Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-01 20:31:07

hi everyone,

i just thought that i would post about the gnome3 update.

For those of you who still want to use gnome, but think you need to migrate to a different desktop. Don't worry about it, gnome3 can be made to behave very similar to gnome2 with some tweaking.

1. Turning off gnome-shell is easy and can be done in system settings.

2. Compiz++ works perfectly in gnome3 fallback mode. if you are using compiz you have absolutley nothing to worry about! emerald++ also works - so you can theme your windows exactly how they were pre-gnome3 update.

3. You can hide the huge panels - and unlike gnome2 - this is actually a nice smooth experience. I still haven't figured out how to remove the bottom panel ~ if anyone knows how remove the bottom panel, please post here! (but atleast they hide well)

4. gnome-tweak-tool will fix various settings such as font-size (that was my big one, anyway). it does require gnome-shell to be installed, but will alter fallback-mode settings just fine.

5. Nautilus can be used to manage your desktop.

6. if you require "hal" for certain applications (in my case VMware) you can use the same method as KDE users are. A solution has been found in this thread;

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=116406

(just make sure hal is present in /etc/rc.conf, under modules, as you can not start it manually in gnome3)

Caveats;

1. the panel has ZERO customization, and if you use things like dockbarX ~ say goodbye to those types of applications. removal of any panel also seems to be an issue. (fallback as 2 panels)

2. No alsamixer for gnome-panel, if you don't want Pulseaudio (and typically remove it). A) just create a symlink on your desktop, if using nautilus. or B) create a launcher in your favorite dock, - that links to the alsamixer application.

3. Applications like Cairo-dock require you to manually add custom launchers, dragging from the Gnome3 menu will have no effect, neither will right-clicking on an open application and pressing "add as launcher". (there isn't gnome3 integration at present)

4. customizing with tools like gnome-color-chooser are incompatible with Gnome3 - so if you liked having small icons in you menu, or reducing their size in general, textured themes, etc - good luck with that. (the start menu might have a CSS file somewhere, but i haven't found it yet)

5. almost no applications outside of what gnome-developers themselves use, or that are out of the scope of gnome3/gnome-shell, will have very poor integration. Most you will have to manually configure / figure out alternative solutions.

This all being said, aside from the stupid bottom panel being present - my desktop is pretty much the exact same as before - just a few slightly more limited system-tools, and I had to manually fix all of the problems from the update <--- this was expected (by me)

hopefully we will see gnome-color-chooser upgraded to work with gnome3. (or some similar tool) I would really like some granular control over how GTK3 draws the menubar, context menus, dropdown menus, start-menu, etc.

But aside from these few issues - I am now okay with gnome3 - since i don't have to use that god awful Gnome-Shell. I swear if Unity and Gnome-Shell were the only DE/shells for Linux - i would just go back to MacOSX and not use linux at all. lol. (aside from at work, where i SSH into the machines, and use a minimal DE).

one plus of gnome3, in fallback mode - is that memory and CPU consumption has dropped. in the case of memory - by 48meg on my system.
it idles at less CPU as well.

jordan

Last edited by triplesquarednine (2011-05-03 05:52:39)

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-02 01:30:58

To add to this;

If you don't like how GTK3 looks, you can easily modify it. (to get it to look more like your gtk2 theme was).

look in both of these files;

/usr/share/themes/Adwaita/gtk-3.0/gtk.css - contains what colors are being used.

/usr/share/themes/Adwaita/gtk-3.0/gtk-widgets.css - contains all widget stuff - ie: menubars, scrollbars, etc.

You can modify both of these files easily and they are human readable. If you do not like how "thick" certain widgets are simply adjust
the "padding" variables. For example;

I didn't like how chick menubars are in Gtk3, so i navigated to the "menu" section (labeled in bright blue), and put the width and padding to '0'. and now the menubar looks nice and thin.

Just do changes with caution, keep a backup of the originals in case you mess something up.

GTK is looking nice and clean again - with much less padding on my menus and now my theme is much more suitable for Desktop usage, as opposed to the defaults which might be more suitable for a smartphone. lol.

*** read a few posts below for further details to do with theming

jordan

Last edited by triplesquarednine (2011-05-04 21:04:10)

yawns · 2011-05-03 07:34:17

I was able to customize/remove panels by alt-right clicking on them, which brought up the normal "I just right-clicked a panel," menu. It doesn't seem to be working now though. Maybe compiz breaks that somehow.

...I rebooted and now it works again.

Edit: Compiz wasn't set as the window manager after I rebooted, so apparently that has something to do with it. Switching back to Metacity after Compiz has been selected seems to randomly fix it, but not always.

Last edited by yawns (2011-05-03 07:37:53)

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-03 08:11:20

yawns wrote:

I was able to customize/remove panels by alt-right clicking on them, which brought up the normal "I just right-clicked a panel," menu. It doesn't seem to be working now though. Maybe compiz breaks that somehow.
...I rebooted and now it works again.
Edit: Compiz wasn't set as the window manager after I rebooted, so apparently that has something to do with it. Switching back to Metacity after Compiz has been selected seems to randomly fix it, but not always.

Interesting. I had tried the alt-click, but that didn't work (maybe compiz related??). anyway, i just have the relevent user-menu keys in dconf empty. I don't really gnome-panel to be running, and it's nice to have the extra space.

ya, maybe compiz breaks that... that's not a big deal though. dconf-editor works fine.

jordan

DeedleFake · 2011-05-03 14:31:29

It looks like the panel menu is actually its window menu now. If you right click on the panel while holding whatever key is stored in /apps/metacity/general/mouse_button_modifier in GConf then you get the normal gnome-panel menu. You get similar results for right clicking on panel items while holding the key, and left clicking allows you to drag items or the panel around. Obviously, due to the fact that that behavior is dependent on Metacity, it won't work under Emerald. I don't use Emerald, but if it has another way to pop up the window menu without needing a titlebar or needing to select the window, than that should work.

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-03 16:34:00

DeedleFake wrote:

It looks like the panel menu is actually its window menu now. If you right click on the panel while holding whatever key is stored in /apps/metacity/general/mouse_button_modifier in GConf then you get the normal gnome-panel menu. You get similar results for right clicking on panel items while holding the key, and left clicking allows you to drag items or the panel around. Obviously, due to the fact that that behavior is dependent on Metacity, it won't work under Emerald. I don't use Emerald, but if it has another way to pop up the window menu without needing a titlebar or needing to select the window, than that should work.

that's good to know. I didn't put too much effort into figuring it out, as I've already got rid of gnome-panel altogether.

i'm using cairo-dock in G3 with no panels. Just my dock on the left-side of my desktop (like i've used in MacOSX for years, and somewhat similiar to Unity, and even to a lesser degree Gnome-Shell's side-bar).i put cairo-dock's "application-menu" icon in the dock - for when i need something not visible. embedded the clock widget in my desktop - and suddenly keeping gnome-panel would have been pointless anyway.
Cairo took over it's job

jordan

J. · 2011-05-04 11:30:41

How do you get compiz to start automatically in fallback mode? Metacity just segfaults when I open a window (of a certain type? Run dialogue's fine, for example) for whatever reason.

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-04 19:59:54

J. wrote:

How do you get compiz to start automatically in fallback mode? Metacity just segfaults when I open a window (of a certain type? Run dialogue's fine, for example) for whatever reason.

You have 2 options;

1.) type gnome-session-properties from the commandline, and create an entry for compiz.

In my case, this executes /usr/bin/compiz++ which is a script that will kill whatever window-manager is running, and instead use compiz and emerald.

The script i am using is the exact same script that you get when building compiz from git (i've just modified it to not start CCSM and not use GTK-window-manager).

#!/bin/bash

PREFIX=/usr
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib:/usr/lib64:/usr/lib32::$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

# Kill all decorators in case an incompatible (0.8) decorator is running
if ps ax | grep gtk-window-decorator | grep -v grep &> /dev/null; then
    echo "Killing gtk-window-decorator"
    killall gtk-window-decorator &> /dev/null
fi
if ps ax | grep kde4-window-decorator | grep -v grep &> /dev/null; then
    echo "Killing kde4-window-decorator"
    killall kde4-window-decorator &> /dev/null
fi
if ps ax | grep emerald | grep -v grep &> /dev/null; then
    echo "Killing emerald"
    killall emerald &> /dev/null
fi

$PREFIX/bin/compiz --replace ccp "$@" &
$PREFIX/bin/emerald --replace &
#$PREFIX/bin/ccsm++ &

2) you could create a .desktop file in /etc/xdg/autostart, linking to the script, in the same fashion.. Gnome will reference these files on startup. (i haven't tried this way, but it's pretty much the same i would think).

I am not using compiz 0.8.6 - I build it from git quite often, and compiz++, so this is how i have been starting compiz, for a year or so.
it works well.

As a side note: i have 2 scripts based on this script, setup on my desktop as launchers... one 2 disable compiz, and one 2 start it up.
You might find this handy, if you use applications that don't play nice with compiz (obviously though, you must be using Nautilus to mangage your desktop to have this option).

jordan

Last edited by triplesquarednine (2011-05-04 20:15:05)

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-04 20:11:09

Removing Pulseaudio .

As of gnome3 - PA has become a "static" dependency. If you would like to not use Pulseaudio, it is fairly simple to disable.
This would mainly be Jackd-users who would probably be interested in this one. I personally have no use for PA, so i always ditch it.

Note: this will not remove PA, only disable it. (removing it is a hassle, and it will get pulled as a dependency on certain gnome3 updates.)

1. type; gnome-session-properties - make sure PA isn't setup to autostart.

2. navigate(with nautilus or a terminal) to /etc/xdg/autostart - look for the pulseaudio.desktop and either rename it (without the .desktop extenstion) or delete it.

3. edit /etc/asound.conf - remove all of the pulseaudio configuration and replace it with you ALSA configuration

This is the default configuration if you have only 1 soundcard;

pcm.card0 {
    type hw
    card 0
}
ctl.card0 {
    type hw
    card 0
}

if you have more than one soundcard, adjust accordingly - or create ~/.asoundrc (in your home folder, and customize there).

jordan

Last edited by triplesquarednine (2011-05-04 20:56:10)

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-04 20:30:59

Adwaita CSS theme:

In my Second post above, i have listed where to find Adwaita's GTK3 theme files.

Some things to note when changing your theme around;

The theme will update, the next time you launch a given GTK3 application. For example, whenever i am editing my theme, i use gedit as a reference. I change a setting in the CSS files, then, i kill gedit and open it again (to refresh my changes).

** it is a good idea to make a backup of the .css files when making changes to your theme. Some of the settings in the css, can be tricky to figure out. ie: which setting affects which - it requires a little bit of playing around, for sure.
However, each section/category is labeled - it's just the settings in each section that can be tricky to figure out.

Once you get the hang out it, theming is quite nice in GTK3. you can play with the gradient values, tab styles, padding, outlines, color etc. Each component has a number of tunables, so experiment way...

NOTE: Nautilus also has a .css theme file;

Also to note, do not use nautilus as a reference as you are theming. it doesn't work without totally killing nautilus first (as in killall nautilus - from thecommandline). it is much easy to use other GTK3 applications as a reference.

Location of Nautilus CSS file;

/usr/share/nautilus/nautilus.css

it mainly affects how it's toolbar looks, ie: buttons, search, color, etc. For the rest of nautilus' theme it will reference gtk.css and gtk-widgets.css.

I haven't figured out how to get Nautilus' sidebar to have it's own color (rather than using bg_color from gtk.css), if anyone figures this out please post. I would like that part of nautilus to properly match the rest of my theme.

*** all colors in GTK3's .css files are Html color code. A simple way of determining which colors are which is to install an application like "gpick" - then you can click on whatever color in GTK you would like to change, and then use Gedit's search/find - type in the color code and search trhough the gtk.css file for matches.

this is the method i have been using, and until we see a proper utility like gnome-color-chooser, i suppose this will have to be suitable.
after you get used to it. it works well.

jordan

Last edited by triplesquarednine (2011-05-04 21:02:12)

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-04 20:39:19

To find all services, schemas, configurations (as in xml) that are in gnome3,

simply do a search for "org.gnome"

Systemd related;

/etc/dbus-1/system.d

Services;

/etc/share/dbus-1/services
/etc/share/dbus-1/system-services

Schemas;

/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas
/usr/share/gnome-panel/4.0/applets

I wouldn't randomly edit any of these files, but i have had a few situations already where it was handy to know where this stuff is stored in the linux file-system.

jordan

J. · 2011-05-04 20:50:43

Hmm, I was hoping for something cleaner rather than have GNOME trying to start two window managers on startup (I assume), but it seems to work fine, so thanks.

Your instructions for disabling PulseAudio - there's meant to be a } to the end of the quoted file, I assume?

Edit: tried it, restarted and pulseaudio's running again. Any ideas? I'm just hoping to use ALSA.

Last edited by J. (2011-05-04 20:55:34)

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-04 20:58:13

J. wrote:

Hmm, I was hoping for something cleaner rather than have GNOME trying to start two window managers on startup (I assume), but it seems to work fine, so thanks.
Your instructions for disabling PulseAudio - there's meant to be a } to the end of the quoted file, I assume?
Edit: tried it, restarted and pulseaudio's running again. Any ideas? I'm just hoping to use ALSA.

thanks for pointing that out ( } ) i fixed that.

you should be able to disable metacity from starting, i haven't bothered yet, as i have more important things to still figure out.
If you figure it out, be sure to post back.

jordan

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-04 22:01:37

for anyone interested, there is a pretty slick dark theme for both GTK2 and GTK3.

it is called Atolm. here are the links to both gtk2 and gtk3 themes

http://skiesofazel.deviantart.com/art/Atolm-191381339 (gtk2)

http://thedeviantmars.deviantart.com/ar … -206663190 (gtk3)

all that you will need to do, is uncompress them, and place the theme in /usr/share/themes

then, open gnome-tweak-tool and select the themes.

they look very nice :

I did have to adjust some padding, afterwards - but other than than that this theme really is much nicer than Adwaita.
the dark-blue toolbar and the gradient scrollbar button are both quite nice on the eyes.

jordan

Last edited by triplesquarednine (2011-05-04 22:13:51)

J. · 2011-05-04 22:12:46

Is there an easy way to tweak it so the scroll bars have arrows? I can't really cope without them, since I right-click to scroll to the start/end a lot (sure, I could middle-click in the place it's missing from, but it's hard to break the habit, and I think you'd have to aim right at the edge), but it does look better than the default.

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-05 00:08:15

J. wrote:

Is there an easy way to tweak it so the scroll bars have arrows? I can't really cope without them, since I right-click to scroll to the start/end a lot (sure, I could middle-click in the place it's missing from, but it's hard to break the habit, and I think you'd have to aim right at the edge), but it does look better than the default.

You would probably have to edit the themes gtk-widgets.css to do that. I did look at it, and you can still click where they would normally be. I don't scroll by clicking. I either use a gesture (which is like using a scroll-wheel) or I click and drag on the scrollbar and move it.

Sorry i don't have a better anwser.

I must say though, i am pretty happy with this theme.

jordan

fzzbt · 2011-05-05 09:24:09

how can I enable icons on windows (top-left corner where it used to be)?

crocowhile · 2011-05-05 10:15:07

If you use compiz and emerald you can actually skip gnome tout court. Use slim and an .xinitrc file like this one:

#!/bin/sh
#
# ~/.xinitrc
#
# Executed by startx (run your window manager from here)

if [ -d /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d ]; then
  for f in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/*; do
    [ -x "$f" ] && . "$f"
  done
  unset f
fi

setxkbmap -layout gb &
tint2 &
nm-applet --sm-disable &
volumeicon &
docky &
gnome-do &
skype &
parcellite &
nautilus &
pidgin &
guake &
dropboxd &
minus &
exec compiz ccp

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-05 17:50:04

fzzbt wrote:

how can I enable icons on windows (top-left corner where it used to be)?

I dont think you can do that, unless you are using a window manger like emerald - i could be wrong though.

I actually keep my windwo title on the left, with minimize:mazimize:close on the right-side.

jordan

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-05 18:01:37

crocowhile wrote:

If you use compiz and emerald you can actually skip gnome tout court. Use slim and an .xinitrc file like this one:

#!/bin/sh
#
# ~/.xinitrc
#
# Executed by startx (run your window manager from here)

if [ -d /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d ]; then
  for f in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/*; do
    [ -x "$f" ] && . "$f"
  done
  unset f
fi

setxkbmap -layout gb &
tint2 &
nm-applet --sm-disable &
volumeicon &
docky &
gnome-do &
skype &
parcellite &
nautilus &
pidgin &
guake &
dropboxd &
minus &
exec compiz ccp

that's a nice way to do things

I might try it out. But also, gnome is providing other things that i require like proper color management (ICC profiles) and there are some other features i like.

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-06 02:32:35

For anyone who wants to be able to use the delete key, as we all normally would ~ for deleting files

check out this post;

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=919463

this also applies to changing most accelerators found in gnome3 menus. It's actually a pretty handy little feature, to change the hotkey behaviour of a given GTK3 application.

jordan

Last edited by triplesquarednine (2011-05-06 02:55:48)

hqet4 · 2011-05-08 03:02:05

The alt+right click trick on gnome-panel seems to work erratically for me as well...
Has anyone else noticed that gnome desktop icons are more spaced than they used to ? Any idea on how to fix that ?

Last edited by hqet4 (2011-05-08 03:07:37)

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-08 03:14:27

I've fixed the original and also done a 'mod' on the logo for gnome-tweak-tool.

the original logo was designed to be on white and doesn't have an alpha chennel (the image that comes default). it looks bad on colored/dark themes.

i've also remixed the original logo, added color, G'mic + gimp. Added aplha channels, shading, layers...i tried to give it a little of dimension...

here's the link to my other thread;

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=118490

the 1st mofidied one, is just the default whit happy-face modified, so that it looks clean on a dark or colored theme. But my next reply, directly below... -> has my remixed version, i believe the file is called welcomeninezmod.png. it's got some decent color, lighting FX, layers and depth.

it look really nice on my desktop (Atolm-GTK3 theme)

let me know what you think

jordan

Last edited by triplesquarednine (2011-05-08 03:27:48)

Total · 2011-05-08 04:46:55

Nautilus not have emblem support in Gnome3 yet? o_O

triplesquarednine · 2011-05-08 14:05:10

Total wrote:

Nautilus not have emblem support in Gnome3 yet? o_O

no, it would seem not ;(

Arch Linux

#1 2011-05-01 20:31:07

Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#2 2011-05-02 01:30:58

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#3 2011-05-03 07:34:17

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#4 2011-05-03 08:11:20

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#5 2011-05-03 14:31:29

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#6 2011-05-03 16:34:00

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#7 2011-05-04 11:30:41

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#8 2011-05-04 19:59:54

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#9 2011-05-04 20:11:09

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#10 2011-05-04 20:30:59

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#11 2011-05-04 20:39:19

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#12 2011-05-04 20:50:43

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#13 2011-05-04 20:58:13

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#14 2011-05-04 22:01:37

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#15 2011-05-04 22:12:46

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#16 2011-05-05 00:08:15

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#17 2011-05-05 09:24:09

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#18 2011-05-05 10:15:07

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#19 2011-05-05 17:50:04

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#20 2011-05-05 18:01:37

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#21 2011-05-06 02:32:35

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#22 2011-05-08 03:02:05

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#23 2011-05-08 03:14:27

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#24 2011-05-08 04:46:55

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

#25 2011-05-08 14:05:10

Re: Gnome3 - without Gnome-Shell - POST TWEAKS HERE!

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