnome Terminal as the default terminal.

1) Go to Main menu > Settings > All > Apps > Default Applications.

2) At the dialog box that opens, the default browser should already be set to Firefox, but you will need to highlight File in the left pane then scroll down to and highlight Nautilus in the right pane, then click Apply.

3) Then highlight Terminal in the left pane and Terminal in the right pane, and Apply.

4) Click Close.

**The rest of this chapter covers more advanced topics and can be omitted or returned to later. So you can now if you wish jump to Chapter 3, '**Turbocharge your Desktop **'.**

### 2.7 Running Nautilus as Superuser

Sometimes, as in the next section, it's handy to run Nautilus as a 'superuser' with administrative privileges, as this allows you to make changes to protected system directories. To do so, you must run Nautilus as 'Root'. Needless to say, you must take great care when running Nautilus this way, as you could wreck your system.

The most convenient way to run Nautilus as Superuser will be via the menu system, and to set this up you must create a personal application launcher for it.

1) Go to Main menu > Settings > All > Apps > Personal Application Launchers.

2) At the Personal Application Launcher dialog box click Add.

3) At the next dialog box type _Nautilus as Root_ in the Name field

4) Type _gksudo "nautilus %U --no-desktop"_ in the Application field (note the quote marks - they are essential.)

4) Click the General tab and in the Categories field type _Utility; ._ This tells Enlightenment where to locate this launcher's entry in the menu system.

5) Click Apply, then Close.

Now go to Main menu > Applications > Accessories, where you will see that 'Nautilus as Root' has been added to the menu. Click on this entry and Nautilus will run, though it is not quite the same Nautilus as before. For example, the bookmarks you created earlier have disappeared, and if you had set any preferences (in Edit > Preferences) these will have gone too. It is in fact a different instance of Nautilus.

The (root) terminal that you can run from here will also be a different instance of Terminal, with different preferences. Test this out now:

1) Right-click on an empty space in the Nautilus window, and choose 'Open in Terminal'. Terminal as Root opens, but with awkward colours.

2) To fix these colours, open Terminal's Edit menu and choose 'Profile Preferences', open the Colours tab, then untick the 'Use colours from system theme' box. At 'Built-in scheme', choose Custom. Now set the background colour to something like dark red; this will serve as a warning when you are in this instance of Terminal that you are in superuser mode.

3) Click Close, then close Terminal but keep Nautilus as Root open in preparation for the next section.

### 2.8 Customizing the Nautilus Icon

It should be any easy task to replace the rather dull-looking icon that's been assigned to Nautilus, but there appear to be two missing icons folders in the Enlightenment file system that prevents us doing so. Furthermore, these folders are in a protected part of the system, which means we can't create them by running Nautilus in the normal way, instead we must run it as Root.

1) If Nautilus as Root is not already open, open it now (Main menu > Applications > Accessories > Nautilus as Root).

2) Navigate to /usr/local/share, right-click on an empty part of the folder window and choose 'Create New Folder'. Enter _icons_ as the name.

3) Navigate to /usr/share/enlightenment and create an _icons_ folder here too.

4) Having created the two missing folders, you can close Nautilus as Root. Instead you should now run it normally (by double-clicking its icon on the desktop).

To change its icon, proceed as follows:

1) Right-click on the orange Nautilus title bar and choose Nautilus > Edit Icon. The Desktop Entry Editor opens.

2) Open the Icon tab, then click on the icon itself. A new dialog box opens which allows you to navigate to your chosen icon.

3) Click on Root in the left pane, then in the right pane navigate to /usr/share/icons/MaXo-ReMix/apps

4) Scroll down to 'nautilus.png' and click OK.

5) Back at the Desk Entry Editor click Apply.

6) Close Nautilus.

The icon on the desktop should have changed to a more pleasing image.

### 2.9 Hidden files

Just as most of the stuff in the universe is invisible dark matter, so the majority of directories and files in your Home directory are hidden. To see these, double-click your new desktop icon to run Nautilus, then press Ctrl + h (or open the View menu and click 'Show Hidden Files'). You will see that there are quite a few hidden folders in your Home directory, and there will be many more when you've finished installing the various applications in the next chapter. Notice that these hidden files and directories are all prefixed with a '.'.

Personal application launchers are stored in this hidden part of your Home directory, in the .local/share/applications folder. Have a look at it:

1) Navigate to that folder now, and open Terminal.

2) Enter _ls_ to list the files in the folder. One of them is 'Nautilus_as_Root.desktop'.

3) Enter _leafpad Nautilus_as_Root.desktop_ (remember you can copy-and-paste the filename into this command).

4) The text of the launcher should be displayed.

5) Close Leafpad, and close Terminal.

6) In Nautilus, return to your Home directory (by clicking Home in the toolbar), and press Ctrl + h again to turn off the Hidden Files view.

7) Finally close Nautilus.

# 3 Turbocharge your Desktop

If you have got heartily sick of navigating through endless choices in the menu system, then this chapter is for you. By the end of it you should have an appreciation of the full flexibility and speed of the Enlightenment desktop system, for you will have set it up to run applications and change settings by just one or two clicks of the mouse. You will even have speeded up and simplified the way you use the mouse to maximize, minimize, close and otherwise manipulate windows. The pain of accurately settling on those tiny buttons at the right of the title bar will be a thing of the past!

You will achieve all this by setting up and populating shelves and iBars, and by setting up edge bindings. Other topics covered here include using Run Everything, loading modules (including the Places module), and using gadgets. This will prepare your desktop environment for the next chapter, where you will be downloading the applications you need to handle office work, manipulate photos, play media files, and so on.

**Hint:** You will be opening a number of windows and dialog boxes as you work through this Guide. If one of these extends off the edge of the screen and you want to bring it into view, hold down the Alt key while dragging it with the mouse. (Of course, if the window has a visible title bar you can instead drag on that.)

### 3.1 A first look at shelves and iBars

We'll begin by customizing the existing shelf at the left of your desktop.

1) Right-click on an empty area of the shelf and choose the first option in the context menu, 'Contents'.

2) The Shelf Contents dialog box opens, listing the available gadgets. (There are more gadgets than these, and you will discover how to load them shortly.)

3) Make sure that the following three gadgets are selected: 'Settings', 'Everything Starter', and 'iBar'. (To select a gadget, highlight it and click 'Add Gadget').

4) Deselect any other selected gadgets, by highlighting them and clicking 'Remove Gadget'. (Some of these, like the Mixer and Systray, you will shortly be adding to another shelf).

5) You will be left with just three icons on your shelf, namely 'iBar' (which is currently housing Midori), 'Settings', and 'Run Everything'. Close the dialog box.

6) Now right-click the Midori icon on the shelf, mouse over 'iBar' then choose 'Contents'. The iBar Applications dialog box opens. You may want to make it bigger by dragging on its top or bottom borders.

7) Following the procedure described in (3) above, add the following applications to the iBar: Firefox, Nautilus, Synaptic,Terminal, and Thunderbird. Remove Midori.

8) Click on the Order tab (at the top of the box), and move Firefox and Synaptic down in the list so that the order reads: 'Nautilus, Terminal, Firefox, Thunderbird, Synaptic'.

9) Click Apply, and then close. Your iBar should now contain icons for these five applications.

10) Right-click on an empty area of the shelf again, and choose 'Settings' from the menu. The Shelf Settings dialog box opens.

11) At the 'Stacking' tab, choose 'Below Windows'. (This ensures that the shelf will not be visible if you want to run an application fullscreen.)

12) Click on 'Position', and at this tab choose the second option at the left (i.e. the one with the shelf along the left edge of the screen, at the top).

13) At the 'Size' tab, leave the size at 40 pixels, but select 'Shrink to Content Width'.

14) Click the right arrow to reach the 'Style' tab, and here you should select 'Invisible'.

15) Click Apply, and then Close.

The icons on your shelf should now be clustered at the left edge of the screen, at the top, and the shelf itself should be invisible. And now you can access all the gadgets and applications placed on it it with a single click. One of these - the Settings gadget - you'll be using in the next section.

**Note:** The 'System' (power switch) gadget is no longer on the shelf. So to switch off your computer, you will either have to press the computer's power button or use the menu system (Main menu > System > Power Off). Later in this chapter you will be creating a key binding to switch off.

### 3.2 Hiding desktop launchers

Since you can now launch Nautilus with a single click on its iBar icon, there's no point having its launcher on the desktop as well. Indeed, as we'll see later, there's no point having _any_ such launchers on the desktop, as we can put iBars there instead.

To hide desktop launchers:

1) Click the Settings gadget on the panel. The Settings window opens, which you may want to maximize. Now, all the different Settings possibilities that you previously had to access by wading through the menu system are at hand.

2) Desktop icons are controlled by the Enlightenment file manager, and to get to its settings you will have to click on the arrow at the top-right of the Settings window to scroll sideways to Files. Choose 'File Manager', then, at the Fileman Settings dialog box, click on the Display tab and turn off 'Icons on Desktop'. Click Apply, and then Close, and close the Settings window.

### 3.3 A second shelf

We'll put the Systray and Mixer gadgets on a second shelf, which again we'll locate at the left of the screen, but at the bottom. Systray requires that this shelf is visible.

1) Go to Main menu > Settings > Shelves, and at the Shelf Settings dialog box click Add.

2) Give your new shelf a meaningful name so that you can identify it later (e.g. 'Bottom').

3) The Shelf Contents dialog opens, where you should add the Mixer and Systray gadgets. Click Close, and you are returned to the Shelf Settings dialog box.

4) Highlight your shelf ('Bottom'), and click 'Settings'. The Shelf Settings dialog box opens, and at the various tabs make the following settings: Stacking - 'Below Windows'; Position - fourth down (i.e. left edge, at the bottom); Size - make sure 'Shrink to Content Width' is selected; Style - leave it as 'Default'.

5) Click Apply, then Close, and then close the Shelf Settings dialog box.

To change the order of the gadgets on this shelf (so that the Mixer is at the bottom, below Systray, right-click on the Mixer and choose 'Begin Moving Gadgets'. You can now drag the gadgets to the desired position. Right-click Mixer again and choose 'Stop Moving Gadgets'.

**Hint:** If an application is open and maximized, so that it fills the desktop apart from the narrow strip at the left resserved for your shelves, you can click the exposed part of the desktop between the two shelves to open the Enlightenment menu system.

### 3.4 A popup shelf

Now you'll create a shelf which will be tucked away at the bottom of the screen, hidden from view until you mouse over it.

[1) If you have a laptop it will be helpful to include the Battery gadget on this shelf, but its module is not part of the basic Composite profile. To rectify this, go to Main menu > Settings > Modules. The Module Settings dialog box appears, where you should click on the System tab, highlight Battery, and click Load. Then click Close.]

2) Now go to Main menu > Settings > Shelves, and add a new shelf which you can call 'Popup'. At the Shelf Settings dialog box you should highlight 'Popup' and click 'Contents'. The Shelf Contents dialog box opens.

3) Here you should add the Battery gadget (if you loaded this in step 1) and the Tasks gadget, then click Close.

4) Back at the Shelf Settings dialog box, make sure 'Popup' is still highlighted and click 'Settings'. Make the settings for this shelf as follows: Stacking - 'Above Everything'; Position - fifth down on the left, i.e. at the foot of the screen, to the left; Size - 'Shrink to Content Width'; Style - 'Invisible'; Auto Hide - 'Auto-hide the shelf'.

5) Click Apply, then Close, then close the Shelf Settings dialog box. The top edge of your new shelf should be visible at the bottom left of the screen, and you can reveal it by moving the mouse pointer down to it.

**Note:** If you added the Battery gadget at step 3 above, it may also have been added to your first (top) shelf. If it has, simply right-click on it, mouse over 'Battery' in the context menu, and click 'Remove'.

6) Now open one or two applications (e.g. Terminal and Nautilus). Their icons will appear in your new popup shelf (move the mouse to the shelf to check this). Minimize them, and they will be docked there. As in Windows, you can click on the docked icon in this shelf to restore the application's window.

This completes what we need to cover in this chapter on shelves and iBars. In Chapter 5 you will be putting an iBar or two on the desktop, and you will explore the possibility of virtual desktops with different shelves and iBars populated with different applications and gadgets.

If you want to add more gadgets to your shelves, feel free to do so. Glance through the list of modules first (Main menu > Settings > Modules) to see if there are any which you fancy which are not yet loaded. Load them, and they become available in the Shelf Contents dialog box.

### 3.5 The Places gadget

I find this gadget useful, but located on the desktop rather than on a shelf.

1) Go to Main menu > Settings > Modules. The Module Settings dialog box opens. Click on the Files tab, highlight 'Places', and click Load and then Close.

2) Now go to Main menu > Settings > Gadgets, and at the Desktop Gadgets dialog box highlight 'Background', then click 'Configure Layer'.

3) Scroll down to 'Places' and highlight it, click 'Add Gadget', then Close, then Close again.

4) The Places gadget should have appeared on the desktop in a movable box. Drag this box to a suitable location, then pull down the bottom border an inch or two to give plenty of room to house the details of any storage devices such as USB sticks that you might plug in.

5) Right-click on the Places box when you've finished moving and resizing, and the movable box disappears. Right-click again on the gadget, and mouse over 'Places' then 'Appearance' and click 'Plain'. The border around the gadget disappears.

6) (If you didn't install Nautilus in Chapter 3 but opted instead to use the Enlightenment file manager (EFM), you can ignore this step and the next.) Right-click on Filesystem, mouse over 'Places' and click 'Settings'. The Places Settings dialog box opens.

7) Here you should click 'Use a custom file manager' and enter _nautilus \--no-desktop_ in the box (that's two dashes before the 'no'). Click Apply then Close.

8) Test your new desktop gadget: click the Home icon (top right of the gadget), and Nautilus will run in your Home directory; close it then click on the hard disk icon, and Nautilus will run in the Root directory; close Nautilus.

9) If you insert a USB memory stick into your computer, its icon will show up on this gadget, with details of its capacity; if you click on its icon, Nautilus will open in the drive's root directory.

### 3.6 Run Everything

You can see that iBars offer a great way to launch applications with a single click, but what about the various Settings utilities with their dialog boxes that you've been making use of, which must be launched from deep within the menu system? Even using the Settings gadget to reach these dialog boxes takes quite a bit of navigating. The solution is to use the 'Run Everything' module.

You can launch Run Everything by clicking its icon in the first (top) shelf you set up (it's the leaf on a white background). You can also run it either by pressing Alt + Esc (i.e. hold down the Alt key and press Escape), or Win + space (i.e. hold down the Windows key and press the spacebar), or by selecting it from the Main menu.

1) Click the Run Everything icon now. Its dialog box opens, with tabs listed along the bottom labelled 'All', 'Applications', 'Windows', 'Exebuf', and two further ones ('Settings' and 'Plugins') which you can't see until you click along to them. Click each tab in turn, and you will see how Run Everything organizes the programs on your computer.

2) If you know the name of a program, the easiest way to run it is not via these tabs but simply by typing the first few letters of the program's name into this dialog box. For instance to run Terminal, you could type the first two or three letters of _terminal_ and press Enter.

You'll be using Run Everything in the exercises in the remainder of this chapter. Note that in these exercises I will simply instruct you to 'Run Everything', meaning that you should either click on the Run Everything icon on the shelf, or press Alt + Esc, or press Win + Space, or select it from the Main menu.

**Further reading:** Go to the Bodhi Guide to Enlightenment (Main menu > Bodhi Linux > Quick Start, mouse over 'Enlightenment' and choose 'Bodhi Guide'), and read the 'Everything Module' section. To prepare for the next exercises you should also read the 'Bindings' section.

### 3.7 Edge bindings

Edge bindings specify the actions that occur when you click the mouse on different parts of the screen edge. To set these up:

1) Run Everything, and type the first three letters of _edge bindings_. The Edge Bindings icon is highlighted. Press Enter, and the Edge Bindings Settings dialog box opens.

2) Click Add, and you are taken to the Edge Binding Sequence dialog box. You'll begin by creating a binding for the top right corner of the screen, so click the brown box at this corner.

3) Click 'Clickable edge', then click Apply.

4) You now have to assign an action to this binding. In the right-hand action pane, scroll down to the 'Window : Actions' section (about two thirds of the way through the huge list of possibilities) and highlight 'Close'.

5) Click Apply. Now, whenever you click on the top-right corner of the screen, the currently-focussed window will close. This is equivalent to clicking the 'x' button at the top right corner of the title bar. (Those tiny title bar buttons are fiddly, zipping the mouse up to the top right of the screen is much easier!)

6) Click Add again, and now, in the Edge Binding Sequence dialog box, click on the top edge of the picture of the screen. The Clickable edge option should have been automatically selected, so click Apply.

7) In the right pane scroll down to the 'Window : State' section, highlight 'Maximize', then click Apply. Now, whenever you click on the top edge of the screen, the currently-focussed window will be maximized. This is equivalent to, but easier than, clicking the '+' button at the right of the title bar. Note that to unmaximize the window, simply click the top edge of the screen again.

8) Click Add again, click the bottom edge in the 'Edge Binding Sequence' box, then Apply.

9) Highlight 'Iconic Mode Toggle' (in the 'Window : State' section) and click Apply. Now, whenever you click the bottom edge of the screen, the currently-focussed window will be minimized. This equivalent to clicking the '-' button on the title bar.

10) Now you should create bindings to carry out other actions that can't currently be done by mouse clicks. I suggest the following:

a) Top-left edge - 'Fullscreen Mode Toggle' (in the 'Window : State' section). Clicking here will switch to Fullscreen, clicking again will restore.  
b) Left edge - 'Maximize Left' (in the 'Window : State' section).  
c) Right edge - 'Maximize Right' (in 'Window : State'). This binding and the last are invaluable when you want to open two windows side-by-side.  
d) Bottom-right edge - 'Show The Desktop' (in the 'Desktop' section, at the top of the right pane). This will minimize all open windows and show the desktop.  
e) That leaves the bottom-left corner without a binding. I will be suggesting one for this later.

11) Now open an application and test these bindings with its window. Note that for most of these bindings a second click will restore the window to its previous state.

**Note:** You don't need to minimize an application to hide it from view, instead you can double-click its title bar to roll up its window beneath the bar. Double-clicking the bar again will unroll it. Try it.

### 3.8 Key bindings

Let's now create some key bindings. The procedure is similar to that described in the last section.

1) Run Everything, and in the Run Everything dialog box type the first few letters of _key bindings_. The Key Bindings icon will be highlighted; press Enter and the Key Bindings Settings dialog box will open.

2) If you click on any item in the (long) list in the left pane, the action to which it is bound will be highlighted in the right 'Action' pane. For example, if you click on 'Menu' (which denotes the Menu key), 'Show Main Menu' will be highlighted at the right. It's worth spending a few minutes exploring the many key combinations for which bindings already exist. For example, Win + Left (i.e. the Windows key with the left-arrow key) will Maximize Left, and Win + Right will maximize right.

**Note:** When setting up key bindings of your own, you should avoid key combinations that are used by applications. For example, Ctrl + s is often used to save, and Ctrl + c and Ctrl + v are used for copy and paste. Win (Windows key) combinations are not used elsewhere and so are good choices.

3) Let's set up a key binding now. Click Add, and you are invited to press a key combination. Press Win + m (i.e. hold down the Windows key and tap m).

4) In the right 'Action' pane, scroll down to the 'Window : State' section and highlight 'Maximize Vertically'. Click Apply, and the binding is set.

5) To test your binding, click Win + m now. The Key Bindings Settings dialog box should be maximized vertically, making it much easier to use. Henceforth, if a dialog box such as this is too cramped vertically, you can press Win + m to instantly enlarge it.

6) Press Add again to create another binding. Press Win + End, and in the right Action pane scroll down to the 'System' section and highlight 'Power Off Now'. Then click Apply. Now, when you want to turn off your computer, simply press Win + End.

7) If you don't have volume control keys on your keyboard and you would like some, set Win + up (i.e. Windows key with the up-arrow key) and Win + down as the 'Increase Volume' and 'Decrease Volume' respectively. You will find these actions in the 'Mixer' section of the Action pane. To test these keys, open Firefox and play some video material, e.g. from YouTube.

8) Click Close to exit. As you continue using Bodhi, other key combinations will occur to you, and Run Everything makes it really easy to return to the Key Bindings dialog box.

If, having reached the end of this chapter, you wish to turn off your computer, remember your shortcut: press Win + End.

# 4 Beef up your System

By the time you reach the end of this chapter you will have installed most of the applications you are likely to need. If you are new to Linux, the problem will be which out of the many possibilities should you choose? Sometimes the choice will be clear-cut, and in many cases there will be a Linux version of favourite software that you previously ran under Windows.

VLC, for example, is the standard public domain (i.e. free) media player, both in Windows and Linux, and LibreOffice is the standard public domain office suite for both Windows and Linux. Other choices are not so clear-cut, and some that I suggest here may not be the best for you. And if your computer is old and underpowered, this will limit your choices to lightweight applications.

Your best policy is to try out one or two alternatives; it's easy enough to uninstall those you don't want and install others. (As in Windows, there may be some baggage left behind when you uninstall applications; you will learn how to remove this and tidy up your system in Chapter 6.)

Whenever possible, you should install applications from the Bodhi AppCenter rather than Synaptic. To uninstall applications, use Synaptic.

### 4.1 Office applications

Microsoft products, including Microsoft Office, do not work in Linux. LibreOffice, however, makes a good replacement, and it is used in a number of schools, government offices, and businesses (though usually on Windows computers). It has Writer instead of Word, Calc instead of Excel, Impress instead of PowerPoint, and Base instead of Access. It also includes Draw, a drawing program. It can read any documents saved in Microsoft Office format, and it can export documents to that format. I'm using LibreOffice Writer (running under Bodhi Linux) to write this book.

Of course, if your only requirements office-wise is to produce the occasional letter, there is not much point installing something as heavyweight as LibreOffice. The Abiword word processing package would be much more appropriate.

Cups is the printing package used by applications that offer a Print option, and if you are going to want to print from your computer you will need to install this.

LibreOffice and Cups must be installed from AppCenter, otherwise you will not download all the components needed to run them. Abiword can be installed either from AppCenter or Synaptic.

1) Go to the Bodhi Linux website (www.bodhilinux.com) and navigate to the AppCenter.

2) In the Office section choose 'Office Suite' and then LibreOffice. Click 'Install Now'. The installation will take a minute or two. If you choose to install Abiword instead of LibreOffice, you will find it in the Office section under 'Word Processor'.

3) To install Cups, return to the AppCenter and from the Office section choose 'Printing and Scanning', then Printing, and click 'Install Now'.

4) LibreOffice and Cups will have been added to your menu system, the former at Main menu > Applications > Office and the latter at Main menu > Applications > Preferences. Note that you will not see Cups listed by name, instead it will be called 'Printing'.

You can now install your printer:

1) Make sure your printer is switched on and connected either directly to your computer or to the network. For example, it could be connected to a Windows computer which is itself connected to the network.

2) Run 'Printing' either from the menu system or via Run Everything (type the first few letters of _printing_ and press Enter). The Printing window opens, where you can click Add to add your printer.

3) The Select Devices dialog box opens, where you can choose the appropriate option. For example, if the printer is connected to another Windows computer on the network, select 'Network Printer' and then 'Windows Printer via SAMBA'. Then click Browse and double-click the entries that appear (e.g. WORKGROUP, then the name of the Windows computer). Your printer should appear in the dialog box: highlight it and click OK.

4) Click Forward, then select your printer's make from the list that appears, then Forward again and choose the model. Choose the recommended driver, click Forward, then Apply.

5) You are invited to print a test page. Assuming this is satisfactory, click OK, then close the Printing window.

6) Now run LibreOffice Writer (or Abiword), open the File menu, and choose Print. You should see your printer highlighted in the Printer dialog box. If so, all's well and you can click Cancel, then close Writer.

### 4.2 Media players

VLC is the standard application for playing media files, especially video files, as it handles many different file types and it is able to convert between one type and another, should you wish to do this. If you wish to play DVDs, you will need to download also a plugin called 'libdvdcss2' _._ VLC and this plugin are both available at the AppCenter (the latter under the listing 'DVD Playback'.

Besides movies, VLC can be used for playing music and other audio files, though you may find it more convenient to use a dedicated audio player such as Audacious for this.

You should download these applications now from the AppCenter, where you will find them in the Multimedia section under the headings 'Video Player', 'Codecs', and 'Audio Player'. (You may of course wish to download one or more of the alternatives on offer. Or you can stick with my recommendations are try others later.)

**Note:** You can speed up the installation of multiple packages if, after downloading the first package, you choose 'Quick Install' instead of 'Install Now' at the installation page. This bypasses the 'sudo apt-get update' which synchronizes the database of files held on your computer with the repository database. Having synchronized this for the first package, there is no need to synchronize again for the rest.

### 4.3 Photo applications

If all you want to do is to view your photos, perhaps as a slide show, together with some very basic editing facilities, then Mirage is a very user-friendly choice. For more editing options as well as photo management capabilities, you might like to try Shotwell, either as an alternative to Mirage or in addition to it. Or perhaps you wish to install alongside Mirage a drawing package that can handle photos, in which case try Pinta. If, however, you want a really powerful photo editor along the lines Photoshop, try Gimp.

Install one or more of these now from the Graphics section of AppCenter.

### 4.4 Dropbox

Dropbox allows you to store important files in a secure location on the Internet. If you have Nautilus on your system, I suggest you install it using Synaptic, otherwise install it from the AppCenter (you will find it under 'Cloud', in the Internet section), though note that this will only install part of Dropbox. To install the remainder:

1) Go to Main menu > Applications > Internet > Dropbox.

[2) If, at the dialog box that opens, a message appears warning you that python-gpgme is not installed, close the dialog box and install this utility now. (You will not see this warning if you installed it as part of the initial exercises in Chapter 2.) When the installation of python-gpgme is complete, run Dropbox again, and this time there should be no warning.]

3) Click OK at the dialog box. The full Dropbox package will now be installed, and you will be taken to the Dropbox Setup dialog box where you can open a Dropbox account. Note that you are allowed 2 Gb of free Dropbox storage, and once you've opened an account you can add to that free storage by recommending Dropbox to others.

If you don't want to open an account right now, close the dialog box.

### 4.5 Osmo personal organizer

If you want a calendar/diary, contacts list, notepad, and to-do list in one handy package, then I think Osmo is good choice. You won't find it at the AppCenter, instead you will have to download it from Synaptic (type _osmo_ into Quick Filter and click its box when the list of hits appears, then Apply). After Osmo installs, there are a number of settings I recommend you make:

1) Run Osmo (you will find it the Applications > Office menu); when it opens you will see tabs for the various modules across the top and a toolbar below them.

2) Notice that the Osmo icon appears in the Systray on your bottom shelf. You can reveal/hide Osmo by clicking here, so there is no need to use the title bar's minimize or close buttons. If you should wish to close it, right-click its icon in the Systray and choose Quit.

3) Since the title bar buttons are unnecessary, it's a good idea to get rid of the title bar, as this will declutter things and increase Osmo's working area. To do this, right-click the title bar, mouse over Window, mouse over Border, then click 'Select Border Style'. Highlight 'Borderless', click the 'Remember this Border' box, then click OK.

4) Now click the left edge of the screen to left-maximize Osmo. If you now quit Osmo (by right-clicking its Systray icon) and open it again, you will see that all these settings have been remembered by the system.

**Hint:** You can if you wish restore the title bar and border later by opening Osmo and pressing Ctrl + Alt + w to display the title bar menu. Then you can repeat the steps in (3) above, this time choosing the Default style.

There is quite a lot to Osmo, and you should spend some time exploring the Preferences for each of its modules to set it up the way you want. I use Osmo for keeping notes about Linux, Enlightenment, and the various applications that I use. I've categorized these notes by topic, which makes for easy retrieval.

Osmo has been designed for use with the mouse, but if you prefer to use the keyboard there are key bindings for everything. To see them, click the 'About' icon at the right of the toolbar, then choose 'Key shortcuts'.

### 4.6 Skype

If you have a webcam and you want Skype on your system, you must install it from the AppCenter (in the 'Internet' section, 'Communication'). Otherwise you may have problems getting the sound working.

Once you've installed Skype, you will find it at Main menu > Applications > Internet. When you run it, you are asked to either sign in if you have a Skype account, or to create a new account. This done, the main Skype screen will open. The first thing you should do is check your webcam settings:

1) Click the menu icon (the button at the bottom left), then choose Options > Video Devices, and check that the camera is selected and working.

2) Choose 'Sound Devices' and then, if your device is not shown in the 'Microphone' field, click the arrow at the right of this field and choose your device from the list. If you are using a USB webcam, choose the first USB camera option.

3) Now click on 'Make a test sound' (you may need to increase the speaker volume), then click 'Make a test call'. Assuming everything works, you are good to go.

### 4.7 Osmoma Audio Recorder

This allows you to record anything that's played through the speakers of your computer, including radio programmes. You won't find this application in AppCenter or Synaptic, instead you will have to install it from a PPA.

PPAs are unofficial repositories for specific packages, and they cannot necessarily be trusted. So if installing from a PPA, you do so at your own risk; having said that, I have not experienced any problems with the PPAs referred to in this guide.

Osmoma Audio Recorder is described at http://itsfoss.com/record-streaming-audio/. To install it, you must open Terminal and enter the following commands:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:osmoma/audio-recorder  
sudo apt-get update  
sudo apt-get install audio-recorder

(These commands are given on the above web page, and you may find it easiest to copy and paste them from there into Terminal.)

Audio Recorder can record in a number of file formats, but not MP3. If you want to add MP3 capability to it, you must also install a plugin called 'gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly' (use Synaptic for this).

To test Audio Recorder, run it (you will find it at Applications > Sound & Video), and when it opens:

1) In the Format field select a suitable format (e.g. MP3 if you have downloaded the above Gstreamer plugin).

2) Play some audio content through your computer and press the Start Recording button. A blue audio visualisation bar should appear alongside the Recording button, showing that the audio is being recorded.

3) Press Stop Recording, and the recorded file will be saved in the Audio folder. (This folder will have been created during the installation, if it wasn't already present in your Home directory.)

4) Test the recording by opening Audacious (if you installed it in Section 4.2), adding the new file to its playlist, then playing it. Alternatively you can play it in VLC.

Note that if you mute the speakers (using the mute option in the mixer gadget), there will be no sound for Audio Recorder to record. To record something without having to listen to it, e.g. a radio programme that you want to play back later in the car, cut the speakers by inserting a headphone jack into the computer's headphone socket.

Note also the commands that you can use in the Timer section of Audio Recorder. The # symbols comment out commands, so delete the # preceding any command you want to activate. If you make a change in this section, you must click the Save button for it to take effect.

Note also the Add button alongside the File field. You should only click this if you want to append your recording the previously-recorded file recorded.

### 4.8 eDeb and Chrome

If you live in the UK and you wish to watch or listen to programs on BBC iPlayer, it's best to use the Google Chrome web browser. Unfortunately you can't download this from AppCenter or Synaptic, instead you have to download it as a .deb file.

The easiest way to handle .deb files is to use the eDeb package installer. This is included in Version 2.4 of Bodhi (you will find it in Main menu > Applications > System Tools), but if you happen to be running an earlier version of Bodhi you will first have to download it from Synaptic (search for _edeb_ in the Filter field.)

Assuming you have eDeb on your system, you can download and install Chrome:

1) Open Firefox and search for Google Chrome. The first hit should be the official Google Chrome web page, with a blue 'Download Chrome' button towards the top.

2) Click this button, and at the next screen accept the '32 bit .deb (for Debian/Ubuntu)' option. Click Accept and Install.

3) At the next dialog box click OK to save the file. A message will appear showing that it is in your downloads (i.e. in your Downloads folder).

4) Go to Main menu > Applications > System Tools and run eDeb. Click the 'Select .deb file' button.

5) At the next screen click the Downloads folder, then highlight the google-chrome .deb file and click OK.

6) At the next screen you will have to wait 30 seconds or so while eDeb downloads the package information, then click OK.

7) You are invited to run Checks before installing, so click the Checks button. Hopefully this will confirm that you are cleared to go.

8) Click OK and then click Install.

9) Enter your password, and click OK. The installation will take place, and after a while a message will appear warning that there are missing dependencies.

10) The great thing about eDeb is that it will resolve such problems for you. Click 'Install Missing Dependencies', click Grab, then enter your password and click OK.

11) When eDeb has finished installing everything you can click Done, then close it.

You can now if you wish run Google Chrome (Main menu > Applications > Internet). At the initial welcome screen, untick the box that invites you to make Chrome the default browser, then click Start.

### 4.9 Get-iPlayer

If you want to download material from BBC iPlayer in MP4 format (for TV programmes) or MP3 format (for radio programmes), so that you can play them without restriction on any device that supports those formats, then Get-iPlayer is a must. It is a command-line program, meaning that to use it you have to enter commands in Terminal. Don't be put off by this, as the commands are quite simple (or they will be when we've tweaked things a little - but more on this later).

You have to download Get-iPlayer from a PPA, and to do this you should enter the following sequence of commands into Terminal:

`s``udo apt-add-repository ppa:jon-hedgerows/get-iplayer  
sudo apt-get update  
sudo apt-get install get-iplayer`

To use Get-iPlayer to download a TV programme:

1) Use Nautilus to navigate to the folder where you want the programme to be stored, then right-click on an empty part of the folder pane and choose 'Open in Terminal'.

2) At Terminal, enter _get-iplayer "programme name"_. You can use either an underscore or a hyphen between 'get' and 'iplayer', and you must obviously replace _programme name_ with the name of the programme you're seeking, and you should include the quote marks. If, for example, you type _railway_ here, a list of all programmes with 'railway' in the name will appear.

3) Each of the hits will be numbered. Say the one you want is numbered 456, you should now enter _get-iplayer --get 456_. (That's two dashes before the 'get'). Get-iPlayer will proceed to download programme 456 into the folder you opened in step (1). Depending on the duration of the programme, this will take quite a while, and you will need to occupy yourself with something else while this carries on in the background.

4) When it's finished, you can play the programme with a media player such as VLC.

Radio programmes can be downloaded in a similar way, the only difference being that at step (3) you should enter _get-iplayer --type=radio "programme name"_ .

**Note:** Unlike TV programmes, radio programmes downloaded from iPlayer will have two or three minutes of unwanted material from the previous programme at the start as well as material from the next programme at the end. This is a nuisance if you are downloading programmes to listen to in the car. What I do is to use the Chrome web browser to play these programmes, and Audio Recorder to record them from the correct starting point.

Options such as '--get' and '--type' that you can add to a command are called arguments or switches. There are many arguments that you can use with Get-iPlayer, and for fuller instructions than are possible here you should search the web for 'get-iplayer instructions'.

Note the '--help' argument: this will list all the arguments that are available for a command together with a brief explanation of each. So to list all the arguments that you can use with Get-iPlayer, enter _get-iplayer --help_ in Terminal.

### 4.10 Other applications

There will of course be other applications that you will want on your computer. The best place to see popular choices is AppCenter, where you will find games, educational software, communication software, and much else besides. Here are a few suggestions.

1) If you want to read documents in PDF format, you will need a suitable reader. There is Adobe PDF reader, or you might prefer Evince _,_ which will read documents in various formats. Look for PDF readers in the Office section of AppCenter.

2) If you want to edit audio files, you will want Audacity, also available at the AppCenter.

3) If you want to connect your computer to a projector to give a presentation, or perhaps to a TV, you will need to use xrandr. This comes with the Bodhi system, but it is a command line utility, meaning that you have to configure it using appropriate Terminal commands. However, a friendly graphical front-end is available, which allows you instead to make configuration choices from a menu. This front-end is called aRandR, and you can download it from Synaptic. After downloading, it will show up in your Preferences menu.

**Note:** To use aRandR:  
a) Connect your computer to the projector and switch everything on.  
b) Run aRandR, open the Outputs menu, and match the resolution of your computer (LVDS1) with that of the projector (probably VGA1).  
c) Click Apply.

4) If you are into eBooks, you will probably want Calibre, available at the AppCenter.

5) It is even possible to run a number of Windows applications using a Windows emulator such as Wine (available at the AppCenter). You can see a list of what will run flawlessly under Wine (mostly games) by visiting Wine HQ at http://appdb.winehq.org/. If you are into eBooks, it's worth noting that Adobe Digital Editions will also run under Wine. However, you should be aware that Wine is a hefty package which will add a lot of baggage to your system.

### 4.11 Uninstalling applications

Anything that you have installed from AppCenter or Synaptic can be uninstalled by running Synaptic, searching for the application's name, and ticking its box. (The box will be coloured rather than blank if the application is installed on your system.) Choose 'Mark for Complete Removal' from the menu then click Apply. The application and its dependencies will be removed.

In spite of this, there will be unwanted files left on your system, and you can clear these out by opening Terminal and entering the following command:

sudo apt-get autoremove

You will already have accumulated some clutter on your system, so it's worth running this command now.

# 5 More power to your desktop

In this chapter you'll organize your desktop and its menus so that the applications you installed in the last chapter are at your fingertips, you'll learn about virtual desktops, you'll apply a GTK theme to your application windows, and you'll try different E17 themes. Then you'll practise what you've learned by creating a new profile.

### 5.1 Update your iBar

Let's begin by updating your iBar to reflect the applications you added in the last chapter.

1) Right-click on the iBar area of the shelf, mouse over iBar, and choose Contents.

2) In the iBar Applications dialog box, you might wish add LibreOffice (choose the first LibreOffice entry) and Osmo, and I suggest you remove Synaptic (you'll be adding this to the Favorites menu shortly). If you don't want these, choose a few other applications you are likely to frequently use.

3) Click the Order tab, change the order to what you want, and click OK.

Your iBar will be updated with these changes.

### 5.2 An iBar on the desktop

If you followed the suggestions made in the last chapter, you will have added a number of media applications to your system. You might find it helpful to group these on another iBar.

1) Go to Main menu > Settings > Gadgets. The Desktop Gadgets dialog box opens, where you should highlight 'Background' then click 'Configure Layer'.

2) The list of gadgets appears. Highlight iBar and click Close, then Close again. The iBar appears on your desktop, with a white border. It also contains the application icons from your original iBar; we'll change these shortly.

3) Use the mouse to move your new iBar to a suitable location on the desktop, and drag on one of its vertical borders to widen it. (You will refine these adjustments shortly.)

4) Right-click on the iBar, then mouse over 'iBar' and choose 'Settings'.

5) In the iBar Settings dialog box click Add, then enter a suitable name for the source. You might call it _media_. Click OK.

6) Highlight the name of your new source in the Source list, and click Setup. The iBar Applications dialog box will appear. (If this dialog box is rather small and cramped, remember the key binding you set up in Chapter 3 to rectify this: press Win + m to maximize it vertically.)

7) Remove the application icons that are currently populating this iBar (by clicking in turn the orange buttons and Remove), and add the media applications you have installed: Audacious, Audio Recorder, and VLC. You might wish to add the Brasero disc burning program here too.

8) Click the Order tab, and put these in the order you want, then click OK, and OK again. The icons for the packages you selected will appear in your new iBar.

9) Right-click on one of these icons, mouse over 'iBar', then choose 'Begin move/resize'. You can now drag on a vertical border to make it fit snugly around the icons, and you can move it to the exact position you want on the desktop. When you've finished right-click again.

10) Your new iBar has a border round it. To remove this, right-click on it again, mouse over 'iBar', mouse over 'Appearance', then choose 'Plain'.

You can if you wish set up further iBars on your desktop by repeating this process.

It's possible that the gadgets on your shelf have become rearranged as a result of making changes like this. Remember that you can re-order them by right-clicking on them and choosing 'Begin moving gadgets'. Right-click again when you've finished and choose 'Stop moving gadgets.

**Note:** If later on you want to modify the contents of this second iBar, right-click one of its icons then mouse over Settings (not Contents) and highlight this iBar's name (media) in the list. Then choose Setup. (Choosing Contents instead of Settings will modify the default iBar on the shelf instead.)

### 5.3 The Favorites menu

Now let's set up the Favorites menu. This will allow you to access favourite applications by right-clicking anywhere on the desktop.

1) Click the Settings icon (top shelf), then maximize the Settings window that appears (by clicking the top of the screen - remember your mouse bindings!).

2) Click Apps, then click 'Favorite Applications'. The Favorite Applications dialog box opens. You may want to use your Win + m key-binding to maximize this box vertically.

3) You should add Synaptic, together any other applications that you want immediately to hand, apart from those that can be run from the shelf iBar.

4) Click the Order tab and set this, then click OK.

5) Leave the Settings window open in readiness for the next section, but test your new menu by right-clicking on the exposed desktop area below the shelf.

### 5.4 Applications name display

The application names that appear in the menu system are rather long, as they not only give the name but also, beside it in brackets, the application type. For example, Synaptic Package Manager appears as 'Synaptic Package Manager (Package Manager)'. This is fine when you're new to Linux, but later on it gets a little irksome. You can change this at the Settings window:

1) Click on Menus, then Menu Settings.

2) At the Menu Settings dialog box, turn off Generic, then press OK. Leave the Settings window open, but test what you've done by right-clicking the desktop below the shelf. The generic (bracketed) comments should have disappeared.

### 5.5 Startup applications

You may want some applications to run automatically when you start up your computer, so that they are effortlessly and immediately available. For example, I like to run Osmo this way. Any personal application launchers that you set up can also be run automatically at startup. For instance, I have set up a launcher to execute a command which turns off the touchpad on my laptop at startup (I use a mouse).

To set startup applications:

1) At the Settings window, choose Apps, then 'Startup Applications'.

2) At the Startup Applications dialog box, click Applications, then, if you wish, choose one or two applications. Click OK.

You will of course have to restart your computer to test this. Otherwise leave the Settings window open for the next section.

### 5.6 Virtual desktops

You have available to you not one but five desktops, and more can be added if you wish. At the moment these virtual desktops are identical, with the same wallpaper, shelves, and iBars, but this can changed, so that you could have one desktop where your media applications are grouped, for example, and another for your photo applications. Even better, you could have one desktop set up for the way you want to work, and another for your partner. In my case, I could have this guide that I'm writing on one desktop, and things that I need to refer to, like dialog boxes, open in the other.

Let's set up something along these lines now.

1) At the Settings window click Screen, then Virtual Desktops. The Virtual Desktops Settings dialog box opens. Here you can see that you have five identical desktops; you can increase or decrease this number, and you can stack them vertically as well as horizontally.

2) Let's simplify things by reducing the number of desktops to two: drag the bottom slider to the left until '2' appears as the number.

3) Now click on the second desktop, change the Name to something meaningful, then click Set. You are taken to the Wallpaper Settings dialog box. Click on 'Use Theme Wallpaper' (or, preferably, grab another wallpaper, e.g. by using Firefox to download one from the Bodhi Linux website).

4) Click OK, then OK again. Back at the Virtual Desktops Settings dialog box, click on the first desktop and give it a meaningful name. Click OK, then Close to return to the Settings window.

5) Click the Flip Animation tab, and set this to Off. Click Apply, then Close.

6) To go to the second desktop, press Alt + F2, and to return to the first press Alt + F1.

If you have a third desktop, Alt + F3 will switch to that, Alt + F4 to the fourth, and so on. An easier way to switch between desktops is to put the Pager gadget on a shelf or on the desktop and to click on that. You can also switch between your two desktops by pressing Ctrl + Alt + right-arrow key.

But to make switching really easy, let's set up an edge binding:

1) Go to the Edge Bindings dialog box (via Run Everything).

2) Click Add, choose the bottom left corner, then Clickable Edge, then Apply.

3) With 'Bottom Left Edge' highlighted in the left pane, choose 'Flip Desktop Linearly...' in the right pane.

4) The three dots at the end of this command indicate that a further bit of information, an 'action parameter', is required - in this case a parameter stating how many desktops to flip. Type '1' in the Action Parameters box, then click Apply.

5) Test this binding by clicking the bottom-left corner of the screen. Each repeated click will switch between desktops.

### 5.7 Different shelves for different desktops

To create a different shelf on the second desktop we need first to modify the settings of the existing shelf so that it only shows on the first desktop:

1) Right-click on one of the icons of the top shelf, mouse over 'shelf', and choose Settings.

2) At the Shelf Settings dialog box, keep clicking on the right arrow until you reach 'Desktop'. Click 'Show on specified Desktops', highlight the name of the first desktop, and click OK.

3) Press Alt + F2 to check that it has disappeared from the second desktop.

Now let's add a shelf to this second desktop:

1) Go to Main menu > Settings > Shelves, and click Add.

2) Give your new shelf a meaningful name, e.g. the name you gave your second desktop. Click OK.

3) Now, at the Shelf Contents dialog box, add some gadgets. These might include the Everything Starter as well as the iBar. Click Close.

4) The iBar on this shelf is filled with the icons from the default iBar. To change this, right-click on it, mouse over 'iBar', and choose Settings. Now click Add to add another source, and give it suitable name. Click OK.

5) Highlight this name in the list of sources, then click Setup. Press Win + m if you wish to vertically maximize the dialog box, then remove the applications that are on it already and add some others. Then click the Order tab to adjust the order, then click OK, and OK a second time to close these dialog boxes.

6) Now right-click on your new shelf, mouse over its name, and choose Settings. Make these settings: Stacking - 'Below Windows'; Position \- Right, at the top; Style - 'Invisible'; Desktop - 'Show on specified desk' and the name of your second desktop. Click OK.

You now have two desktops with different shelves. Note that the desktop gadgets (the clock, desktop iBar, and Places gadget) are the same on both.

### 5.8 GTK Themes

These are application themes, and they allow you to customize the appearance of the windows within which applications run. This is a very straightforward task, as it is simply a matter of downloading and trying out some themes.

1) Open Firefox and go to the Bodhi home page (http://www.bodhilinux.com/) and navigate to Resources > Art Wiki > GTK Themes.

2) Go down to bodhi_gtk_country_oak (fifth down on the right) and click on it. You are taken to the installation page for this theme.

3) It's best to do a _sudo apt-get update_ before beginning the installation, and an easy way to do this is to click the link on the line below the heading 'Before Starting'. After a few seconds you will be asked if you want to install a small update program. Accept this.

4) Now click on 'Install Now', and a dialog box opens asking you to confirm the installation. Do so. (If Firefox misbehaves at this point and doesn't display the box, restart it and try again.)

5) Now go back to the theme gallery and click on the eighth theme down on the right, bodhi_gtk_gold. At its install page, click on 'Install Now', then at the dialog box click 'Install' again.

6) Return once more to the theme gallery, and click on the next theme down, bodhi_gtk_kiwi. Install this.

7) Leave Firefox open and maximized. Click the Settings gadget on your toolbar, and, at the Settings window, click Look and then Application Theme. The Application Theme Settings dialog box opens. Now minimize the settings window so that you can see as much as possible of the Firefox window

8) Highlight 'Kiwi' in the Theme Settings dialog box and click Apply. The Firefox window will adopt a different colour scheme, and it will have different scrollbars.

9) Now try the E17-GTK theme (this is the 'Gold' theme you downloaded at (5) above).

10) Try others as well and pick the one you like and which matches the E17 theme which you applied in Chapter 2 (Bodhi-Theme). One of my favourites is Country Oak.

You can if you wish change the icons used with your application theme. I will not be covering this here, but you can find alternative icon sets at the Bodhi Art Wiki, and you can apply them by clicking on the Icons tab at the Application Themes Settings dialog box (7 above).

### 5.9 Profiles

You have made many changes to the Compositing profile that you chose when you first installed Bodhi Linux. All of these settings have been stored in this profile. They include the theme you selected, the shelves you set up, and any edge and key bindings you created. If you now apply a different profile, it will have none of these settings (though it will keep the contents of your iBar and your Systray, and also your Favorites menu).

This does not mean that you have lost all those settings that you laboriously created. By returning to the Compositing profile, your desktop will returned to its previous state, with all its settings in place.

In the next section you are going to make some radical changes to your Compositing profile that you may not want to keep. How then can you return to your profile as it is now? The answer is to save it as a new profile under a different name, and then return to that new profile. So let's save your profile now.

1) Go to the Profile Selector dialog box. To do this, Run Everything, then type the first few letters of _profile_ and press Enter.

2) At this dialog box click Add, then enter a name for your profile - something like _Mycompositing_ will do.

3) Click OK, then Close. Your profile, with its theme, wallpaper, shelves, bindings, and other settings, is stored.

Note that you are not using your new profile. The Compositing profile is still selected at the dialog box. Any changes you make now will be stored in that. It also means that if you want to make changes to your new profile, you must first select it here.

**Further reading:** Go to the Profiles section of the Bodhi Guide to Enlightenment

### 5.10 E17 themes

You have a few E17 themes already installed on your computer, and more are available at the Bodhi Art Wiki. To see them, open the Bodhi home page, click on 'Resources', then 'Art Wiki', then 'Enlightenment Themes'. The install procedure is the same as for GTK themes above.

Many more themes (about 80, in fact) are available in the Bodhi repository, and I suggest you try one of these now:

1) Open Synaptic and type 'bodhi-theme' into Quick Filter. A long list appears, but only those denoted as version 2.0 or higher will work properly with the latest (v.2) of Bodhi Linux. However, with a simple tweak it is easy to make others work.

2) Find the Crema theme (i.e. _bodhi-theme-crema -_ if you can't spot it type the name into Quick Filter) and install it. This is an old (version 0.5) theme, so you will have to tweak it.

3) Close Synaptic when the installation is complete, then click the Settings gadget on the shelf to open the Settings dialog box. In preparation for the next step, click 'Wallpaper' (in the Look menu), click 'Use Theme Wallpaper' then click OK.

4) Now click 'Theme' (in the Look menu): the Theme Selector dialog box opens. The themes stored on your computer are shown here, including the A-crema theme that you have just downloaded. Highlight this, then click Apply. Your theme is changed, and your desktop is transformed.

5) Now click the 'Advanced' button in the Theme Selector dialog box. In the left pane ('Theme Categories') scroll down to and click on 'widgets'. It is the widgets part of A-crema that will not work with version 2 of Bodhi, so we need to use instead the widgets from another theme.

6) With 'widgets' highlighted, click 'Bodhi-Theme' in the Themes panel, then click the 'Assign' button (at the left, below the Theme Categories panel. We could if we wished change other elements of our new theme in the same way.

7) Let's also change 'modules/everything'. (This is to improve the appearance of the Run Everything dialog box.) Highlight 'modules/everything' in the Theme Categories panel, then highlight A-Egypt in the Themes panel. then click Assign.

8) Click Apply, then Close, then close the Settings Dialog box.

9) The appearance of your desktop has been transformed. The gadgets look different, and if you click on the desktop to open the menus you will see that they look different too. (If some of the icons are missing from the shelves, restart Enlightenment.)

10) Run Everything, then type in the first few letters of _application theme_ to open the Application Theme Settings dialog box. Observe that this looks exactly the same as before you applied the Crema theme: this is because you are using the Bodhi-Theme widgets.

11) Now you need to choose a GTK theme that matches your Crema theme. In the dialog box you have just opened, highlight the Country Oak theme and click OK. To inspect the appearance of this theme open an application - Osmo is a good choice.

12) You may want to adjust some of the fonts used by your new theme. To do so, Run Everything and enter _font_ , and at the Font Settings dialog box click Advanced.

a) Highlight 'Menu Item' in the Font Classes pane and make sure 'Enable Font Class' is selected.  
b) Select 'Nimbus Sans' as the font, 'Bold' as the style, and '14 pixels' as the size.  
c) Highlight 'Menu Title', check 'Enable Font Class', and make these same selections (Nimbus Sans, Bold, 14 pixels).  
d) Highlight 'Title Bar' and select 'Ubuntu' as the font, 'Bold' as the style, and '14 pixels' as the size. Click Apply and observe how the title bar of the dialog box now looks, then Close it.

13) Click on the desktop to observe how the menus now look.

14) A final change you might make is to the clock gadget on your new desktop. If this is digital, change it to analog now, observe how it looks, and resize and move it as necessary.

All these changes have been stored in the Compositing profile. If you wish to restore your Mycompositing profile, highlight it at the Profile Selector dialog box and click Apply.

### 5.11 Starting afresh

This completes our exploration of the Enlightenment desktop. There are more tweaks you could make, but to include these would make this guide far too long. Your time would be better spent consolidating what you've learned by starting afresh with a different profile and customizing that to create your own personal desktop. Remember that at any time you can return to the profile you have already set up, by opening the Profile Selector and applying either Compositing (to return to your profile with the Crema theme) or Mycompositing (to return to your earlier profile with the Bodhi-Theme theme.

To apply and customize another profile:

1) Return to the Profile Selector dialog box and select the Laptop/Netbook profile. (You could of course select some other profile from the list; this will give you a different selection of gadgets on the shelf.) A new desktop appears with a different shelf (across the top) and a different theme. All your old desktop settings have gone \- shelf, mouse and key bindings, everything. Your iBar, however, has been retained (it is located on a pop-up shelf at the bottom of the screen), and of course you still have the menu system, including your Favorites menu.

2) Before you make any changes to this profile, it might be worth adding the Run Everything gadget to the shelf: right-click a blank area of the shelf, choose Contents, then, at the Shelf Contents dialog box, add that gadget. It might be helpful as well to remove the Start gadget, as this uses the same icon as Run Everything.

3) Now go to the Theme Selector dialog box (via Run Everything) and try one or two of the themes available there. If you don't fancy any of these, visit the Art Wiki at the Bodhi website and install one of those. When you've found one you like and applied it, start customizing the shelf. You will want different gadgets on it, and you may want it at a different position, and you may want to shrink it to fit the content.

4) Decide what gadgets, if any, you want on the desktop. You may want to move the clock there, and you may want the Places gadget there.

5) Apply an appropriate GTK theme, then change fonts as necessary to make e.g. the menus easier to read. Apply a different wallpaper.

6) Create edge bindings and key bindings to make life easier.

When you've finished perfecting your masterpiece, return to your Mycompositing profile to compare my suggested desktop with yours. Hopefully you will prefer yours!

# 6 Maintain and replicate your system

This final chapter covers tasks that you should carry out periodically to freshen up your system. These tasks are not onerous, and will involve only a few minutes of your time.

We also discuss how to replicate your system on an optical disk or USB stick, so that it can be run on other computers and even installed on them.

### 6.1 Aliases

One or two of these maintenance tasks involve entering some long-winded commands into Terminal, like s _udo apt-get dist-upgrade_ to upgrade any out-of-date software. This is a pain to type and an even bigger pain to remember. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to type simply _upgrade_ instead? By setting up aliases we can do just that.

Aliases are stored in the .bashrc file in your Home directory. To create some, you must open this file in Leafpad.

**Hint:** Before setting up an alias, you should first check that your proposed word isn't an existing command. Do this by entering it in Terminal; if the response is 'command not found', you're good to go.

1) Open Terminal, then enter _gksudo leafpad .bashrc_. (Note the '.' at the start of the filename: this is a hidden file.)

2) With this file displayed in Leafpad, scroll down almost to the bottom of it, and after the section headed '# some more ls aliases' insert the following:

# _My aliases  
alias leaf='gksudo leafpad'  
alias update='sudo apt-get update'  
alias upgrade='sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y'  
alias remove='sudo apt-get autoremove'_

(Note the ' -y' at the end of the third command. This bypasses the need to type 'y' when, after running the dist-upgrade command, you are asked to confirm that you want to replace any out-of-date files.)

If you installed Get-iPlayer in the Chapter 4, you may want to add to this list the following alias:

alias get='get-iplayer'

3) Save the file, close Leafpad, and close Terminal.

To activate these aliases, you need to reboot the computer. Do so now, as you will be trying some of them in the next section.

### 6.2 Updating your system

You should update your system every month or so, to keep everything on it up to date. With the aliases you set up above in place, this is very easy:

1) Open Terminal, and enter _update_. The database on your system will synchronized with the repository.

2) Enter _upgrade._ Any out-of-date files on your system will be upgraded to the latest versions.

3) When this finished, it might be worth getting rid of any accumulated junk on your system. Enter _remove_ , then press 'y' at the prompt.

### 6.3 Cleaning your system

Once every few months you should carry out a thorough clean of your system. This can be done using an application called Bleachbit. Bleachbit is not on your system, but you can install it from Synaptic. Do so now.

When the installation is finished, two entries will have been added to the System Tools section of your menu system:

**-** 'Bleachbit', which cleans user files.  
**-** 'Bleachbit as root', which cleans system files.

1) Run Bleachbit now (Main menu > Applications > System Tools, or use Run Everything). Its window opens, with various categories of file to clean listed at the left. Select them all except the following:

The Deep scan options (these are slow);  
Passwords (in the Firefox section);  
Free disk space, Localizations, and Memory in the System section (the first two are slow, and Memory is experimental.

2) Click Preview, and a (long) list of files to be deleted appears.

3) Click Clean, and in moments the job is done.

'Bleachbit as root' is used in the same way.

### 6.4 Backing up with Remastersys

You should of course keep backups of important documents and photos on an external storage device or on Dropbox. Nautilus, with its twin panes and 'Copy to other pane' facility, makes this easy.

Backing up your entire system is another matter, however, and one way to do this is to use a program called Remastersys. This allows you to create an image (ISO file) of your system, including all your customizations and, if you wish, your documents, photos, and other data files, which you can then install on an optical disc (a recordable DVD) or on a USB memory stick (pen drive). With this DVD or USB stick you can run, and if necessary install, your system on any computer.

Remastersys is on your system, and it can be run from Terminal, but it will make life easier in the future if you set up a personal application launcher for it.

1) Run Everything and enter the first four letters of _personal_. The Personal Application Launcher dialog box opens.

2) Click Add to add a personal launcher, then at the Desktop Entry Editor type _Remastersys_ in the Name field, and in the Application field _remastersys-gtk_.

3) If you want to set up an icon for your launcher, click on the Icon tab, then click on the icon box and navigate to /usr/share/icons/MaXo-ReMix/apps, then scroll through the list for a suitable icon. Click OK.

4) At the General tab, type _remastersys_ in the 'Generic Name' field, and _System_ in Categories.

5) At the Options tab, make sure that 'Show in Menus' is selected. The other two options should not be selected.

6) Click Apply, then Close. Remastersys will appear in the menu system, under System Tools (if it doesn't , restart Enlightenment).

Before backing up your system with Remastersys, you should first run Bleachbit and Bleachbit as Root to remove unnecessary files. You should include the 'Free disk space' option to make the image as compact as possible. (This will take a long time to execute, as it involves shuffling files around on the hard disk.)

The instructions for using Remastersys to create an image of your system are as follows:

1) Close all open applications, run Remastersys, and at its dialog box choose the Settings tab. Here you can enter any files or directories you wish to exclude from your image. For example, if you wish to exclude your Movies and your Pictures folders, you would enter _/home/bodhi32/Movies /home/bodhi32/Pictures_ (replacing _bodhi32_ by your username).

2) Click the Actions tab, close all open windows (apart from the Remastersys window) and click Backup. Remastersys will then set to work creating the ISO image of your system, a process that will take about an hour.

The ISO file will be located in the /home/remastersys directory. To see it, run Nautilus, click the box at the left of the toolbar (to the left of 'Home' - the box is marked with a small left-pointing arrow), click 'home' (not 'Home'), then navigate to remastersys > remastersys. (In other words, the ISO is in the _/home/remastersys/remastersys_ folder.)

This size of this file, if you have excluded any personal data files that you might have added to your system such as photos, music, or other documents, is probably around 1 GB (gigabyte). (That includes all the applications you've added to your system.) This will result in an installed size of rather more than 2 GB.

You can now install this image on a recordable DVD using Brasero (which you will find in the Sound & Video section of the menu system). Alternatively you can install it on a USB memory stick - which may be your best option, as a USB stick can hold a much bigger images than a DVD, and you can change or add to the files stored on it. (Note, though, that an older computer may not be able to boot from a USB stick - see Section 6.6 below.)

### 6.5 Unetbootin

To install your ISO image on a USB stick you need to an application called Unetbootin _._ This is not on your system, so run Synaptic to install it. Like Remastersys, Unetbootin will appear in the System Tools section of the menu system.

1) Before running it, you should insert the USB stick in a USB port, and you should mount it. (To mount it, simply click on its icon in the Places gadget so that Nautilus opens it, then close Nautilus. Alternatively open Nautilus in the normal way and click on the USB stick in its left pane.)

2) Run Unetbootin, and at its dialog box select the DiskImage option (at the bottom left). Then browse to the ISO you saved in the last section - the browse button is at the right. When the Browse dialog box opens, click the up-arrow at the top, double-click 'home' in the list, then 'remastersys', then 'remastersys' again.

3) If you think you'll want to add files later to the USB system that you are about to create, then you must allocate space for this. The amount is limited by the capacity of your USB stick. For a 4 GB USB stick, you will have to limit yourself to around 1500 MB.

4) Click OK, and an image of your system will be installed on your USB stick. This process will take several minutes.

### 6.6 Running Bodhi Linux from a USB drive

The copy of your system that you've installed on the USB stick can be run on any computer that will boot from a USB drive. To try this on your computer:

1) Switch off.

2) Make sure the USB stick is inserted in a USB port.

3) Switch on, and while the computer starts up hold down the F12 key. A boot up menu should appear. (This assumes your computer uses F12 to do this \- a list of keys you can use at startup should appear on the screen when the computer fires up.)

4) One of the options should be to boot up from the USB drive. If that option is not there, then you can't boot up from the drive. In that case you will have to write your ISO image to a DVD (using Brasero) and boot from that.

**Hint:** You can check whether your computer has this option prior to creating an installable USB stick by carrying out the above steps with _any_ USB stick inserted in the USB port.

5) If the USB option is present, select 'Boot from the Live System'. The computer will run your Bodhi system and after a few moments your desktop will appear.

6) Some of the icons are probably missing from the shelf. This always seems to happen the first time you use a USB installation. The solution is to Restart Enlightenment (Main menu > Enlightenment > Restart), which will fix the problem.

7) When running Bodhi from a USB drive or optical disc, it does not automatically connect to the Internet. To connect, Run Everything and type the first letters of _network_. Press Enter, and the network applet will run. Click on its icon (bottom shelf), choose your network from the list, and enter the password.

8) You are now able to use the system in exactly the same way as if you were running it from the hard disk, including being able to save files to it (assuming you allocated space for this in the previous exercise).

9) You can also easily access the files on the computer's hard disk, using the Places gadget on the desktop (assuming you put that there in an earlier exercise). You will notice that several drives appear on this gadget, including the hard disk. Click on the hard disk icon to reveal its contents in Nautilus.

[10) You can if you wish use this USB stick to install your Bodhi system on the computer's hard drive. You might want to do this if the hard drive on your computer has become corrupted, or if you want to install your Bodhi system on another computer. To do this, Run Everything and type in the first few letters of _install RELEASE._ If the Install RELEASE applet is present on your USB stick, its icon will appear in the dialog box and you can press Enter to run it. You can try this now if you like - abort the install process by selecting Quit at the first dialog box.

Note: If _Install RELEASE_ is not present on your USB stick, you can download it from http://packages.bodhilinux.com/bodhi/pool/testing/u/ubiquity. Choose the download called _ubiquity-frontend-gtk_3.12.17_i386.deb_. As this is a .deb file, you must install it using the eDeb utility, as described in Section 4.8.]

11) To power down, press Win + End in the usual way - all the shortcuts you set up earlier are available.

### 6.7 Future versions of Bodhi Linux

Like Windows, distros such as Ubuntu and Bodhi Linux bring out new versions every couple of years or so. The next major Ubuntu release is scheduled for April 2014, and the new Bodhi release (version 3.0) will come out a month or two after that.

You will not be able to update your existing Bodhi installation to version 3, instead you will have to do a fresh install - i.e. you will have to download the new disc image, install it on your computer, and repeat everything you have done in this guide. The good news is that there is no urgency about this: version 2 of Bodhi will be supported for a further couple of years.

When you do make the switch, you must obviously back up all your important data files first, as the hard disk on your computer will be reformatted. It might also be a good idea to back up your entire system onto an external hard disk or a (large) USB stick, as described above, just in case you need to run it again for any reason.

After that, minor revisions to the Bodhi distro will be released about three times a year, but these will be automatically incorporated into your installation when you do a _sudo apt-get dist-upgrade_.

### 6.8 Conclusion

We've reached the end this guide. You will have realized that there is much more to Bodhi and the Enlightenment desktop than is covered here, and as for Linux itself I've barely scratched the surface. Probably the best way to find out more about Linux is to search the web, including 'ubuntu' in your search phrase and sometimes 'linux'. There are many guides available there. And as for Bodhi and Enlightenment, your main source of help will be the Bodhi website, especially the Forum and the Documentation Wiki.

I've replicated the customized Bodhi that's described in this book, with all its tweaks and applications, on the computers of several acquaintances, and if you become a Bodhi convert you might do the same (using the USB stick or DVD you created in the last section). If so, you might find it useful to provide them with the Quick Start Guide below.

### Quick Start Guide to this Bodhi Linux installation

All the applications on this computer can be accessed via the menu system, which you can open by pointing the mouse at any exposed area of the desktop and clicking left.

This installation includes a number of shortcuts to make life easier:

_*_ Frequently-used applications such as the web browser are located on the shelf at the left. Simply click on the appropriate icon to run these.

***** Other favourite applications can be found on the Favorites menu, which is reached by pointing the mouse at a blank area of the desktop and clicking right.

***** Keyboard shortcuts, such as Win + End to shut down the computer (i.e. hold down the Windows key and tap End).

***** Mouse actions to manipulate windows:

\- Click the top-right corner of the screen to close the current (focussed) window.  
\- Click the top edge of the screen to maximize the window (click again to undo this).  
\- Click the bottom edge of the screen to minimize the window  
\- Click the top left corner to set the window fullscreen (click again to undo).  
\- Click the left edge of the screen to left-maximize the window (click again to undo).  
\- Click the right edge of the screen to right-maximize the window (click again to undo).  
\- Click the bottom-right corner of the screen to show the desktop.

The Nautilus file manager is included in this installation. Its icon is located at the top of the shelf. When Nautilus opens, you can press the F3 key to display a second pane; this simplifies the task of copying or moving files from one location to another (right-click the file and choose e.g. 'Copy to other pane'. Nautilus also makes it easy to access other computers connected to your network - choose Browse network in its left pane.

The applications installed on this system include Firefox web browser, Thunderbird email client, LibreOffice office suite (the Linux alternative to Microsoft Office), Osmo personal information manager (calendar, diary, notes, contacts, todo list), VLC video player, Audacious music player, an audio recorder, Mirage for photos, as well as Skype and Dropbox. You can add others by visiting the AppCenter at the Bodhi Linux website (http://appcenter.bodhilinux.com/). If a package that you want isn't listed here, search for it using the Synaptic Package Manager (on the Favorites menu).

The terminal is the second icon down on the shelf. Use this to enter any commands, in particular the commands to keep your system and its software up to date. To keep things easy, these commands have been simplified on this system, so all you have to do is:

1) Enter _update_ to synchronize your system file index with the on-line database (you must be connected to the Internet for this and the next command to work).

2) Then enter _upgrade_ to replace any out-of-date system files.

To learn more about the Bodhi Linux system, including how to access the Internet, click anywhere on the desktop to open the menu system, then highlight 'Bodhi Linux' and choose Quick Start.
