Gordaen's Blog

When I first started using OSX at work, it was a slightly rough transition. Some things work really well and other things are just not intuitive at all (like the key combination for taking screenshots). The one thing that I instantly loved was QuickSilver. It’s an application launcher and a lot more. The most basic use is to hit the key combo you have set up to bring up a dialog box and then type in a few letters from the application you want to open. You could do “FF” for Firefox or “Fire” or just “F.” QS is pretty intelligent about learning what key combo you like to use for which application, so I generally just type a single letter and press enter and there I go. QS can do a lot more than this and it integrates extremely well with applications, but I wanted at least this basic functionality in Linux. Even in Windows, there is a program called Launchy that is similar and worth checking out if you’re a Windows user.

After making the complete jump to Linux a year and some-odd months ago, I looked for a QuickSilver application for Gnome (the GUI I use in Linux). Katapult is a pretty good version for KDE (another GUI choice in Linux), but I kept looking. Eventually, I tried several and gave up. ALT+F2 could bring up the Run Application box that was like the ugly step-brother of an application launcher, so I stuck with that. Recently, I was looking for something else and came across a fairly new (I believe it was first released in September of this year) development called Gnome Do.

I tried to find more information out about this (why didn’t I hear about it sooner?) and I came across this blog post that is a nice intro to the program. That post is probably better than what I would create, so check it out. Also keep in mind that Gnome Do is new, so it doesn’t have the ridiculous (in an awesome way) feature-set that QuickSilver does, but, if we start spreading the word about Gnome Do, I’m sure the features will start rolling in.