Re: [Ayatana] Dash search vs Alt+F2 in 11.10

[James Jenner <james.g.jenner@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 27 September 2011 02:19, Jo-Erlend Schinstad <joerlend.schinstad@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have not proposed anything like that. That was someone else, and I completely disagree with it. I don't want commands in the dash at all. They do not belong there. I like it just the way it is, but having an output section in the Alt+F2 screen would not be too bad. I don't think it's important.

The examples that I've seen given here for using the Alt-F2 would require an output section. For example, how do you know the results of a ping or how do you terminate it once you're happy with it? How do you know the PID of the process to kill without first searching for it (someone gave killing a process as an example) and how do you know if the kill command was successful (presuming non-gui process here)? If you have a window that is dead then you need to search for the PID first before killing, this would necessitate a terminal (unless you have a gdesklet or similar app that shows you the top processes, then I could see the use of Alt-F2).

I tried the Alt-F2 and disliked it mainly because I have no way of knowing if it worked and I have no way of stopping it if it's a process like ping. One area I can see it being useful would be to restart a service or stop/start a service. But when I'm doing that I'm generally doing a number of related activities that would necessitate the use of a terminal (e.g. reconfiguration of a service and need to restart).

Perhaps an option next to the command line in Alt-F2 that states, run in terminal. Thus if selected then a terminal window could open and the command is executed in the terminal. Just a thought, but I think that I would find useful.

I'm also curious if anyone out there actively uses Alt-F2 and if so, what type of commands are we talking?

Cheers,

James.