You are not logged in.

#1 2013-09-22 22:11:17

ilike
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2011-09-01
Posts: 15
Website

Use Nemo to handle desktop - How to show background image?

Hey Community wink
I recently switched from Gnome to XFCE4. I don't want to use Thunar and xfdesktop, so I removed them with pacman. Nemo is my prefered filemanager, so I want it to handle my desktop as well. (How) Is that possible? I have Nemo in my autostart list and I can see the desktop icons on the desktop but I don't see a background image. I already searched for this issue in the net but couldn't find a solution yet. If I open the dconf-editor, I can see an entry org.gnome.desktop.background.picture-uri, which seems to work for gnome 3 but is ignored under xfce.

Thanks in Advance!

Last edited by ilike (2013-09-22 22:12:08)

Offline

#2 2013-09-22 22:17:05

clfarron4
Member
From: London, UK
Registered: 2013-06-28
Posts: 2,163
Website

Re: Use Nemo to handle desktop - How to show background image?

My understanding is nemo doesn't handle the background image, the environment you are using does. I believe this is so as I use nemo in MATE and I have to use the MATE desktop settings to configure the background image.

In the designed setting for nemo, the Cinnamon Shell (soon to be DE) handles the background image and nemo is literally just a file manager, which can display icons for Home, Computer etc.

Last edited by clfarron4 (2013-09-22 22:18:32)


Claire is fine.
Problems? I have dysgraphia, so clear and concise please.
My public GPG key for package signing
My x86_64 package repository

Offline

#3 2013-09-22 22:34:26

cris9288
Member
Registered: 2013-01-07
Posts: 348

Re: Use Nemo to handle desktop - How to show background image?

ilike wrote:

Hey Community wink
I recently switched from Gnome to XFCE4. I don't want to use Thunar and xfdesktop, so I removed them with pacman. Nemo is my prefered filemanager, so I want it to handle my desktop as well. (How) Is that possible? I have Nemo in my autostart list and I can see the desktop icons on the desktop but I don't see a background image. I already searched for this issue in the net but couldn't find a solution yet. If I open the dconf-editor, I can see an entry org.gnome.desktop.background.picture-uri, which seems to work for gnome 3 but is ignored under xfce.

Thanks in Advance!

doesn't xfce4 have a configuration program similar to dconf or gconf (possibly just called xconf). There might be an option if you dig around in that.

Offline

#4 2013-09-23 03:08:10

cookies
Member
Registered: 2013-01-17
Posts: 253

Re: Use Nemo to handle desktop - How to show background image?

cris9288 wrote:

doesn't xfce4 have a configuration program similar to dconf or gconf (possibly just called xconf).

Yes, xfconf-query.

Offline

#5 2013-09-23 13:08:00

ilike
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2011-09-01
Posts: 15
Website

Re: Use Nemo to handle desktop - How to show background image?

clfarron4 wrote:

My understanding is nemo doesn't handle the background image, the environment you are using does.

Okay, good to know, I thought nautilus was also drawing the desktop background in gnome.

I did it the unclean way now:
Installed xfdesktop again which also installs Thunar as dependency:

sudo pacman -S xfdesktop

Removed the thunar binaries and created symlinks to nemo since this is the filemanage I want to use:

sudo rm /usr/bin/Thunar /usr/bin/thunar
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nemo /usr/bin/thunar         
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nemo /usr/bin/Thunar

I added "nemo --no-default-window" (for the desktop icons) and "xfdesktop" (for the background) to my autostart list and disabled the xfdesktop-icons in the xfce desktop-settings.

If there's a cleaner way to get a desktop image and use nemo as default fm, let me know please, I'm still curious about it. ;p

Offline

#6 2013-09-23 16:32:57

satanselbow
Member
Registered: 2011-06-15
Posts: 538

Re: Use Nemo to handle desktop - How to show background image?

Um... you didn't think to consult the wiki?

Removing binaries and symlinks is such a bad way of going about... good luck with your next update wink

Offline

#7 2013-09-23 19:44:11

cris9288
Member
Registered: 2013-01-07
Posts: 348

Re: Use Nemo to handle desktop - How to show background image?

satanselbow wrote:

Um... you didn't think to consult the wiki?

Removing binaries and symlinks is such a bad way of going about... good luck with your next update wink

How is directing the OP to the nitrogen wiki when he is trying to set up nemo helpful?

OP, my advice would be investigate how nemo works in a Cinnamon environment and try and adapt it to xfce4. Here is what I know:

In cinnamon, there is an option that allows nemo to "manage" the desktop. I installed nemo on to my system to try it out - it immediately tries to create a desktop window in i3, so it seems that throwing up desktop icons and setting a background seems to be the default behavior. Have you tried right clicking on a picture file in Nemo? There should be an option to set it as the wallpaper. If that doesn't work, then I would assume that you are missing dconf and dconf-editor. There should be a whole ton of options that you can set there - and one of them should definitely be the background uri for nemo.


EDIT: Sorry, I was referring to GNOME and gnome-tweak-tool (and by extension, thinking about nautilus) when nemo applies to Cinnamon. The rest still applies - get dconf and dconf-editor.

Last edited by cris9288 (2013-09-23 19:47:21)

Offline

#8 2013-09-24 08:46:10

satanselbow
Member
Registered: 2011-06-15
Posts: 538

Re: Use Nemo to handle desktop - How to show background image?

cris9288 wrote:

How is directing the OP to the nitrogen wiki when he is trying to set up nemo helpful?

It offers a solution to the original question?

Offline

#9 2013-09-25 12:17:24

ilike
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2011-09-01
Posts: 15
Website

Re: Use Nemo to handle desktop - How to show background image?

satanselbow wrote:

Um... you didn't think to consult the wiki?

Removing binaries and symlinks is such a bad way of going about... good luck with your next update wink

In the first place, I searched for a solution without an external tool, so I didn't stumble over nitrogen when reading the xfce-entry in the wiki. Since this is a lightweight software, I tried it now. Unfortunately it didn't work on my system: I uninstalled xfdesktop, installed and started nitrogen but my desktop wallpaper stays grey. If I restart xfwm or log out, I can see the wallpaper, so it seems to be placed *under* the grey desktop. I took a look at my running processes to determine where the grey-color-wallpaper could come from and noticed that X is started with the argument "-background none", which might be the source of the problem (?)... I will stick with xfdesktop since I found a better solution.

cris9288 wrote:

Have you tried right clicking on a picture file in Nemo? There should be an option to set it as the wallpaper.

Yes, I have this option but it doesn't change my background image. It changes the dconf key /org/gnome/desktop/background/picture-uri, so it seems to work only with gnome, not with xfce.
Dconf/Dconf-Editor is installed. But there there's no settings for the background-image in /org/nemo/desktop:
sKFmKhS.png

Last edited by ilike (2013-09-25 12:20:07)

Offline

#10 2013-09-25 14:19:58

clfarron4
Member
From: London, UK
Registered: 2013-06-28
Posts: 2,163
Website

Re: Use Nemo to handle desktop - How to show background image?

As I said, nemo doesn't manage the desktop background (though it can manage the desktop icons).


Claire is fine.
Problems? I have dysgraphia, so clear and concise please.
My public GPG key for package signing
My x86_64 package repository

Offline

#11 2013-09-26 15:34:37

satanselbow
Member
Registered: 2011-06-15
Posts: 538

Re: Use Nemo to handle desktop - How to show background image?

There are also a couple of bug reports about nemo covering the desktop wallpaper... but I should imagine you've seen those already.

Offline

#12 2013-10-10 22:51:51

perost
Member
Registered: 2007-01-23
Posts: 52

Re: Use Nemo to handle desktop - How to show background image?

Has anyone found a solution for this yet? I'm also running XFCE and want to use nemo to handle the desktop icons, but nemo covers the current background with solid black. I tried having xfdesktop handle the background like ilike, but xfdesktop just covers nemo's icons on the desktop. So either I get only icons or only the background, but not both.

Edit: I "solved" it by just letting xfdesktop handle the desktop. It's quite rubbish at handling icons compared to nemo, but at least it allows you to have a background.

Edit2: I found a better solution. The issue occurs when there's no composite manager, which causes the window nemo creates for the desktop to become opaque instead of transparent. Enabling XFCE's composite effects doesn't work for some reason though, it just turns nemo's window gray instead. So I installed Compton instead, which allows nemo's window to be transparent and show the background beneath.

Last edited by perost (2013-10-12 17:51:25)

Offline

#13 2013-10-26 14:10:19

ilike
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2011-09-01
Posts: 15
Website

Re: Use Nemo to handle desktop - How to show background image?

@perost:
Thank's for the tip with compton, it's quite a neat wm, i'm using it now too. smile
But you still need to start xfdesktop to show the desktop-wallpaper, right?

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB