1. Thinkpad HDAPSD
I can’t work peacefully without knowing that my hard disk is protected from shocks that might happen either with or without purpose.

$ sudo apt-get install hdapsd


2. Remove Messaging Menu

For me, this indicator is more to disaster rather than feature. Even without this indicator, I got enough distraction from the social medias and chat clients. So let’s remove this useless feature to help us focus.

$ sudo apt-get remove indicator-message


3. Install CPU Temperature Monitor Applet/Indicator

Since my Thinkpad X61 is getting old, the cooling performance is getting worse over time. Especially in last summer, everytime I played game it shuts down suddenly because of processor overheating. I built myself a laptop cooler out of junks, and to monitor the temperature I need an applet or in Ubuntu Unity’s term: “indicator”.

There are not much option for hardware sensor monitor that gives temperature display. One of them is Psensor which is available in Synaptic. It gives one nice thermometer button on the indicator panel, when you click on it a drop down will show up with all the temperature readings. It also has a temperature alarm feature that will give notification if the temperature reaches certain value. But it’s not handy enough for me because I have to click on it to see the temperature.

The other option is the indicator-sensors. This tool is quite handy and easy to use. It has also the alarm feature, and the most important feature: it displays the temperature value on the panel. But unfortunately this isn’t available yet from Synaptic, so we have to install it from the ppa:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alexmurray/indicator-sensors
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install indicator-sensors


And this is how it looks like:

Neat huh? But I still haven’t figured out how to display more than one sensor reading.

This is the Preferences window:

Make sure you put a tick on the sensors you want to activate on the applet.

4. Remove Indicator “Switch User Account” Indicator
Ubuntu developer decides to display my name on the top right of the screen. Well, I know my name and I don’t really need a reminder. And since my laptop screen is quite small, the presence of this indicator makes it a bit cluttered.

To remove it, install dconf-editor first, either from Synaptic or apt-get:

$ sudo apt-get install dconf-editor


Then open dconf-editor, on the left panel navigate to “apps” -> “indicator-session”, then on the right panel remove the tick on “user-show-menu”. Close it, log out and log back in.

5. Install Network Speed Applet/Indicator
Back in Gnome2 when I was using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, one of the applets I use the most is the Netspeed Applet. I don’t know why but I really enjoy looking at my fast network speed.

But unfortunately this applet is not available for Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin user. And there are no other similar applet either, that could be installed easily. Luckily, Andrew from webupd8.org came up with solution. It uses the indicator-sysmonitor and combine it with a BASH script. Click here to go to his page and follow all the steps.

This is how it looks like on my ubuntu: