My Tech Notes

Google released Google gadgets for Linux, as an open-source project. After a few trials-and-errors, I managed to set it up on my Ubuntu 8.04 64-bit.

1. Install the following packages: libgtk2.0-dev libmozjs-dev libxul-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev libdbus-1-dev libxml2-dev librsvg2-dev spidermonkey-bin libxcomposite1 xcompmgr (Not sure all are really required, but just in case) Also, some qt-related (development) packages are required if you want QT support.
2. Download google-gadgets-for-linux-0.9.1.tar.gz .
3. Untar, configure and make will all the default options. Install additional packages if required.
4. Enable "composite mode" in X-server, by adding these lines to /etc/X11/xorg.conf : Section "Extensions"
       Option "Composite" "Enable"
   EndSection
   Re-login to force server restart.
5. In a separate window, start: xcompmgr -o 10
6. And finally, in another shell start Google Gadgets as ggl-gtk or ggl-qt. You may need to add /usr/local/bin to you $PATH and /usr/local/lib to you $LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
7. You can now add gadgets through UI or by passing .gg file directly to the command line, e.g.: ggl-gtk ~/Download/Tetris-1.3.gg

Labels: google, linux, xwindows