customizing Dektop

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: customizing Dektop
started by: xmak

Posted by xmak on Feb. 01 2005,12:43

There are some things I want to do with my DSL but I don't know how. Please help...

Desktop issues. How to:

- remove those two windows in the bottom, the one on the left with the workspaces, and the other on the right with floppy, CDROM icons and CPU meter.
- change or remove background

I figured out all the rest pretty much by myself, but I just can't find where to change this two.

Also, is there any posibility to customize the taskbar?

General issues. How to:

- automatically log in a specified user when the system starts
- present users a graphical login screen when system starts

Posted by mikshaw on Feb. 01 2005,16:30

- remove those two windows in the bottom, the one on the left with the workspaces, and the other on the right with floppy, CDROM icons and CPU meter.
Edit /home/dsl/.xinitrc, removing the "enhance" lines.

- change or remove background
bsetroot, bsetbg or xsri to change the background. The command is contained in your style file or in .fluxbox/init

- any posibility to customize the taskbar?
What do you have in mind? Any available customization is done in /home/dsl/.fluxbox/init and the current style.

- automatically log in a specified user when the system starts
Can't remember offhand, but it's probably somewhere in /etc/init.d. User dsl is automatically logged in, so I assume you could just change 'dsl' to a different user (if i could remember where that happens).

- present users a graphical login screen when system starts
You'd need to install something like xdm and change the default runlevel. I can't tell you the specifics because I don't use a graphical login.

Posted by uzi on Feb. 24 2005,19:43

=0 JUST WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR!!!
had a quick question though regarding logins
what about a cui login instead of d/ling an app for a gui login (does that happen automatically when i create a new user?

and now that i think about, another questions is
as far as modding the taskbar - is there a way to stretch it across the screen or something like that? i'd like to be able to select what system info is avail on the bars and set there sizes and such

thanks for the help in advance

Posted by mikshaw on Feb. 24 2005,21:16

cli login would require basically the same thing. I heard recently that it is actually root which is logged in, and root su's to dsl....maybe it's /etc/inittab? I still don't know for sure.

toolbar: It's all in /home/dsl/.fluxbox/init
tools: < http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/docbook/en/html/chap-toolbar.html >
All other options are pretty easy to understand from their names in the init file (widthPercent, placement, visble). The width of each tool dynamically changes according to its contents, and the height is determined by the font size (except in the newer development releases). Font size is set in the current style file.

After making changes to init you will need to reload flux configuration, and in flux stable I think a few options cannot be changed while fluxbox is running .

Posted by tronik on Feb. 25 2005,06:13

terminal logins are usually handled by a getty. check /etc/inittab

root does su to user 'dsl' the information you're looking for is in /.bash_profile

Posted by ericd on Mar. 07 2005,22:01

Posted by ericd on Mar. 07 2005,22:11

Sorry I found it
I was looking for the "ehance" script (2 hours !) and I finally found the "eNhanced" script... in /usr/bin
grrrrrrrrrrrrrr..............;
Eric

Posted by mikshaw on Mar. 08 2005,02:03

My advice (take it or leave it...doesn't really matter):
Forget /usr/bin/enhance, particularly if you are using liveCD or frugal.

Enhance is a shell script, same as .xinitrc. Enhance was created presumably to make x startup simpler, but in my opinion it only complicates things. Anything you want to start with X can be put into /home/dsl/.xinitrc. Having xinitrc start a script which in turn starts a collection of other things is just making things unnecessarily complex. If enhance were to actually simplify things, it should probably be rewritten in such a way that it accepts options. At this time xinitrc starts dillo and enhance, which basically gives you all or nothing unless the user understands a bit about shell scripting and can edit the files.
With enhance checking for command options, the script could be launched from xinitrc with only the progs that the user specifies.
Example:
"enhance icons mount" in .xinitrc could launch enhance only with the icons and mount.app. This would allow for the extra code in enhance to still work, and give the user a little more control without needing to know a lot about shell scripts.