gnome-main-menu: a new attractive menu for the GNOME environment
March 7th, 2007 edited by jaduncanEntry submitted by Yann Benigot. DPOTD needs your help, please contribute by sending us original, high quality entries !
Look at your GNOME application menu. It’s simple, but has got one big problem: it doesn’t really allow you quick access to your favorite applications. Of course, you can make little icons on the panel to get a fast way to launch your programs, but this only scales so far. Finding an icon on a long bar with really small icons can be really annoying.
Gnome-main-menu is an easy and beautiful solution to that problem. It’s an applet to add to the desktop bar which offers you two-click access to your favorites applications, and also to your last documents and places. Additionaly, it allows easy access to disk usage levels, network connection information and the ability to add new applications to the base menu.
Not simply a new menu, it also offers an application browser with search. This enables you to quickly drill down to your selected application with a short description of the app, something of particular use to long time debaday addicts.
You might also be pining for the new 2.18 version of GNOME and the all in one control panel. Well, pine no more as all control applets also have their own search in GMM!
Gnome Main Menu is available in Debian testing/unstable and in Ubuntu Edgy/Feisty in the package gnome-main-menu.
March 7th, 2007 at 8:14 am
This package is, in Feisty, terrible outdated though. They released a new version a couple of weeks ago with a shitload of new features.
March 7th, 2007 at 8:41 am
nice app! Thanks for the tip.
March 7th, 2007 at 8:57 am
Wow, very nice! Unfotunately I’m on KDE… Does anybody knows about something like this for KDE?
March 7th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Nope, I haven’t seen anything like this for KDE I’m afraid.
March 7th, 2007 at 10:13 am
OpenSuse has a new start menu in KDE.
http://home.kde.org/~binner/kickoff/sneak_preview.html
March 7th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
does it use mono?
March 7th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
@pirast, no it doesn’t use Mono.
The version in Debian/unstable is also terribly outdated and has some major bugs. It’s more than 6 months old, which is like eternity for work-in-progress application.
March 7th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
jkohen, wow, something from Novell which does not use Mono ;-)
March 8th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
KDE users may also be interested in the similar kbfx project: http://www.kbfx.org/
Themes here: http://www.kde-look.org/index.php?xcontentmode=62
March 9th, 2007 at 10:21 am
KBFX looks very promising. Thanks for the hint, Nathan.
March 11th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
A similar project, the SuSe-Style KDE-Menu is available under Ubuntu, too.
March 12th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Regarding the shortcuts it seems to be optimized for mouse users.
If it’s not fully (and easily) accessible by keyboard then… well… it sucks.
March 12th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
WOuld it be possible to place this (or any)applet on the actual desktop? I was hoping that it could serve in a similar function to “My Computer” but I can’t figure out how to create a launcher for it.
March 13th, 2007 at 1:06 am
Nice application but have you seen the linux MINT (based on ubuntu) gnome-main-menu and the control -center, those apps are amazing, they are more complete and usable than these.
March 13th, 2007 at 4:04 am
I recommend gimmie instead.
March 15th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Once you install gnome-main-menu, it’s in the Applets list as “Start menu” with a Debian logo icon, not “Main menu” with a Gnome logo icon (that’s the current default menu).
Anyone know how it decides what your “Favorite Programs” are?
Also, the word “Programs” happens to have the same number of characters as the dumb name “Computer”, so I just edited the main-menu binary to replace the text :)
April 25th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Thank You
September 19th, 2007 at 5:32 am
Kde has always, to my memory, had a utility called “kappfinder” which searches for apps and adds to the K-menu. It also provides a way to include apps it can’t find easily. That’s for those asking about a similar utility in KDE.