“GNOME Do” has to be one of the coolest tool that I’ve seen in the recent few days. GNOME Do (Do) is an intelligent launcher tool that makes performing common tasks on your computer simple and efficient. “GNOME Do” not only allows you to search for items in your desktop environment (e.g. applications, contacts, bookmarks, files, music), it also allows you to specify actions to perform on search results (e.g. run, open, email, chat, play).
GNOME Do provides instantaneous, action-oriented desktop search results that adapt to reflect your habits and preferences. Unlike other search tools that present search results as flat, homogeneous lists, “GNOME Do” provides familiar graphical depictions of search results that assure you that your intent is being realized correctly; searching for “mom” will show a picture of mom (if you had your moms picturer and indeed the filename had mom in it).
“GNOME Do” works reasonably well with KDE environment as well.
Install GNOME Do
“GNOME Do” can be installed using one of the following 1-click installs based on your openSUSE version.
openSUSE 11.0 ( GNOME Do 0.6.1.0-4.1)
openSUSE 10.3 ( GNOME Do 0.5.99.0-1.1)
openSUSE 10.2 (GNOME Do 4.2.0-5.1)
NOTE: Click here to enable 1-click install in openSUSE 10.2
This should download the YaST MetaPackage file (YMP) and launch the YaST Package manager for installation. Click next on the window showing the selected repositories and next again on the package selection window and finally click Next on the installation proposal window. This should add the required repositories (click import when prompted to import the GPG Keys) and install “GNOME Do” and required dependencies. Click Finish when the installation is completed succesfully.
This should add “GNOME Do” under “Applications – Utilities“. Click “GNOME Do” to launch it for the first time.
GNOME Do can make your keyboard a new mouse with almost anything can be searched or launched using the “arrow keys”, tab key. “Do” can extend upto 3 tabs. For instance, here I search for VLC on tab “1” and then found it…Now what, press tab key and select the most appropriate action “Run”. At anytime, in any of the tab, use the down arrow key to find more than one option. For instance, when I type “VL” while searching for something that has VL in it shows up VLS as the first option. What if, I was looking for something else, press your Down arrow and it should show up any other option available. Similarly in the “Action” tab, if you are not looking for “Run”, click the down arrow to find more options.
GNOME Do gets even more interesting and special when you install and use the plugins available “GNOME Do”.Plugins here enhance and extend the functionality of GNOME Do. For instance, you can use “Google Maps” plugin to map a location on google maps or with Google Calendar plugin you can search. create or browse google calendar events. Plugin architecture is always something that attracts my special attention in any software.
On the top right corner, click the Arrow and click preferences, to edit general settings like launching “GNOME Do” at the start up or to enable or Disable plugins.
Installing Plugins
As of “GNOME Do” version 0.5 all plugins listed as “working” or “stable” can be installed using the “Plugins” tab. You also can manually install plugins by putting the DLL file in ~/.local/share/gnome-do/plugins and restarting GNOME Do. For GNOME Do 0.4 (openSUSE 10.2 version we use here), download the DLL files, put them in ~/.local/share/gnome-do/plugins and then restart Do.
The list of official and community plugins can be found here
Click here to visit the project home page where you can also find more useful documentation for “GNOME Do”!
Too bad it relies on Mono, which I had removed right after installing Ubuntu. Launchy for me then.
Why did I remove Mono? Those who don’t value their freedom tend to lose it.
Launchy is a more mature tool.
Also, in my opinion, most plugins are out of place: why would I need a gnome-do plug-in for searching flickr? A Firefox extension may be, but gnome-do?
Nice article. It’s probably worth noting that KDE users might want to look at Katapult.
Wow, Matt, that’s so powerful. You’re right, I don’t value my freedom at all.
None, it’s not a Flickr search plugin — it lets you quickly upload any pictures on your desktop to Flickr… We generally don’t tell people that they should not develop their plugin ideas for Do, no matter how wacky.
David
Launchy are you serious? Its windows only, and if you run that in Wine you have serious issues. Futhermore gnome-do is a sweet program for gnome.
would the 11.0 link work for 11.1?
Impressive site. My co-workers and I were just discussing this the other evening. Also your webpage looks nice on my old blackberry. And thats rare. Nice work.