As a first attempt at creating a cross-plattform application, Launchy for Linux has a lot going for it: it is small, fast and elegant, and has a nice selection of plugins and skins. But for the past couple of weeks, two major bugs have become really annoying: Launchy opens all application scripts in a text editor, which means that half of my applications fail to run, and for some reason several of my most important directories are never indexed.
There doesn’t seem to be a fix in the pipeline, and as a result I installed Gnome-Do instead. It seems just as snappy as Launchy, and although I haven’t been able to find a configuration menu the default installation runs all applications and opens most directories as it should. I qualify my statement, as there seems to be a problem with Gnome’s standard directories. Rather than opening /home/eirik/Documents, say, Gnome-Do opens /home/eirik instead. By default in version 0.4.* directories are opened with the “Reveal” option, and you have to tab to the Options window and type Open to get Gnome-do to truly open the directory. I upgraded to the latest version, and now directories are opened directly by default.
28/08/2008 at 11:35
Have you seen this: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GnomeDo/
I didn’t know half of it beeing an active gnome-do user for a year 🙂
28/08/2008 at 14:47
And for those of us using KDE ( KDE > Gnome 😉 ), Katapult is a great program, which does mostly the same as Launchy/Gnome Do.
29/08/2008 at 21:21
With your “Rather than opening /home/eirik/Documents, say, Gnome-Do opens /home/eirik instead” are you using reveal or open? reveal opens the directory above whatever the item is, open opens the directory. Also make sure you’re suing the latest version in our ppa (0.6). Sounds like you’re using a really old version.
29/08/2008 at 23:29
Alex: Thanks for the tip. I’ve been using “Reveal”, as it was the default setting, and “Open” was hidden when I tabbed to options. I used the standard version in Ubuntu Hardy, which was 0.4.0.1. Now I’ve upgraded, and “Open” is default. Problem solved – brilliant! 🙂
13/11/2008 at 20:56
I’m used to OSX with quicksilver and/or spotlight, and gnome-do seems to do about the same as these.
But: how do I launch gnome-do in the first place??
In OSX I would tap cmd-space to open quicksilver/spotlight and then type mye command, but I can’t seem to find an equivalent to open gnome-do. What did I miss when?
13/11/2008 at 21:32
First, if you can’t see the gnome-do icon in your task bar, it isn’t running. If it was installed properly, you’ll find it in /Accessories/Gnome-Do . Otherwise, you can always run it from the terminal by typing “gnome-do”.
Now right click on the icon, choose “Preferences” and click the “Keyboard” tab. Here, you can choose your own command to summon the Gnome-Do window – my choice is Ctrl-Space. 🙂