I recalled PacMan – one of the most popular classic arcade video games. I used to play PacMan at a video game parlour each day (literally), on my way from school to home. My friends used to consider me an expert at it

I started googling for PacMan for Linux. While searching, I got to know that this game is available as a Google Gadget. That’s it. I decided to install Google Gadgets on my Fedora 9 laptop. Thought it would be fun as well as learning and I will install more than just a game.

Google Gadgets on Fedora 9 Desktop

Installation:

• Login as root
• Configure a new YUM repository for Google Gadgets. Create a file named google-gadgets.repo in the directory /etc/yum.repos.d with the following contents: [google-gadgets]
  name=Google Gadgets
  baseurl=http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/suzhe/Fedora_9/
  enabled=1
  gpgcheck=0

• There is a google-gadgets RPM for an older release in the Fedora Update Repository which conflicts with the google-gadgets-common RPM from the above setup repository. Hence temporarily disable the update repository by editing the file fedora-updates-newkey.repo. Change Enabled=0 from 1 for [updates-newkey]. After the next step you can re-enable it by setting 0 to 1.
• Install Google Gadgets for Fedora as:yum install google-gadgets-gtk. Since I use GNOME on my Fedora 9 desktop I chose to install google-gadgets-gtk. KDE users may opt for “yum install google-gadgets-qt” (untested by me).
• Turn on Desktop Effects (System>Preferences>Look and Feel>Desktop Effects) to see the Gadget sidebar translucent as the Vista sidebar.

Run It
There are two ways to run the Google Gadgets sidebar (which shows your gadgets): manually or automatically, when you log into GNOME. To run it manually, issue the following command in a terminal/console window:

ggl-gtk -bg

Second, to run it automatically when you log into GNOME, click on System>Preferences>Personal>Sessions. Click on the tab “Startup Programs”. Click on the Add button. For Name: type in Google Gadgets and for Command: type in:  ggl-gtk -bg. Next time, when you log into GNOME, the sidebar will appear automatically.

Note that if you click on the show desktop icon (bottom left) on GNOME, the Google Gadget’s sidebar would dissappear. To see it again, click on the Google Gadgets icon on the GNOME panel.

To install Google Gadgets for other Linux distributions browse to http://code.google.com/p/google-gadgets-for-linux/

Add the PacMan gadget
To add a gadget like the PacMan game, right click on the Google Gadget’s sidebar and click on “Add Gadgets”. This will popup a window with the gadgets’ category on the left and the gadgets on the right pane. To add PacMan, select “Fun and Games” and then move the mouse over the “Games” gadget. Then click on the Add button. This will add the Games gadget to the sidebar which lists other games like Tetris, Donkey Kong, Sonic, amongst PacMan. Click on a game to start playing it.

All said and done, I happened to install Google Gadgets on my Fedora 9 desktop for PacMan and it is worth it. Played across three stages while downloading a 25 MB file in office . As of this writing I only have 3 gadgets added to the sidebar – Wikipedia search, Games and Analog Clock.

Will update this post when I add something more or as interesting as PacMan to my gadgets sidebar. PacMan rocks