ayozone

The popular hack to gtk and applet that imitates the Mac menu isnt’t maintained by its original creator AdQ.
Fortunately, rainwoodman started a new project based on adq patch and applet (now, totally rewritten from scratch) : globalmenu.
Now, the menus are detached to the panel applet only if this one is running, the menu key bindings (eg Alt+F) are now functional.

Here is a short guide with two possible methods to install global menu on Ubuntu.

/!\ WARNING : This how to works only with the 0.4 series of globalmenu (svn revision up to around 980) and may not work on Ubuntu Intrepid, Check the new how to for the 0.6 series

• the deb package way
• building it yourself to be bleeding edge.

warning : regardless of the choosen method, before trying this hell thing, read very carefully the instructions and remind that globalmenu is an alpha software !
if you encounter problems, try to ask here

The deb packages way to install global menu

WARNING : this method works only with gutsy (ubuntu 7.10) 32 bits. there is at the moment no package for 64bits systems due to a compiling issue
First download the pack gnome-globalmenu-0.4.2_ubuntu-gusty-svn679.tar.gz here (the svn number may change)
Assuming you have downloaded the pack in your user home directory (if not put it there), open a terminal (menu Applications>Accessories>Terminal) and apply the following commands (use copy and paste to avoid typos):
Unarchive the packages :

tar xzvf gnome-globalmenu-0.4.2_ubuntu-gusty-svn679.tar.gz

then go to the directory where the packages have been extracted :

cd gnome-globalmenu

now install them with this command :

sudo dpkg - *.deb

if you got some errors at this step, you may need to try this command :

sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite *.deb

now, edit (or create) the ~/.gnomerc file:

gedit ~/.gnomerc

add this line to the file :

export GTK_MODULES=libgnomenu

save and exit gedit.
Finally, restart your session, add the global menu applet to your panel (right click on an empty part of the panel and choose “add to panel” from the menu).
That’s all, you should now have your applications menu in the panel.

building global menu yourself to be bleeding edge.

Warning: There is a compiling issue on 64 bits systems, if you manage to compile this, please post an issue here
Open a terminal (menu Applications>Accessories>Terminal) and apply the following commands (use copy and paste to avoid typos):
first, install all needed build tools :

sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf automake1.9 subversion fakeroot checkinstall

make a directory :

mkdir globalmenu-install

go in this directory :

cd globalmenu-install

checkout the source code with subversion :

svn co http://gnome2-globalmenu.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ gnome2-globalmenu-applet-0.4.2

change to this directory :

cd gnome2-globalmenu-applet-0.4.2/gtk+-aqd/

get the gtk2.0 source code :

apt-get source libgtk2.0-0

and the required deps to build gtk :

sudo apt-get build-dep libgtk2.0-0

copy the patch to the debian dir in the gtk source directory :
(note: gutsy people want to use the patch.diff from here, download it and extract it in the directory listed bellow instead of copy the patch from trunk)

cp patch.diff gtk+2.0-2.12.0/debian/patches/

edit the series file :

gedit gtk+2.0-2.12.0/debian/patches/series

add this at the end of the file :

patch.diff

save and exit gedit.
edit the chanlog file to increase the release number (the number after ubuntu word in the package name),
this avoid that update manager wants to reinstall original distribution gtk packages.

gedit gtk+2.0-2.12.0/debian/changelog

add this at the very top of the file (respect the indentation and white line after mail/date line or it will give you an error at build)

gtk+2.0 (2.12.0-1ubuntu3.1~adq) gutsy; urgency=low
  * debian/patches/patch.diff:
    - patch from rainwoodman, for globalmenu integration

 -- Ayoli <ayolinux@gmail.com>  Tue, 10 Mar 2008 10:29:09 +0200

save and exit gedit.
go to the gtk2.0 source directory :

cd gtk+2.0-2.12.0

now, we’re ready to build gtk, here we go :

dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot

note: this process will take about 30 min of your life.
Once this is finished, go up and install the debs :

cd .. && sudo dpkg -i *.deb

go up once again :

cd ..

before building the applet, install the required deps :

sudo apt-get install libgconf2-dev libpanel-applet2-dev libwnck-dev

now we can run the autogen.sh :

./autogen.sh

and then the configure script :

./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-tracing=no --enable-xfce-plugin=no --disable-maintainer-mode

next step is make :

make

and install with checkinstall (this make uninstall easier) :

sudo checkinstall

after that run this :

sudo ldconfig

now, edit (or create) the ~/.gnomerc file:

gedit ~/.gnomerc

add this line to the file :

export GTK_MODULES=libgnomenu

save and exit gedit.
Finally, restart your session, add the global menu applet to your panel (right click on an empty part of the panel and choose “add to panel” from the menu).
That’s all, you should now have your applications menu in the panel.