[clug] Ubuntu Netbook Edition - simple question (hopefully)

Daniel Pittman daniel at rimspace.net
Sun Aug 15 08:20:43 MDT 2010


Scott Ferguson <prettyfly.productions at gmail.com> writes:
>  On Sun, 15 Aug 2010 20:43:32 +1000 Sanders King
> <sanders_at_mupanda.com>  wrote
>>
>> I recently tested Ubuntu Netbook within VirtualBox and liked many features
>> especially the 'singleton' launch of applications. (i.e. If you try to
>> launch an application a second time you just get focus put back to the
>> already launched copy.)
>>
>> I thought that this would suit my forgetful grey-haired mother and so I
>> installed Ubuntu 10.04 for her and then used Synaptic to install
>> ubuntu-netbook-* and netbook-launcher-efl.  I thought that this would give
>> me the same result as installing Ubuntu Netbook Edition, however I am not
>> getting applications launched as singletons (and some other minor
>> differences).  I have compared version numbers of the various bits to those
>> in the VirtualBox install and I can't see any differences.
>>
>> It seems crazy to me reinstall Ubuntu Netbook Edition just to solve this
>> problem (and go through another round of automatic updates).
>>
>> I Googled and came up with nothing useful.  Does anybody have any ideas?
>
> An afterthought... you may in fact already have the required packages.
> I suspect Ubuntu uses perl to implement singleton - check your installed
> packages for perl.

Perl is installed: Debian, and by extension Ubuntu, don't work without it.
Non-trivial parts of the package installation tools are built with it.

[...]

> http://ldn.linuxfoundation.org/column/a-half-dozen-ways-script-a-singleton-application-only-one-right

...that just uses Perl as an easy way to build an example of how a software
package could internally implement the "singleton" model, which in fact is
more or less how current browsers do.

However, Perl is irrelevant to the point of the article and, unless Ubuntu are
wrapping every single executable in their "Netbook Remix", has nothing in
particular to do with how they implement this.


I strongly suspect that their NetBook focused launcher plays a much more
significant role in mapping the application to the windows it creates, and
either selecting or launching those.

(Although, many of their core applications, such as Firefox, OOo, and a bunch
 of the GNOME tools all implement this singleton pattern on their own. :)

        Daniel
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