GNOME tips - ArchWiki

# GNOME tips

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Reason: please use the first argument of the template to provide a brief explanation. (Discuss)

This article or section is a candidate for merging with MATE.

Notes: and possibly other DE pages. (Content relevant to GNOME has been merged already) (Discuss)

## Configuration tips

This article or section is a candidate for merging with GDM.

Notes: Merge GDM related info there. (Discuss)

### Add/edit GDM sessions

Each session is a `.desktop` file located at `/usr/share/xsessions/`.

To add a new session:

1. Copy an existing `.desktop` file to use as a template for a new session:

    $ cd /usr/share/xsessions
    # cp gnome.desktop other.desktop

2. Modify the template `*.desktop` file to open the required window manager:

    # nano other.desktop

Alternatively, you can open the new session in KDM which will create the *.desktop file. Then return to using GDM and the new session will be available.

### Fonts seem skewed

You can alter the DPI of your fonts in GNOME with right-click on the desktop > Change desktop background > Fonts > Details > Resolution.

### Change the default background color, opacity, etc.

The default background color is green. You might want to change it if you're using a transparent PNG as background.

    $ sudo gconf-editor

Go to File > New Defaults Window and edit the keys

    /desktop/gnome/background/primary_color

and

    /desktop/gnome/background/secondary_color

You can also find keys for opacity, shading style, etc.

### Start application with another language

If you want to start an application with another language as the system's default one, you can change the application's desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications'' for yourself or in /usr/share/applications for everyone like shown below.

Find the desktop file of the application which you want to start with another language. Go to theExec row: (here for Empathy):

    Exec=empathy %f

and change it to:

    Exec=env LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 empathy %f

From now on that application will start with the chosen language.

## Miscellaneous tips

### GNOME Files tips

Get a certain path in spatial view? Just press `Ctrl+l`.

#### Change browser mode (spatial view)

1. Start gconf-editor
2. Browse to apps/nautilus/preferences
3. Change the value of "always_use_browser" (it's a yes/no value and should be visible as a checkbox or say "false", for the later change the value to "true")

Or you can do this through the preferences:

1. In a Files window go to Edit > Preferences
2. Change to the Behaviour tab
3. Check (or uncheck) Always Open in Browser Windows

#### Music information columns in list view (bit rate, etc.)

GNOME Files lacks the ability to display metadata for music files in list view mode. A Python script was written to add columns for:

- Artist
- Album
- Track Title
- Bit Rate

First, install the mutagen and python-nautilus-git.

Now, create a directory called python-extensions in `~/.nautilus`. Place the following script, named `bsc.py`, in this newly created folder. You may download the script here: [bsc.py] (please drop --stefanwilkens a line if this goes down)

Mirror: [bsc.py]

bas-v2.py adds fixes and more media support (link at bottom of 4th post).

Mirror: bsc-v2.py

Restart Files. You can now configure this new functionality in Edit -> Preferences -> List Columns

#### Thumbnails

You will need a tool for creating thumbnails, such as ffmpegthumbnailer. Make sure the necessary codecs are installed.

In a command line, enter these two lines:

    gconftool-2 -s "/desktop/gnome/thumbnailers/video@mpeg/enable" -t boolean "true"
    gconftool-2 -s "/desktop/gnome/thumbnailers/video@mpeg/command" -t string "/usr/bin/ffmpegthumbnailer -s %s -i %i -o %o -c png -f -t 10"

You can replace 'video@mpeg' in that line with any filetype that ffmpeg can open - just right-click > Properties on a file in GNOME Files and look at the bit in brackets in the 'Type:' field (don't forget to replace the forward slash with an @ symbol). Some common filetypes are video@mpeg, video@x-matroska, video@x-ms-wmv, video@x-flv, video@x-msvideo, video@mp4; which are usually .mpg, .mkv, .wmv, .flv, .avi, .mp4 respectively.

### Speed up panel autohide

#### panel_show_delay / panel_hide_delay

If you find that your panels are taking too long to appear/disappear when using the Panel Autohide feature, try this;

1. Start gconf-editor
2. Browse to /apps/panel/global
3. Set panel_hide_delay and panel_show_delay to more sensible (integer) values. Note that these values represent milliseconds!

The default panel_hide_delay of 500 works well in most cases, but the panel_show_delay default of 500 is horribly slow. After experimenting, a panel_show_delay between 100-200 seems much better.

#### Panel animation_speed

Now that the panel show/hide delay has the panels beginning to appear in a reasonable length of time, why does it take the panel so long to actually pop up? There is one more setting you need to add/change to make the panel behavior crisp. The setting `animation_speed`: ihis setting can be applied globally or on a per-panel basis just like the `panel_show_delay` and `panel_hide_delay`. The official description is:

The speed in which panel animations should occur. Possible values are slow, medium and fast. This key is only relevant if the enable_animations key is true.

To apply globally, just add or change the animation_speed key as a (string) value in:

- /apps/panel/global

To apply the setting on a per-panel basis, just add/change the key in, for example:

- /apps/panel/toplevels/bottom_panel_screen0/ (usually the default name for the bottom panel)
- /apps/panel/toplevels/panel_0/ (usually the default name for the first additional panel)

{Note|The key `panel_amination_speed` is deprecated, use: `animation_speed`.}}

### GNOME menu tips

#### Speed tweak

You can remove the delay in GNOME menus by appending "`gtk-menu-popup-delay = 0`" to `~/.gtkrc-2.0`.

However, this setting is reported to crash Banshee, and possibly other programs.

#### Menu editing

Most GNOME users complain about the menu. Changing menu entries system-wide or for one or several users alone is poorly documented.

    Alacarte is already covered in GNOME#Hiding_applications_from_the_menu -- ref. Talk:GNOME_tips#Updating

#### Change the GNOME foot icon to an Arch icon

Note: Thanks to arkham who posted this method in this forum post.

- Download this Arch icon (filename is `starthere.png`)
- Alternatively get the artwork package by installing archlinux-artwork, this puts all artwork in the `/usr/share/archlinux` directory, and resize your desired logo to 24x24px
- Figure out which icon set you are using (right-click desktop > Change Background Image > Theme > Customize > Icon). For example, Crux, *GNOME, High Contrast, High Contrast Inverse, Mist, etc.)
- Now make a backup of your current GNOME icon in the correct directory. In the example below, I am using the GNOME icons but adjust the directory structure accordingly for your icon set:

    # mv /usr/share/icons/gnome/24x24/places/start-here.png /usr/share/icons/gnome/24x24/places/start-here.png-virgin

- Copy `starthere.png` you just downloaded to the same directory renaming it start-here.png

    # cp /path/to/starthere.png /usr/share/icons/gnome/24x24/places/start-here.png

- Restart your gnome-panels and the new Arch logo should be displayed

    $ pkill gnome-panel

#### Change the GNOME foot icon to an Arch icon (without root access)

- Figure out which icon set you're using (right-click on desktop > Change Background Image > Theme > Customize > Icon). For example, Crux, *GNOME, High Contrast, High Contrast Inverse, Mist, etc.)
- Duplicate that icon set's directory structure for `24x24/places` in your home directory under .icons

    $ mkdir -p ~/.icons/your_icon_set/24x24/places

- Download this Arch icon into that directory as 'start-here.png'

    $ wget -O ~/.icons/your_icon_set/24x24/places/start-here.png http://i.imgur.com/vBpJDs7.png

- Alternatively get the artwork package using archlinux-artwork package, this puts all artwork in the /usr/share/archlinux directory, and resize your desired logo to 24x24px and copy it into that directory as 'start-here.png'
- Restart your gnome-panels and the new Arch logo should be displayed

    $ pkill gnome-panel

#### Custom icon using gconf-editor

1. Open the configuration editor in GNOME (it should be in System Tools of your main menu) or run `gconf-editor`
2. In the configuration editor go to apps > panel > objects > find the object for your menu (an easy way to spot the correct object is that it will have "Main Menu" in the tool tip section).
3. Set the path to your icon in the "Custom_Icon" field.
4. Check "Use_Custom_Icon" a little ways down.
5. The panel should reload momemtarily, if not, open a terminal window and type:

    $ killall gnome-panel

### Disabling scroll in taskbar

For years there is a "bug" in the GNOME taskbar: the mouse scroll switches the windows. The annoying feature if you have a good mice turns to be a real pain if you have the touchpad. It is impossible to scroll precisely using touchpad, so if you accidentally touch it when your mouse is on the taskbar, then all the windows will flash/switch wildly. There is no setting in gconf/preferences, that can disable this functionality. This is true for KDE 3, I do not know if problem persist in KDE 4. The solution was to install xfce4-panel, which hasn't scrolling at all and looks like default GNOME panel. The bug is better described here [1].

This bug will be probably never fixed, but we have the Arch Build System, so we can build custom software. Install abs (+70Mb), then

    cp -r /var/abs/extra/libwnck ~/Desktop/somewhere

Navigate to that directory, then

    makepkg --nobuild

This will download and extract the sources. Go to `src/libwnck-{version}/libwnck`. Edit `tasklist.c`, search for "scroll-event". You will see somethign like

    g_signal_connect(obj, "scroll-event", G_CALLBACK(wnck_tasklist_scroll_cb), NULL);

This line enables scroll-event handler, comment the line out (place /* before and */ after the line). Now go back to `~/Desktop/somewhere` and

    makepkg --noextract --syncdeps

You will need sudo to be able to install missing dependencies (intltool), but you can always install them separately if you do not want --syncdeps automatically. The --noextract option tells makepkg to not extract sources and use existing src/

    pacman -U libwnck-{version}.pkg.tar.gz

Then log out, log back in, and enjoy. Delete dir with the sources from you desktop, you may also uninstall abs if you want. Next step will be to add gconf option, but I will leave this for GNOME gurus. I just do not need this "feature", not even if I use the mouse (`Alt+Tab` is better anyway).

### Custom transitioning background

This will create a transitioning background similiar to the "cosmos" background found in the gnome-backgrounds package. There are three ways to do this.

Note: The image filenames must not have spaces in them.

#### Manual

You can create an XML file similiar to the one created by gnome-backgrounds in `/usr/share/backgrounds/cosmos/`.

    <background>
      <starttime>
        <hour>00</hour>
        <minute>00</minute>
        <second>01</second>
      </starttime>
    <!-- The first section set an arbitrary start time. -->
      <static>
        <duration>1795.0</duration>
        <file>/path/to/background1.jpg</file>
      </static>
      <transition>
        <duration>5.0</duration>
        <from>/path/to/background1.jpg</from>
        <to>/path/to/background2.jpg</to>
      </transition>
      <static>
        <duration>1795.0</duration>
        <file>/path/to/background2.jpg</file>
      </static>
      <transition>
        <duration>5.0</duration>
        <from>/path/to/background2.jpg</from>
        <to>/path/to/background1.jpg</to>
      </transition>
    </background>

Note that the <duration> tag sets each image as the background for 1795 seconds, or 29 minutes and 55 seconds, and the <transition> then takes 5 seconds. You can add any number of images as long as the last one transitions back to the first (if you want a full loop). Once completed, the XML file can be added to GNOME under System > Preferences > Appearance > Background tab > Add.

#### Automatic

There is also a script which automates this process:

     sed 's/^\<[^ ]*\>//')
      if [ "$(echo $xmlfile

Copy the code for the script above into a file called `mkwlppr` (short for "make wallpaper"). Make the script executable by typing:

    sudo chmod 711 mkwlppr

Move the file so that you can run it from any directory by just using its name:

    sudo mv mkwlppr /usr/local/bin

Execute the script; it will tell you what input it requires from you. Use the script with input to create as many wallpaper XML files as you want.

Note:

Since this script is not interactive, you can use Unix's wildcards with it if you want to use all files in a directory and/or if you do not care about the order of the images. You can specify paths relative to your current directory, and the script will put the files' absolute paths into the XML file for you; so you can create the XML file anywhere you want and move it afterward without rendering it useless. If you want to run the script inside the `/usr/share/backgrounds/` directory, you might have problems with permissions unless you run the command with sudo like this: `sudo mkwlppr -parameters` If you do not know what duration to specify for the images, simply do not provide a number in the input, and the progam will use the default values of 29 minutes and 55 seconds per image and a 5 second transition. For more information, please see this page.

#### GUI

If you prefer using a GUI, you can use Wallpapoz or install crebs from the AUR, which are apps for creating background slideshows for GNOME.

## gnome-screensaver

### Change gnome-screensaver background

The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.

Reason: Referencing a system wide link to a user home directory should be avoided. Better find a path in `/usr/local/share` to place a picture. (Discuss)

There is no option to change the screensaver's default background. The only way is do as root:

    # cd /usr/share/pixmaps/backgrounds/gnome
    # rm background-default.jpg
    # ln -s /home/user/my_background.jpg background-default.jpg

Note: You can save your wallpaper to a static path like `/home/user/wall.jpg` and configure gdm, gnome-desktop and gnome-screensaver to point at it. This way you can have the same wallpaper on each of them.

## See also

- GNOME

Category:

- GNOME