“GWAR is the only band I make time for.” – My brother Ryan
Month: January 2012
Is that a Galaxy Nexus in your…
Is that a Galaxy Nexus in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? http://t.co/bpQBJWFQ
@NathanFillion Polo?
@NathanFillion Polo?
Replace Icons for Windows Applications on Linux via Wine
I recent pulled my old copy of Adobe Photoshop 7 for Windows out of mothballs and was delighted to discover that it now runs perfectly on Linux by the magical powers of Wine. I’ve been using the much more recent CS5 version on OSX at work, but Photoshop 7 has all of the features that I rely on except for layer groups. Which is not much of a problem, really.
The only problem was that the old 48-pixel icon that came with this version for Windows looked pretty hideous in my lovely new Gnome 3 Shell and Gnome Do menus. Customizing these icons means replacing whatever file the system is using for the default image. Conceptually, this is very straightforward. In reality, the location of these icon images is not always obvious. This post will explain how to replace icons for Windows applications running on Linux via Wine in as concise a manner as possible.
Find or Create New Icon Images
A quick search online gave me exactly what I was looking for: a 128-pixel PNG of the Photoshop 7 icon! It doesn’t always work out to be that easy. Or maybe you want to create your own, original icon. Whatever the case, you just need to create your icon as big as you need it or even a little larger, usually 128, 256, 512 or some other square dimensions that are divisible by 8.
Replace Default Icon Image File
Usually Linux systems will save icon image files somewhere around here:
/usr/share/pixmaps
or here:
/usr/share/icons/your_icon_themes_name/
but Wine saves these icons in a special place no doubt due to the “special” nature of running Windows applications on Linux:
/home/your_username/.local/share/icons/
In my specific case on Ubuntu 11.10 I found a folder titled “hicolor” in the “icons” folder. And inside of that I found the 48-pixel Photoshop 7 icon file in folders titled “48×48” and “apps”. So I created a new folder titled “128×128” as well as a folder titled “apps” inside of that.
And, finally, to correctly add a new icon image file navigate to that location and …
- Find the icon that you would like to replace.
- In another file browser window navigate to your new icon image file.
- Copy your new image file to … /icons/128×128/apps.
- Navigate back to … /icons/48×48/apps and copy the complete filename of the original image file.
- Return to …/icons/128×128/apps and update the filename of your new icon file by pasting in the copied filename.
In my case the filename was not as simple as “photoshop.png”. It had some arbitrary letters and numbers in it, so make sure the filename is the exact same otherwise it might not work.
Log out and log in to see if you are successful!
Update: July 7, 2013
So things have apparently changed for the worse regarding Wine applications and Gnome 3 Shell. Actually, it might be “better” and on the road to “great” but for now along with what you do above you also need to edit the .desktop file associated with your Windows application. Doing what I described above doesn’t inhibit Gnome from defaulting to the Wine Application Launcher icon.
The .desktop files are what tells your Linux system various details about a given application in order to list it in a system-wide application menu or even the contextual menu’s “Open With….” system. For Wine applications, these .desktop files are located here:
/home/your_username/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs
There is one small trick to these files: the Linux system (or at least Nautilus) sees these files as “application launchers”. As a result, right-clicking and opening with… mousepad or Gedit isn’t possible. You will have to start your text editor and then use its own open dialog to navigate to the location above and open your desired .desktop file from there.
Once you have the .desktop file open, we need to tell our Linux system to use a different icon than the one specified by default. So, open the file and look for the “Icon=” line. It will probably be associated with a long-ish filename that looks arbitrary and computer generated.
Simply replace that file name with the one used for your preferred icon files above and save the file. You might need to log in and log out to see the difference.
@Cabel Just read the Audion st…
@Cabel Just read the Audion story. Thanks. It’s inspiring.
Mission Impossible – IKEA Prot…
Mission Impossible – IKEA Protocol. http://t.co/9DbWiCDa I particularly like the part where he spells “inept” as “inapt”.
Quick video explaining what PI…
Quick video explaining what PIPA/SOPA bills are trying to do: http://t.co/xFGwNCXf
@KungFuPastor Black magic prom…
@KungFuPastor Black magic promoted by TMNT http://t.co/q6PQiXtu
@motherfuton John Paul Jones i…
@motherfuton John Paul Jones is one of the baddest bad-asses.
@KungFuPastor I’m baffled th…
@KungFuPastor I’m baffled that anybody has the author’s initial perspective. Me and my concerns and preferences will never be so important.
@MrsMelB Woohoo! They trounced…
@MrsMelB Woohoo! They trounced ’em, eh?
@WildBeasts Just listening to …
@WildBeasts Just listening to Smother via Spotify now, but I’m definitely going to buy it. Great songs. Thank you.
@gruber You might enjoy this: …
@gruber You might enjoy this: Top 100 Stories of 2011 #8 The Man Who Gave Us Less for More http://t.co/mcEXSbyC
David H. Freedman’s Ridiculous Steve Jobs Editorial
I have been casually (sometimes painfully) reading through Discover magazines year-end issue featuring “100 Top Stories of 2011”. I read magazines in an illogical order, so it has taken a while for me to get to Top Story #8: “The Man Who Gave Us Less For More” by David H. Freeman. I’ve probably read Mr. Freedman’s work before, but I’m not overtly familiar with him. Regardless, if the top story from 2011 is referring to Steve Jobs’s death, the title alone is a pretty insulting way to reference it.
Read it for yourself, but here are some of the main points of this ridiculous rant that attempts to make Steve Jobs look like a man that sells snake oil:
Original Macintosh
“What did this pretty beige box offer that a hundred other computers didn’t already offer, besides a higher price, much less choice in software and no compatibility with the rest of the world’s devices?”
Well, for starters, it had the first really successful, useful, graphical user interface powered by a mouse. This change in UI was so good and apparently successful that Microsoft made a really bad copy of it. I’m sure in your list of features and bang-for-buck you aren’t giving this important accomplishment much value. I just don’t see how, as an honest technology journalist, you can brush off the Macintosh as overpriced crap. Are you still working sans mouse today?
Apple Lisa
“Who remembers the Apple Lisa, a chunky desktop that sold for $9,995 in1983?”
OK. So the Lisa was a financial failure and a technological dead end thanks to the success of the Macintosh (see above). The price? Well, nobody put a gun to your head. Besides, Steve Jobs was kicked off of the Lisa team and as a result worked on the Macintosh. (see above)
Apple Newton
“Who remembers the Newton, a $700 PDA/paperweight?”
Try doing some research. You are conflating Steve Jobs with Apple. Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985. The Newton project was started in 1987. One of the first things Jobs did after becoming the Apple CEO in 1997 was kill the Newton.
NeXT
“Then there was the NeXT computer, to which Jobs devoted a decade of his life … starting at $6,500, Jobs sold only 50,000 units ever.”
Yes, the NeXT computers never sold well, but you make it sound like Jobs wasted a decade of his life on a complete failure. Maybe you didn’t know this – again, research – but the NeXT operating system was more highly regarded than the hardware. So much so that, when Apple was circling the drain after failing to build their own next-gen operating system, they purchased NeXT. This purchase is how Steve Jobs returned to Apple and also how Apple ended up with the operating system that it runs today. Without Steve Jobs’s return and that operating system – now called OSX – Apple wouldn’t exist today.
iPod
At this point you actually start giving Steve credit for creating something useful. But you still go on to piss and moan about paying higher prices for prettier things like Apple products have no real value above the competition. Never mind that you say this at a time when the rest of the consumer computer companies are struggling to build iPad and MacBook Air knock-offs at the same price point as Apple.
Discover magazine should be ashamed of themselves for publishing this misguided, lazy and factually incorrect editorial as though it were objective journalism. It makes me question everything else I read in their magazine.
@mprogano I forgot about this …
@mprogano I forgot about this site: http://t.co/1yQS7yao they have some good info about various email clients.
@jonikorpi @media Think that’s…
@jonikorpi @media Think that’s intentional or just an oversight?
@robrathmann Welcome to Twitte…
@robrathmann Welcome to Twitter!
@mprogano @jonikorpi Because t…
@mprogano @jonikorpi Because there are no HTML email standards. HTML email markup is trapped in the ’90s. You can barely use CSS.