How do you view all your installed programs?

[KeithLM]

I'm trying to get a handle on this horrible UI in 11.10. How do you find all your programs? I know there's a search, but I don't know the name of everything that's installed. When I click on the button that brings up some apps, it has 10 or so random huge icons, I'd like to find something that shows me more categories and more programs at once on my display, not just a few, like every other OS. Is there some way to do this in Ubuntu? Is there a way to configure the main menus to show many small icons instead of a few giant icons?

[Larkspur]

After you've clicked "More Apps" and gone to the lens with three rows of large icons, look at the second one. It should be titled "Installed". Click the phrase "show more results" and all your programs will be revealed. You can then filter them if you want. If I were you, I'd also take the opportunity to move some of your often-used programs to the launcher bar, so you can open them later without opening the Dash.

[KeithLM]

Is there no way to change it so that I can always see all my apps without clicking on multiple things each time? It's very frustrating while setting up a new system to have to jump through so many hoops to get to all the various programs so I can try and figure out what I can and can't do with this. Like I believe there are programs that will help configure graphics and network settings, but I have to keep hunting for those and every time I open one app, I have to go through all the clicking again to get to another app.

[apollothethird]

Is there no way to change it so that I can always see all my apps without clicking on multiple things each time? It's very frustrating while setting up a new system to have to jump through so many hoops to get to all the various programs so I can try and figure out what I can and can't do with this. Like I believe there are programs that will help configure graphics and network settings, but I have to keep hunting for those and every time I open one app, I have to go through all the clicking again to get to another app.

Hi, KeithLM. From your description of having problems finding the apps, you might be missing these couple of clicks:

Dash home -> More Apps -> Filter Results -> [Category you want] -> [App by name]

The next time you won't even have to click on Filter Results, just click:

Dash home -> More Apps -> [Category you want] -> [App by name]

Also the OS will remember your frequent Apps. The next time you'll just have to click:

Dash home -> More Apps -> [App by name]

You'll not only see your installed applications, but you'll also see suggestions from the repository.

-- L. James

--
L. D. James
ljames@apollo3.com
www.apollo3.com/~ljames

[KeithLM]

I'm finding those, it's just four clicks to do what should be one or two. I should have an option to go to that easily, every time. And why waste space with four 200 pixel icons, or whatever they are, they're just huge and the icons don't scale well so they look ugly, I want more options and I can't help but believe that in a modern OS those options would be available to me.

With 11.04 I switched back to the older gui, and easily figured out everything in there even though I hadn't used an Ubuntu gui before. It was so much cleaner and simpler and straight-forward and informative and provided access to everything in a simple, understandable manner.

[apollothethird]

I'm finding those, it's just four clicks to do what should be one or two. I should have an option to go to that easily, every time. And why waste space with four 200 pixel icons, or whatever they are, they're just huge and the icons don't scale well so they look ugly, I want more options and I can't help but believe that in a modern OS those options would be available to me.

With 11.04 I switched back to the older gui, and easily figured out everything in there even though I hadn't used an Ubuntu gui before. It was so much cleaner and simpler and straight-forward and informative and provided access to everything in a simple, understandable manner.

I can find my apps faster with the Unity interface than I can with the older gnome-panel (of version 10.10). You mentioned it takes 4 clicks. I hope those for clicks can calm some of the aggravation of the initial rant of (" It's very frustrating while setting up a new system to have to jump through so many hoops to get to all the various programs").

By the way, I count the clicks. It might take as many as four clicks the first time. But subsequent calls can almost always be done in three. I'll try to see if I can find a way to get it down to two. I don't think we can go lower than that.

By the way you can also setup a short cut to "/usr/share/applications". Check out:

nautilus /usr/share/applications

There you have all your applications a single click away after bringing up the nautilus short cut. You can actually add the shortcut to the Launch bar.

-- L. James

--
L. D. James
ljames@apollo3.com
www.apollo3.com/~ljames

[garvinrick4]

I'm finding those, it's just four clicks to do what should be one or two. I should have an option to go to that easily, every time. And why waste space with four 200 pixel icons, or whatever they are, they're just huge and the icons don't scale well so they look ugly, I want more options and I can't help but believe that in a modern OS those options would be available to me.

With 11.04 I switched back to the older gui, and easily figured out everything in there even though I hadn't used an Ubuntu gui before. It was so much cleaner and simpler and straight-forward and informative and provided access to everything in a simple, understandable manner.

You might find that after a bit of a learning curve you can navigate through Unity pretty
smoothly. I have anyway, Ubuntu has made a decision to go with the Unity interface and
Classic Gnome is a thing of the past ending with 11.04 Natty. Give it a go for a while and then make a decision, I did and is very nice for me now. I never even look at the icons
I just tap windows key and type in first couple letters of app and when first in line in Dash hit enter and app opens. Can navigate with alt/tab between open windows. Other
windows key and letter commands with left hand opens a lot of avenues. If you want
install something like docky until used to it. Can put your favs on dock and in launcher for easy choice of most used apps. Below is oneiric ppa for docky. I had docky at first
and now do need it at all but convenient for some, Gnome-shell and Unity.
http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/ppa/docky?dist=oneiric

[apollothethird]

I'm finding those, it's just four clicks to do what should be one or two. I should have an option to go to that easily, every time. And why waste space with four 200 pixel icons, or whatever they are, they're just huge and the icons don't scale well so they look ugly, I want more options and I can't help but believe that in a modern OS those options would be available to me.

Hi, KeithLM. Sorry for taking so long in getting back to you. It has taken me this long (about a week) to get this worked out. First the problem doesn't exist in Ubuntu 11.04, only 11.10.

Your applications are two clicks away in Ubuntu 11.04, after having used a maximum of four to initially find what you want. In Ubuntu 11.10 it's three clicks away until you add the “More Apps” feature back to the Launcher.

I don't know why it was removed and made almost impossible to put it back, but after many hours I've figured out how to get the functionality back. I understand that having to perform an extra mouse search and click is a lot of work at the end of the day when you might have looked for a hundred applications and run a number of them multiple times.

With the method I'll present to you, two clicks and you have your application running.

First, you have to put the “More Apps” feature on the Laucher. It takes a number of steps at present, but I'm going to work on a method to simply it.

The steps are:

1) Create a text file (mymoreapps.sh)

#!/bin/bash 
xterm -e sleep 2
xdotool keydown super sleep 0.1 key a keyup super

2) Create a launcher (mymoreapps.Desktop):

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Exec=/usr/local/bin/moreapps.sh
Name=My More Apps
Comment=Customized More Apps
Icon=/usr/share/app-install/icons/find_more_apps.png

You can use a program such as gedit to create the two files.

3) Drag the new launcher to the Unity Launcher side bar.

This should save some clicks and mouse movements in the future. I hope to clean up this procedure and make it more functional. If anyone discovers the script or routine that is called (by name) when you hit the (super-A) short cut to bring up the More Apps screen, I'd really appreciate it.

At present it's rather crude, could be cleaned up nicely with support from the developers.

By the way, the call to xterm (which doesn't do anything) appears to be necessary to take the focus away from the Launch bar when running the super-A keyboard short cut. If someone can figure something different I'd really appreciate the input.

-- L. James

--
L. D. James
ljames@apollo3.com
www.apollo3.com/~ljames