Apps and Services

In the Startup Apps tab, you can view the applications the system launches at boot time (Figure 3) and set up new startup apps. This is especially handy if you work with different distributions: You do not always need to think about where you need to set up applications that run at boot time on the respective systems, and you can also tell Stacer to lock an application for the next start as a test, without having to plumb the depths of the Control Panel.

Figure 3: In the Startup Apps section, you can add and remove applications to be launched at boot time.

Starting and stopping system services is just as easy in the Services tab (Figure 4). A search function facilitates finding a particular service. A word of caution: If you shut down the wrong service here, you can look forward to a reboot.

Figure 4: Consider carefully starting and stopping services to avoid endangering the running system.

Out!

Like the first tab, the last two tabs are purely informative: As the name suggests, the penultimate tab, Uninstaller, lets you remove packages (Figure 5). You will find many of the applications installed on the system here, and you can point and click to uninstall and remove. Stacer does not list basic packages, to keep users from pulling the rug out from under their own feet.

Figure 5: The Uninstaller section only works on Ubuntu and Arch Linux distros and their derivatives.

The uninstaller works perfectly with Ubuntu and Apricity OS, but not with any other distribution tested in the lab. Rummaging around the bug reports on GitHub revealed an announcement stating that Stacer can only handle this function on Ubuntu and Arch Linux (on which Apricity OS is based). Failure to uninstall here is not really tragic, because it makes more sense to delete packages with your distribution's package manager anyway.

Colorful Plots

The Resources tab displays the last 30 seconds of CPU, RAM, and network activity (Figure 6). If you have four, eight, or more cores, Stacer shows them individually in contrasting colors. To view each plot separately, press the Cpu History button, for example.

Figure 6: In the Resources section, you can open selected objects (e.g., the CPU) and view animations of all the cores individually.