Sunday, December 23, 2007

XO laptop Tip: Change Buddy Color

Today I found out how to change your buddy icon Color and Nickname. I was doing a little research on how to change the Sugar settings and found a few commands that can help. There is another method which requires you to hack/modify a config file, but it's pretty simple and all you need is a working understanding of HTMl Hex colors and the uses of the terminal.
Much like skinning cats, there are two (and maybe more) ways to change your buddy settings.

The Easy Way:


Start the Terminal Activity. Once the terminal is fully loaded, enter the sugar-control-panel command with the color names. It should look similar to this:
sugar-control-panel -s color strokcolor fillcolor [strokequalifier [fillqualifier]]
Remember, the colors in the braces are optional.
Once the command was successfully executed you'll be asked to restart Sugar. Simply press ctrl+alt+erase Sugar should restart. You should note that this will close any open activity you have running, so be sure to save any documents!
The downside of using the sugar-control-panel is that you can only choose from six colors:
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple
and three qualifiers:
dark, medium, and light
To Change your Nickname using sugar-control-panel simply enter this command in the Terminal Activity:
sugar-control-panel -s nick "New NickName"
Remember, always restart Sugar when messing around with Sugar Settings. To give Credit where credit is due I found these steps Wiki for Laptop.org.

The L33T way:


If you want to change your color to something is isn't already pre-defined by the sugar-control-panel, you can modify the 'config' a file found under /home/oplc/.suger/default/ . Note that the Sugar directory is hidden. (noted by the '.' infront the file/directory name).
Open a Terminal Activity and enter this command:
cd .sugar/default/
Then use your favorite text editor (vi or nano) to modify the config file.
Once the file is open locate the section of the file:

[Buddy]
color = #ffffff,#000000
nickname = nick

Your values may differ, but the structure should be the same. Change the color values to whatever you want, they just have to be in hex form. Also, you can change your nick here too.
Once you have decided on which colors to use, save the file and restart Sugar by pressing ctrl+alt+erase. Once sugar is up, your new color scheme and nick should be visible.

Other Settings


I haven't explored any of the other settings in that file, so edit at your own risk.

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