MainWindow.py:19::ImportError: No module named gmenu

Shortly after, the Automatic Bug Report Tool popped up a warning saying the same thing. After doing some research I find that it’s a well known, overly reported bug. I won’t go into details but you can find them at Gnome’s Bugzilla site: Bug 626220.

In order to workaround this problem on Fedora 16, one needs to grab the gmenu package from the Fedora 15 package repository and copy over a couple of library files. I essentially followed the steps outlined at MacLochlainns Weblog but it was a bit difficult to follow even after having been edited a few times for corrections. So I offer a more straightforward rewrite below.

DISCLAIMER: All the steps below will be done as the root user at the command line. Please read the entire post in full before attempting to complete the steps. No guarantees are provided should you do something horrible to your system by mistake.

Seven easy steps:

1. Open a terminal window and log in as root.

   $ su -

2. To use gnome’s menu editor, you’ll need to install the alacarte package.

   # yum install alacarte.noarch

3. Next, create a temporary directory and change to it.

   # mkdir /tmp/gmenu-temp
# cd /tmp/gmenu-temp

4. Download the gmenu package from the Fedora 15 repository and extract its contents using rpm2cpio. There are both a 32-bit and 64-bit package, so download the one that matches your architecture.

   32-bit:
   # rpm2cpio http://archive.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/15/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/gnome-menus-3.0.1-1.fc15.i686.rpm | cpio -ivd

   64-bit:
   # rpm2cpio http://archive.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/15/Fedora/x86_64/os/Packages/gnome-menus-3.0.1-1.fc15.x86_64.rpm | cpio -ivd

5. Copy the required library files from this temporary directory to their proper locations.

   32-bit:
   # cp /tmp/gmenu-temp/usr/lib/libgnome-menu.so.2.4.13 /usr/lib/
# cp /tmp/gmenu-temp/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/gmenu.so /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/

   64-bit:
   # cp /tmp/gmenu-temp/usr/lib64/libgnome-menu.so.2.4.13 /usr/lib64/
# cp /tmp/gmenu-temp/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/gmenu.so /usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/

6. A symbolic link needs to be created for the first library file.

   32-bit:
   # ln -s /usr/lib/libgnome-menu.so.2.4.13 /usr/lib/libgnome-menu.so.2

   64-bit:
   # ln -s /usr/lib64/libgnome-menu.so.2.4.13 /usr/lib64/libgnome-menu.so.2

7. Lastly, remove the temporary directory, exit from the root user, and launch the menu editor.

   # cd
# rm -fr /tmp/gmenu-temp
# exit

Find Main Menu in the menu, or ALT-F2 and type alacarte to launch the application.

Deleting files within Nautilus, much like other file browsers, is simply a shortcut for “move to trash”. The trash being a collection point for unwanted files also acts as a safe haven to restore files we accidentally delete. However, unlike other file browsers, Nautilus does not provide a confirmation dialog when deleting files. For a few years, people have been asking Gnome developers to address the issue categorizing it as a bug.

Instead of a dialog box, they’ve implemented a MacOS-like, two-finger process by requiring the user to press CTRL-DEL to move files to the trash.

kryo on the Arch Linux Forums provides the following in order to change the behavior:

Quick fix:
Run dconf-editor, and open:
org -> gnome -> desktop -> interface
Enable “can-change-accels”.

Open nautilus, select any file/directory, then click “Edit” from menubar, and hover on “Move to Trash” menuitem.
While hovering, click on your delete key. The accel should change from “cntrl+del” to “del”.

Make sure you have selected a file, else the “Move to Trash” menuitem will be greyed out.

I suggest you disable “can-change-accels” afterwards, to prevent accidental accel changes.

I haven’t changed the behavior as kryo suggests. I can understand the reasoning behind it and will adjust to this new two-fingered approach.

By the way, SHIFT-DEL will still allow the user to bypass the trash to permanently delete files.

Sources:
Arch Linux Forums: I can not delete with the delete key in Gnome 3
gg: Patches for Nautilus “move to trash” bug

However, within the same country that promotes freedom, the same country that condemns oppression, a great evil poisons it. There are large corporations who profit from the control of intellectual property from news media to music, motion pictures and television. These industries have been able to convince our elected officials that they are losing money, threatening layoffs and closures because of it, and have asked through lobbyists to be granted the power to control the Internet in ways that we, as a country, continually condemn in foreign lands such as China, North Korea, and Iran.

Two bills being deliberated in Congress essentially gives corporations the ability to censor the Internet as they see fit, all in the name of policing piracy and copyright infringement. While the cause is a noble one, the fact remains that corporations have never been trustworthy with peoples rights. The news media has been known to hack cellphones. The recording industry has been known to drag innocent people through expensive trials for piracy, even implicating dead grandmothers, and to assert rights over copyrighted or copyleft material in which it has no right to do so. And the list goes on. Remember when the banking industry needed to be bailed out? How many people had their homes foreclosed while executives were getting big dollar bonuses? The last thing we need is to give corporations the right to make anything disappear from the Internet in which they may or not agree with.

Every elected member of the US Congress recites the following oath:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

So I put it to task every member of Congress, including my own representatives, Rep. Marcia Fudge [D-OH11] in the House, and Sen. Sherrod Brown [D-OH] and Sen. Robert Portman [R-OH] in the Senate . Do your job and kill the proposals of SOPA and PIPA as well as any future proposals that would do the same. The rights of the people are to be protected by those we as a people elect to defend them.

While we feel that copyright owners have a right to combat the online piracy of their intellectual property, the provisions outlined in these two bills would do more harm to the Internet by violating the US First Amendment and free speech, preventing whistle-blowing actions against corruption, and bring about an unprecedented crippling of the Internet.

Please take a moment to visit Fight For The Future for more information and to help speak out against these dangerous propositions.

Join the fight: Fight For The Future

On day 1, the unofficial start of OLF with Ubucon among the few presentations tracks (IE: Medical, Early Penguins) began much like it did last year. I spent more time with the Early Penguins track than Ubucon. Much of Ubucon was a repeat of last year, which is not to say that’s bad but I wanted to experience other talks and learn something new. Ubucon is a wonderful day of getting to know Ubuntu’s Ohio Loco and Ubuntu’s approach to tackling Bug #1.

Beth Lynn Eicher gave the presentation about being Inside A Bug #1 Resolved Company which gave some fantastic insight about how much Linux has progressed within the professional community. A few members of the audience gave details about how the companies that they work for have been able to transition their services to F/OSS products.

From there I went to the Early Penguins room to listen through Clif Flynt‘s presentation about Writing Games With Tcl/Tk. Essentially in under an hour, we all went through a crash course of Tcl’s coding basics and walked through the creation of a simple game. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to code anything in any other language, so it was invigorating to get that creative itch scratched again.

Then came lunch at Barley’s across the street. They have a fantastic selection of in-house brewed beers. They also have great food and atmosphere, always feeling welcome whenever we go there.

Back to the conference, Mark Terranova gave an educational talk on So What Kind Of Cult Is Linux, Anyway? The insight is that as much as we dislike the strategies and goals of companies like Microsoft or Apple, much of the problems we perceive actually originates from the “fanboy” followers rather than the corporations they represent. That’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement. But you can compare that relationship to Linux community where we have avid followers of particular distributions or applications, the usual emacs vs. vim, Fedora vs. Ubuntu, Red Hat vs. Suse, etc.

Skipped the next hour to head back to the car, walk around Columbus and head back to Barley’s for another drink.

Linux For All by Edward Mokurai Cherlin with OLPC explained clearly that the initiative of giving every child in the world a laptop isn’t about technology but providing them the freedom to empower themselves, first by providing them the knowledge of the world, giving them the ability to connect to one another freely, and further to empower them with the ability to help shape the world by merging their culture with the rest of the information aware world.

Skipped the next hour to hit the bathroom, find connectivity to figure out was going on in the rest of the world, and grabbed a slice of cheesecake.

Friday’s keynote by the immortal Jon “maddog” Hall gave an entertaining presentation about the evolution of Linux from even before Linus Torvalds birth through to how it’s being implemented today with The Twentieth Birthday Of The Linux Kernel. The only person who could be more knowledgeable about Linux other than Jon Hall would be Linus. Everyone should get a chance to attend Jon’s presentation where ever he gives it as it’s entertaining and informative. I did my best to record it but connectivity here is lower than adequate, so I’ll post it later.

Right now I’m part way through Saturday’s presentations and the expo, so another update to follow.

I’m a little behind the news but for those that aren’t aware, Gnome has officially released 3.0. It’s a stunner if I may say. You can see plenty of visuals at Gnome’s website. If you want to give it a spin, Gnome is offering three live images that can be burned to CD or placed on a USB key. Two are built on openSUSE for either 32-bit or 64-bit machines, one is built on Fedora for 32-bit machines.

I downloaded the Fedora live image and had mixed luck. My spare Acer Extensa 4420 could get to the desktop with a movable mouse but nothing to interact with. I suspect it has to do with video drivers as Gnome 3 requires hardware acceleration for the “full Gnome experience”. It has an ATI Radeon Xpress video chipset and has not always easiest to use. After a few unsuccessful tries, I moved the live image to my desktop gaming machine which is pretty robust with nVidia graphics, tons of ram, and plenty of CPU. That’s when Gnome 3 came alive, and it was good.

There’s still some polishing that needs to be made, such as the integrated chat not displaying correctly, the behavior of taking a screenshot forced me to look for the screenshot window instead of having it appear as it does in 2.3, and at some point the whole system froze up.

I had install Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal onto the Extensa right before the announcement came out and was please to see that there’s an experimental PPA for Gnome 3 on Natty, and it’s very unstable, trust me. I finally gave up after trying a few things to get it to work. I’ll keep updating the system as time goes by hoping to find the sweet spot where everything works. It might be a while since changes are being made to both the release of Ubuntu and the Gnome 3 PPA.

At the very least, grab one of the live images and give Gnome 3 a free spin. It’s definitely the direction I want to see my desktop going. It does seem to require hardware video acceleration and will default to the familiar Gnome 2 desktop if it should fail to load Gnome 3.

Get your own copy, now.

Aside from that, I am having my ass handed to me on the “easier” Arcade mode for Steel Storm Episode II.

While Episode I was criticized for being too easy, that shouldn’t be a concern for Episode II. Along with the new maps comes new enemies and weapon upgrades.

It seems that weapons can be enhanced as well as added. They also come with the time-honored tradition of having to use them immediately upon unexpected visitors.

You’ll never know when or where they’re going to appear. They may show up in front of you, behind you, or all around you after a forcefield traps you from getting away.

You can get more information and pre-order your own copy of Episode II right now at the Steel Storm website.

Rikki Kite at Linux Magazine is organizing a ChipIn for anyone interested in tossing in a few bucks to help Amber and her family to get back on their feet and help pay for necessities like food and clothes.

Amber is held in high regard within the Ubuntu community. She’s only been involved with the community for a little over a year now, but what she’s been able to accomplish in that time frame is quite impressive.

I attended her presentation at this year’s Ohio Linux Fest during the Friday’s Ubucon and her personality seemed impenetrable. It’s hard for me to imagine that something so tragic would happen to someone as upbeat and cheerful as she is.