Uncarved

I broke down and hacked my MIE. But just a teeny bit, though: I simply installed the Flock browser and added it to the application launcher.

I needed to know it could be done.

Having satisfied my need to see the proof-of-concept, I intend to return to using the non-hacked configuration (by disabling what I’ve done) for a little while longer, while I complete a review period during which I use the computer with only the applications found on the default system.

That said, I will mention that am rather pleased with the initial results of my efforts in hacking this thing.

Once I’m done assessing its performance and capability as configured in its “out-of-the-box” mode, I intend to hack the hell out of MIE. Maybe I’ll even manage to fix the damned issue I’m encountering with the Mail widget on the home screen that HP’s customer support facilities have utterly failed at helping me resolve… but I’ll get into the saga of HP’s epic failures at customer support in a future post.

Installing Flock

Head over to the Flock website and download Flock. Unless you’ve changed the default settings, Firefox will download the file to your desktop.

Fire up a terminal, cd to your Desktop (or whichever directory your Firefox is configured to save its download to) and type:

  [#!shell]
  $ sudo tar -C /opt -xjvf flock-*.linux-i686.tar.bz2

Test if flock works from the command line:

  [#!shell]
  $ /opt/flock/flock-browser

If Flock launched properly, it’s installed properly. Next, we want to get the command to launch flock accessible from your PATH by adding a symlink to it in /usr/local/bin:

  [#!shell]
  $ sudo ln -s /opt/flock/flock-browser /usr/local/bin/flock

Test if the symlink works:

  [#!shell]
  $ flock

If Flock launched, then our command line installation steps are complete.

Adding Flock to the Launcher

The next several steps will cover how we get the nice Flock icon in the Internet tab of the application launcher, which initially looks like this:

Backing Up the Original Settings

First, let’s backup our launcher’s current setup; the wise hacker always keeps a copy of the original configuration in case something gets hosed.

To create this backup, type the following into your terminal:

  [#!shell]
  $ sudo cp -r /etc/xdg/menus /etc/xdg/menus.original

If we ever want to restore to our defaults, we need simply type:

  [#!shell]
  $ sudo mv /etc/xdg/menus /etc/xdg/menus.hosed
  $ sudo cp -r /etc/xdg/menus.original /etc/xdg/menus

This reversion will keep whatever changes you made to the config files you accidentally hosed, in case you want to try to copy your hacks back, one by one.

Creating an Application Entry File for Flock

Create the file /usr/local/share/applications/flock.desktop and set its contents as follows:

  [#!ini]
  [Desktop Entry]
  Name=Flock
  Comment=Flock Web Browser
  Exec=flock
  GenericName=Flock Web Browser
  Icon=/opt/flock/icons/mozicon128.png
  Path=
  StartupNotify=true
  Terminal=0
  TerminalOptions=
  Type=Application
  Categories=Application;Network;

Note that we’re creating our Application Entry file in /usr/local/share rather than /usr/share. This is because this is the recommended practice for items added manually by the user in Unix-like operating systems.

Adding the Application to an Existing Tab

Let’s add Flock to the launcher’s Internet tab.

Open /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu file, and make the following change:

  [#!xml]
  <Menu>
    <Name>Internet</Name>
    <!-- ... other nodes ... -->
    <Layout>
      <Filename>firefox.desktop</Filename>
      <Filename>thunderbird.desktop</Filename>
      <Filename>pidgin.desktop</Filename>
      <Filename>skype.desktop</Filename>

      <!-- We're adding this line -->
      <Filename>flock.desktop</Filename>

    </Layout>
  </Menu>

Save your file, then go to the application launcher. You should now see the following:

I won’t cover replacing Firefox as the default browser here, nor will I get into how to add tabs to the launcher — I’m not ready to get into all that just yet. Rest assured, however, that I’ll definitely get there once I dive headlong into my hacking activities.

The material I based this entire endeavor on is from HP’s Mini forum — check it out!

Good hacking, amigos.

24 May: HP has got the Mini’s fora back up and running, so I’ve updated the URL to the material, and removed the Google Cache link.