Gnome Pie is an application inspired by a World of Warcraft addon called OPie, that tries to offer a different way of launching applications in Gnome.









Gnome Pie - visual application launcher

Gnome Pie consists on multiple "pies", and each one is triggered by a keyboard shortcut you set.



Each "pie" has it's own role: a category of applications, a media control "pie" (play/pause/previous/next), a "pie" that allows you to control the focused window (maximize, unmaximize, close, etc.) and so on.



You can of course create new or delete some of the already existing pies so you have full control on what each pie does.









With Gnome Pie you can basically add as many commands that can be accessed using keyboard shortcuts to a single "pie" so you only have to remember one keyboard shortcut, which some of you might find useful.

The application is Ubuntu-friendly and comes with a PPA for easy installation, an Ubuntu application indicator and even a Unity theme:





Unity theme

Adwaita theme

Glossy theme

Gnome Pie video

Here is a video I've created with Gnome Pie in action (you can also see all the available themes):

What's missing?

"Pies" can only trigger applications / commands and run various keyboard shortcuts but you can't combine applications with actions - for instance, you can't select a file and perform some command or do any other fancy stuff that's available in Synapse or Kupfer.

Install Gnome Pie in Ubuntu

Gnome Pie worked great in my test but before proceeding, please note that Gnome Pie is experimental so it may not work for you, it may crash, etc.

Install Gnome Pie in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, 11.04 Natty Narwhal or 10.10 Maverick Meerkat using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:simonschneegans/testing sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install gnome-pie