Integrate Picasa with Ubuntu
Have really grown attached to Picasa as a photo manager. Since I have been using it more frequently I have been seeking ways to better integrate Picasa into the Ubuntu desktop.
Nautilus as Picasa’s default file manager
I found a great tip at the Ubuntu communities Picasa page demonstrating how to use the Nautilus file manager as Picasa’s default.
1) First copy the template filemanager script to the bin directory with these two terminal commands:
cd /opt/picasa/desktop
sudo cp picasa-hook-filemanager.sh.template ../bin/picasa-hook-filemanager.sh
The first command navigates the terminal to the opt -> picasa -> desktop folder. The second command copies the file manager template to the bin directory and renames it to ‘picasa-hook-filemanager.sh’.
2) Next, edit the template file and paste in the script to open Nautilus when Picasa requests it. This command will open the file we copied above in Ubuntu’s Text Editor.
cd ../bin
gksudo gedit picasa-hook-filemanager.sh
The first command navigates the terminal to the bin directory. The second command opens the newly created file in the Ubuntu Text Editor – gedit.
3) Lastly, using gedit replace the text “exit 1″ at the bottom of the file with this:
/usr/bin/nautilus "${1%%$(basename "$1")}"
Here is the full set of commands exactly as I typed them into my terminal
Here are the terminal commands I used to integrate Picasa with the Nautilus file manager.
Will Picasa ever run natively?
As much as I enjoy Picasa I fear Picasa’s future, being closed-source. Will it ever be truly integrated into the Ubuntu (or any linux distro’s) desktop? I would love to see Picasa run outside of Wine so hacks like these are not necessary. Sadly, the only people with the ability to do this are Google employees; I can only hope the listen to the community requests.