Wednesday 22 April 2015

Elementary OS Freya - Part 2

Elementary OS Freya across 2 monitors using Docky instead of Plank
Wallpaper - Henning Island - Whitsundays Queensland Australia

After installing Elementary OS on my multimedia computer on Sunday, then yesterday deciding I liked it enough to try it on my main desktop, I'm already finding the experience enlightening.  Docky is installed and available on either screen.

There doesn't seem to be a way to extend the panel at the top across the right screen, but that is not an issue.  Simply opening settings, clicking on 'Display' and clicking the star in the top left of one the screens shown will swap that screen to become the primary monitor.

The main advantage I can see for using Plank as the dock is that it uses far less memory than Docky, but it is simply not as configurable or versatile.

My initial plan was to use Freya to test and swap back to XFCE for regular tasks until I had set up things like my Brother printers and scanners, along with configuring my VPN.  But all that was achieved in such a short time, I just forgot to open XFCE once I had repaired GRUB after the Elementary installation.

Which I suppose might be the topic for another post.  Because Freya wrecked my GRUB configuration and it was annoying to fix.  If it happens to you, do a search for a tool called     '   grub-customizer   '      and there's a link I will dig up to help manually edit /etc/default/grub.   It was pretty straight forward, and was caused my my manual partitioning because I have several operating systems installed.  If I had to guess, I  think I probably accidentally installed GRUB to the wrong MBR.

I mentioned earlier that I first installed Elementary OS on my multimedia computer.  This is a five year old Lenovo AMD computer that was leftover when I closed my computer businesses following serious injuries in an accident in 2004.  I was left with a lot of fairly expensive equipment that was too good to throw away but not good enough to sell.

Five years on, the junk heap has become a source of all sorts of innovation.  Connected to a cheap ($190 - Chinese) TV, I could ditch the video player and adding my old Logitech speakers I suddenly had cinema sound.  Now with the National Broadband Network connected at 25mbps/5mbps I have streaming YouTube whenever I want it on a 32 inch TV.

I had tried several different Linux distros and desktops but Freya is the first I have really liked for this purpose.  On the Multimedia sustem I have left Plank as the dock simply 'because' it uses minimal memory.



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