Brightside - Screen Corner Actions and Edge-Flipping Made Easy

Image Credit: maketecheasier.com

Thank you to Kyle a.k.a. phynix for this excellent recommendation. Kyle is part of the open-source community and is currently working on publishing a new blog. Keep up with him at his StumbleUpon page. Update: Kyle launched his blog --- you can visit Adventures in Ubuntu to see more.

Sometimes I find myself a little jealous of those pesky Mac users, with their pretty-looking hardware and reflective dock bar. Yes, I know, most Linux operating systems provide much more functionality than OSX. But still, it's hard not to notice how well things like Spotlight and edge-flipping work.

But then I found Brightside, and I'm nowhere near as jealous. This Ubuntu application adds actions to the corners of the screen in GNOME, such as switching virtual desktops and controlling the volume. You can even enable the screensaver and control the screen brightness on your laptop.

Installing it for Ubuntu isn't too difficult. Fire up your favorite terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install brightside

That will download and install the program for you, but there's still some configuring left to be done. You can start Brightside by pressing Alt+F2 and typing 'brightside' into the dialog box,
but I find it much easier to add it to my startup programs. The process is explained quite well over at Make Tech Easier:

To enable this application everytime you log in, go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions. Click Add. In the window that appears, enter Screen Action in the name field and brightside in the command field. Click OK.

Once that's taken care of, you can configure the application by selecting System -> Preferences -> Screens Action from the GNOME panel. From here, you can tell Brightside what action to assign for each corner of the screen as well as turn on virtual desktop edge flipping.

Would you like to recommend an application for The Daily Ubuntu? You can drop me a line; be sure to include the name of the application, your "real" name (i.e. the person I should credit for the recommendation) and where I should link to. Thanks in advance for your help!