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In a previous Icebox tutorial, we discussed power management under Linux on Powerbooks. I outlined usage of a little application called Batmon to keep tabs on the status of the batteries. While Batmon works, it's a little cumbersome to always have an additional program window on the desktop.

Thanks to Mike Palczewski , there is a new dockable battery monitor called pmudmon. The latest version will place a simple graph displaying the percentage of battery power remaining.

After downloading the file, install pmudmon with the folowing commands:

tar xvfz pmudmon-0.3.tar.gz
cd pmudmon-0.3

Depending on whether you are using KDE or Gnome, you will want to edit the makefile. (/pmudmon-0.3/makefile).

These first two lines make pmudmon a gnome panel application (the default). If you're using KDE, comment them out and use the two lines below instead.

CFLAGS=-O2 -g -pipe `gnome-config applets --cflags`
LIBS=-pipe `gnome-config applets --libs`


#To change this to a windowed app change comment out above 2 lines
#and uncomment the two lines below


#CFLAGS=-O2 -g -pipe -DNO_APPLET `gnome-config gnomeui --cflags`
#LIBS=-pipe `gnome-config gnomeui --libs`

After editing the makefile, type:

make
make install

Log back onto your gnome desktop to see the monitor.

Right-clicking on the battery display, opens the Properties window. Under KDE, you won't get this window, so you can edit the same settings in the text file: ~/.gnome/pmudmon.

Here is pmudmon 'swallowed' into the KDE panel.

The author, Mike Palczewski, owns an iBook, and I have a Powerbook G3 Wallstreeet. As you can see in the image on the left, pmudmon accurately displays the percentage of power remaining compared with Batmon. I suspect if Batmon works on your Powerbook, pmudmon will too. If you have success or failure, please let Mike know.

To adjust the colors in pmudmon, edit the text file: ~/.gtkrc. If this file already exists, add the following lines. If it doesn't exist, create one with a text editor.

style
"infobar" {
bg[PRELIGHT] = "#336699" # Bar Color
bg[NORMAL] = "#CCCCCC" # B/G Color
}

class "GtkProgress" style "infobar"

While pmudmon installs itself into the gnome panel, it takes a little more work to do the same with KDE.

Open the KDE Menu Editor and create a new item of type "Swallow".

Enter the settings shown on the left. Pick any icon, it won't be displayed.

Save your new menu settings, and use the KDE Menu to add pmudmon to the panel.