Arch Linux

Amphaeon

Member

Registered: 2007-01-31

Posts: 72

Customizing My Desktop

Hello everyone again! Im glad to be posting some more questions for everyone in the Arch family to help me.

Ive been expereminting with different Desktop Enviroments. ATM i love gnome, its clean fast and very customizable by its self and also provides great gui configuration tools, i have tried KDE and its ok, i just cant stand how it looks personally, dont ask me why, its just how i feel about kde. Anyways ive read about several different Enviroments, Fluxbox Openbox Blackbox Fvwm2 e16 e17, etc.

What im interested in doing is having a desktop similar to fluxbox/e17 where the menu is contained in simply clicking the mouse button. Also i would like to have engage or a similar iconbox and gdesklets or something similar to show my daily apps.

Ive currently installed fluxbox and messed around with it and have found out that configuring simple things such as a desktop background picture isnt as simple as gnome. Plus my menus were all fuugly and half the stuff in there didnt work or didnt show.

Im kinda wondering if its possible to use the gnome enviroment and create a click menu system for the desktop so i can delete my menu bar, and also an iconbox.

lemon

Member

From: Norway

Registered: 2006-11-11

Posts: 50

Re: Customizing My Desktop

From the wiki:

   1.  Install gnome.
   2. Setup ~/.xinitrc to run gnome: exec gnome-session
   3. Preferences -> Sessions -> Statup Programs
   4. As a high priortiy item, add: openbox --replace
   5. Restart Gnome, and you should be kickin!: (Openbox should replace Metacity, everytime that Gnome loads)

japetto

Member

From: Chicago, IL US

Registered: 2006-07-02

Posts: 183

Re: Customizing My Desktop

You could also run XFCE and still use Gnome apps.  It has a mouse based menu.

Amphaeon

Member

Registered: 2007-01-31

Posts: 72

Re: Customizing My Desktop

From Wiki:

Once openbox is installed you will get a message to move menu.xml & rc.xml to ~/.config/openbox/ in your home directory:

mkdir -p ~/.config/openbox/
cp /etc/xdg/openbox/rc.xml ~/.config/openbox/
cp /etc/xdg/openbox/menu.xml ~/.config/openbox/

I dont have these .xml files, i tried to look for the etc/openbox dir, but it wasnt there, i even did a updatedb and tried to locate menu.xml with no exact result. The wiki wasnt helpful in this area and i need some more help....

You could also run XFCE and still use Gnome apps.  It has a mouse based menu.

i think xfce is good and all, but its lacking alot of small features i like in gnome.

Amphaeon

Member

Registered: 2007-01-31

Posts: 72

Re: Customizing My Desktop

nvm got it working now. Now to experiment. another question tho is that i see alot of people using gdesklets, where do most people get thier desklets from? ive checked out the desklet archive but i didnt see alot that i see in screenshots.

Also im wanting to have a mouse binding where if im on the desktop and i click it shows the menu, kinda like fluxbox,i tried to google and search but didnt really find the info i needed...

in my rc.xml i have this:

<mousebind button="Left" action="Press">
      <action name="ShowMenu"><menu>client-menu</menu></action>
    </mousebind>

which looks to me that it should be showing a menu... but this is my first time using openbox, any linkx/info would be greatful.

Last edited by Amphaeon (2007-03-02 09:08:30)