Installed lxde on top of LMDE-XFCE - have some questions...

[gosa]

Hi all,

Been thinking a bit about finding a "leaner" and less resource-hungry environment for my netbook, and instead of joining the choir screaming about the fluxbox release of LMDE taking time I thought that I'd entertain myself with other options while I'm patiently waiting...

I've been reading a bit (not much, but still) about different options, and in the end I decided I'd give LXDE a try...

So - I fired up VirtualBox and installed the XFCE-version of LMDE, made all the updates and and then just ran

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sudo apt-get install lxde

on top. This went well - didn't really expect anything else either, and after choosing lxde at login I had a seemingly quite snappy environment that use around 80Mb's of RAM just after boot.

Now to the "tweaking"/customizing part - and that's where I have some questions:

In the lxde-menu I have - apart from Accessories, Graphics, Internet, etc. etc. - something called Other. This seems to contain just about everything that's installed in the computer, giving me a very long list of stuff.

- How can I go about cleaning up this sub-menu a bit? I tried installing and running Lxmed, but that program only seem to list a fragment of everything under Other (could it be that it only has the apps that come with lxde?)

And if I can't clean up the sub-menu itself, would it be possible to just disable it, and create a "misc" sub-menu instead? (doesn't seem to be doable in Lxmed)

Next question - the panel. Say that I want to use AWN, Docky or Cairo in my setup - would it be safe to disable lxpanel as a startup app, and just run with the dock, or is the lxpanel needed for something else?

Finally... I suspect that I - even though space is not my issue - want to start removing some xfce stuff eventually. (I know - thread lightly, but that's the beauty with snapshots in Virtualbox) Will the menu "keep up" with things getting uninstalled (thinking about unwanted entries that I can't see in Lxmed)?

Ok, I do still consider myslef being a real genuine newbie with Linux, but I'm also very curious, so this little "project" feels like an interesting challenge... And with that I do have to ask one more question: Is there anything else I need to think about to get a nice outcome?

Thanks in advance,
/gosa

[sagirfahmid3]

How can I go about cleaning up this sub-menu a bit?

Loading...please wait...*researching on Google*...

Say that I want to use AWN, Docky or Cairo in my setup - would it be safe to disable lxpanel as a startup app, and just run with the dock, or is the lxpanel needed for something else?

There's something called "Openbox." Maybe you've heard of it? LXDE uses Openbox as the window manager, and builds upon it with lxpanel and all other processes. If you prefer something like that, you should use openbox instead, and add startup entries for docky and xcompmgr (a compositor). [Install xcompmgr with "sudo apt-get install xcompmgr"] Or, you can also disable lxpanel as well, except for the fact that if you want to logout of the session, you have to open a terminal and type "lxde-logout" every time you want to shut down your computer cleanly.

Terminal>"gksu pcmanfm">browse to /etc/xdg/openbox/>Right click on "autostart.sh" and edit with Leafpad>scroll down to the very last line, press enter, and enter each new startup entry on each line and type in a "&" at the end of each startup command. For example:

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blah blah blah something over here

docky &
xcompmgr &

Save the file, logout and log back in. Docky and xcompmgr will now automatically start.

Finally... I suspect that I - even though space is not my issue - want to start removing some xfce stuff eventually. (I know - thread lightly, but that's the beauty with snapshots in Virtualbox) Will the menu "keep up" with things getting uninstalled (thinking about unwanted entries that I can't see in Lxmed)?

If you want to remove xfce and all related applications, open terminal and type "sudo apt-get remove xfce4" and after that, "sudo apt-get autoremove". And the answer to your second question is yes, lxmenu will keep up with the uninstalled programs. It will remove the entries from the lxmenu.

[gosa]

Hi sagirfahmid3,

Thank you for your reply. Sorry for getting back with a comment a bit late, but with a 11 week old girl at home my internet activities kind of have to happen whenever she feels like giving me the time...

Anyway - to comment a bit on your reply:

I've actually booted into openbox a couple of times, with the intention of configuring it a bit to try to see if that could be a good way to run things. And what can I say? Besides the fact that there's a very good tutorila for openbox on the community pages I have bit of experience from using Crunchbang Linux for a couple of months before I decided that it was a bit too much work for me to make changes manually everytime I - for example - installed a new program. Then I found Linux Mint, and now I'm not 100% sure I want to go back to that way of doing things again...

Another thing speaking against openbox for me right now is that in my setup (in virtualbox) the memory usage between the openbox session and the lxde session only showed a couple of mb's of difference on a newly booted system. And with the difference as small as that I might as well go for lxde and get a few things "automated". With that said I'm keeping the options "open" for now. I'll tinker a bit with openbox, and future will tell where I'll land.

About removing xfce stuff... that one actually wasn't as easy as just typing "sudo apt-get remove xfce4"... (that just returned a "not found" message) It turned out that I had to remove many of the components "individually" instead with the help of the package manager.

So right now I think my only "issue" is to clean up that "other" menu a bit... something I still haven't figured out.

I did come up with a couple of more questions though:

Can I add gnome "applets" to the lxde panel? Or would that be something that is only possible to do with docky/AWN/Cairo?
- I have this thing called "jupiter" that helps me control frequency and other things in my netbook (internal/external screen, resolution etc)

I started this "project" of mine by installing the xfce version of LMDE. Is there a difference in what I choose as a base, or could I have started out with the Gnome version of LMDE instead?

That's it for now (I think)
- Thanks again for your reply.

/gosa

[wyrdoak]

Your should be able to add gnome applet to your panel if you wish.

Screenshot.png

Gnome and I had a fight this week with the LMDE "upgrade" so now I'm using LMDE_Xfce pointing to Debian testing, so far it's blowing Gnome out of the water on my machine. I'm just using as little Gnome as possible right now.

I've got Cairo Dock, WINE with Directx working and Compiz going. I can't think of anything else of Gnome that I need.

[gosa]

Your should be able to add gnome applet to your panel if you wish.[/attachment]

Gnome and I had a fight this week with the LMDE "upgrade" so now I'm using LMDE_Xfce pointing to Debian testing, so far it's blowing Gnome out of the water on my machine. I'm just using as little Gnome as possible right now.

I've got Cairo Dock, WINE with Directx working and Compiz going. I can't think of anything else of Gnome that I need.

Does that go for the lxpanel as well?
(Your example is from the xfce panel, right?)

[richyrich]

Lxde Resource for you from one of our members :

http://douwil7.100webspace.net/linux/Tuning%20LXDE.html

[gosa]

Lxde Resource for you from one of our members :

http://douwil7.100webspace.net/linux/Tuning%20LXDE.html

Thanks for the link, but I have that one loaded on a tab in Firefox already. Right now I'm slowly working myself through it.
- Really great page for a lxde newbie!

[wyrdoak]

yes that was the setting to put gnome applets in your Xfce panel

[gosa]

Your should be able to add gnome applet to your panel if you wish.[/attachment]

Gnome and I had a fight this week with the LMDE "upgrade" so now I'm using LMDE_Xfce pointing to Debian testing, so far it's blowing Gnome out of the water on my machine. I'm just using as little Gnome as possible right now.

I've got Cairo Dock, WINE with Directx working and Compiz going. I can't think of anything else of Gnome that I need.

Does that go for the lxpanel as well?
(Your example is from the xfce panel, right?)

Found the answer to my question:

So no one else is confused, this answer is totally incorrect. It would be correct if the question were "how do I locate and add the Hamster applet to the gnome-panel." As pointed out, we do not and have no plan to support adding Gnome applets to LXPanel.

From this page: http://forum.lxde.org/viewtopic.php?t=1720&f=21

[wyrdoak]

http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/panel- ... let-plugin

[gosa]

http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/panel- ... let-plugin

Believe me - I do understand what you're trying to say, but I'm not using xfce panel. I'm curently using lxpanel, but I'm looking to maybe change that one for docky/AWN/Cairo.

I checked your link and nothing on that pages refer to lxpanel or lxde.
- Or is this your way of saying that I can install the xfce4-applet-plugin and use that even though this page clearly says that one of the requirements for using the plugin is that you are using xfce panel:

Dependencies

In order to use XfApplet, you will need Xfce Panel >= 4.4b1. XfApplet should also work fine with the current development version of Xfce Panel (4.3.x) provided that you have an SVN revision >= r19874. Libxfce4util e Libxfcegui4 are also required. From the Gnome side, you will need Libpanelapplet and its own dependencies. Make sure you have ORBit2 >= 2.12.5.

Even though I appreciate you trying to help I do have to ask one thing...
Why do you keep on suggesting xfce when i'm asking for help with lxde & lxpanel (and/or docky, AWN or cairo)? The only thing related to xfce is that I've chosen to install the xfce version of LMDE as a "base". I even wrote in one of my posts that I deleted a lot of xfce related components?

Either way - I was wrong about "jupiter applet". I downloaded and installed lxde on my netbook now that I know that it seems ok in Virtualbox, and once logged into lxde I did find it in my panel. I have know idea what it is, but it seems to work even in lxde.

- I'd still like to be able to remove the items in the "Other" menu though... will keep on looking for an answer to that one, other than that I don't have any real issues with lxde. Very nice and smooth and with the comforting knowledge that I'm still running lmde under it all...

[wyrdoak]

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Application Menu Editing
The application menu works by resolving the .desktop files located in /usr/share/applications. Many desktop environments run programs that supersede these settings to allow customization of the menu. LXDE has yet to create an application menu editor but you can manually build them yourself if you are so inclined. Third party menu editor can be found in AUR - lxmed
To add or edit a menu item, create or link to the .desktop file in /usr/share/applications. Consult the desktop entry specification on freedesktop.org for structures of .desktop files.
To remove items from the menu, instead of deleting the .desktop files, you can edit the file and add the following line in the file:
NoDisplay=true.
To expedite the process for a good number of files you can put it in a loop. For example:
cd /usr/share/applications
for i in program1.desktop program2.desktop ...; do cp /usr/share/applications/$i \
/home/user/.local/share/applications/; echo "NoDisplay=true" >> \
/home/user/.local/share/applications/$i; done
This will work for all applications except KDE applications. For these, the only way to remove them from the menu is to log into KDE itself and use it's menu editor. For every item that you do not want displayed, check the 'Show only in KDE' option. If adding NoDisplay=True won't work, you can add ShowOnlyIn=XFCE.

OH! OK I think I understand were your going now.

Cairo Dock might work best for ya for what you want but you will need a Composite Manager to make it look right: http://openbox.org/wiki/Help:FAQ#How_do ... windows.3F

Sorry for my confusion in the alphabet soup. Dyslexia doesn't help.
I had a time figuring out the command line for desktop launchers so just made launchers for Cairo Dock [the syntax is different]