MATE 1.12 and "Screenlets" : are those compatible?

Support & Help Requests
#1

Hi,

Coming from the Mac world, I must say that I love the ability to configure the appearance of my Desktop to my likings above all other features (the rest happens under the hood, and I won’t make a difference anyways :slightly_smiling:)

One of the features I like is the ability to display the system monitor on the desktop.
Conky can do that, but it’s not really easy to configure. Of course Conky Manager helps a lot, but it offers rather little themes :frowning:

That is why I was interested in the so called “Screenlets”.
But my question is : are those supposed to be really compatible with Ubuntu 15.10 and MATE 1.12 ?

I am asking because I some days ago, my computer would not wake up after having gone to sleep over the night…
I forced a reboot and got some errors on rebooting…

Ignored the errors, but after a short “sleep”, the desktop woke to a log screen… with no log options.

Forced reboot again, and another error.

All this happened shortly after I installed and used the screenlets.

Uninstalled them and since then no more errors.

But of course, as I am pretty new to Linux, I might have overlooked something upon install or maybe installed/removed things I shouldn’t have…

So I was just wondering if anyone else uses screenlets on MATE 1.12 and if so, what screelets he uses and if he also encounters problems…

Thanks for your answers.

Regards.

#2

Hi,

this is mainly about the weather screenlet but gives you an idea, I use some screenlets on Ubuntu Mate 15.10 and 14.04 no problem!:

#3

Hi Wolfman,

Many, many thanks for your answer…
Looking at the sources, I noticed that those haven’t been updated in about 1 year now.
And support for Ubuntu 16.04 is already said “Won’t work”, obviously for some Python problems…

Do you remember what and how you installed the screenlets ?
I think I used “AppGrid” and, once the “Screenlets” were installed, I used that to download additional screenlets…
Do I need to install additional packages ?

Thanks for your answer.

Regards.

#4

Hi @NexusPenguin,

install the screenlets collection via the following terminal (Ctrl + Alt + t) command:

sudo apt-get install screenlets-pack-all

Any required dependencies should be automatically installed, try it out and see, that’s really all I can suggest!. :smiley:

Screenlets isn’t working correctly in 16.04, that much I do know!. :frowning:

#5

Hi Wolfman,

Again, many many thanks for taking time to reply…

I have installed “screelets” + “screenlets-pack-all”…

The terminal also recommended a bunch of other installs that I also installed…
Hope I did nothing wonrg :slightly_smiling:

Will now test one screenlet after the other, and report here in case of success… or of course, in case of failure !

As I said : the Source page says not working in 16.04.
Not sure what 16.04 brings anyways…

So AFAIAC, I’ll stick to 15.10, which fits my needs perfectly :slightly_smiling:

Regards.

FRED

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#6

Alrighty Fred,

good luck with that, lets hope that when the final of UM 16.04 comes out, all the little bugs will have jumped ship!. :smiley:

#7

Hi Wolfman,

Well, I would not depend on it :slightly_smiling:

It seems the incompatibility with 16.04 is due to a change in Python (don’t know what that is !).
And as it seems (from the source page at least), the screenlets aren’t maintained anymore :frowning:
Besides the source page, I may also stress that A LOT of screenlets DO NOT work on 15.10 !

So I fear they won’t be supported in 16.04 anytime soon.
Just to keep screenlets, I’ll stick to 15.10 :slightly_smiling:

As I said : I won’t probably notice a difference between 15.10 and 16.04 anyways…
Unless of course MATE 2.0 (if that even exists one day) only runs on 16.04 :slightly_smiling:
That, I might notice…

I am running my first screenlet and will report how it goes on the long term :slightly_smiling:

Regards

1 Like
#8

Hi Fred,

16.04 will eventually become stable so no worries there!. What I would point out is that 15.10 is only supported until July 2016, just so you know!. :slightly_smiling:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

1 Like
#9

The problem with screenkets and gdesklets is that they are discontinued . Python is the programming language that it is written on . Python version changes and the program doesn’t . So your best choice is to use conky . Cool configs can be found on deviantart or in Google . The other choose is to use a desktop that has built in desktop widgets like , Enlightenment ,Cinnamon , KDE Plasma Desktop .

#10

Hi IvCho,

Thanks for your answer.

As I suspected, the screenlets are discontinued :frowning:

I know I can use Conky. But Desklets and Conky cannot be compared. And that for at least three reasons :

  • 1°) configuring a Conky RC file is a nightmare compared to how you can configure a screenlet ;
  • 2°) a Conky theme will be on desktop and you won’t be able to click it directly to move it or configure it ;
  • 3°) a Conky theme will appear on each and every desktop, when a screenlet can be configured to appear only on one desktop… and so I can have 5 desktops, each with it’s own screenlets, which isn’t possible in Conky.

About the other desktops :

  • KDE : I would rather use Windows directly than use KDE. I think it’s heavy as hell ;
  • Cinnamon is nice, but really only runs on Linux Mint. I know you can install it on other distros, but I did so, and each time, after tweaking it a little, I found myself with a totally screwed desktop…
  • Don’t know about Enlightenment…

Regards.

FRED