A Guide To Installing Lxde

[mindlord]

Accoring the the Archlinux tips and tricks wiki:

LXsession Full

There are some bugs in lxsession related to session management. lxsession-lite is a version of lxsession which does not have the session management capability. The stability of lxsession-lite is better than lxsession, however it can not save and restore sessions. Thus it is recommended to use lxsession-lite till the problems in lxsession are fixed.

Seems to me full session management on a Pandora is kinda useless anyways.

Also:

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.

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.

Fountain of knowledge that article.

Autostart Programs

.desktop files

First you can link a program's .desktop in /usr/share/applications/ file to ~/.config/autostart/. For example, to execute lxterminal automatically at startup:

$ ln -s /usr/share/applications/lxterminal.desktop ~/.config/autostart/

Once .desktop files have been added you can manipulate them with the GUI configuration tool lxsession-edit.

autostart file

The second method is to use a ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart file. This file is not a shell script, but each line represents a command to be executed, if a line begins with a @ symbol, the command following the @ will be automatically re-executed if it crashes. For example, to execute lxterminal and leafpad automatically at startup:
File: ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart

@lxterminal
@leafpad

Note: The commands do not end with a & symbol.

There is also a global autostart file at /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart. If both files are present, all entries in both files will be executed.

Autostarting xfce4-power-manager works using this method.

 

[OilySalmon]

I'll bet that using openbox in place of xfce's WM would slim it down further still. That's want I want for my Pandora: Arch linux (not likely, not without a lot of work) running openbox, conky, xcompmgr for the eyecandy and a simple panel on startup. That setup on the desktop uses ~60 megs of RAM when totally idle. I can only imagine how useful it'd be for the Pandora...

 

[mindlord]

@OilySalmon - We are already using openbox as the WM in this scenario. xcompmgr won't work without work, that is unless there is a GL/ES port of it, and there isn't any that I'm aware of. conky should work without much effort.

 

[sebt3]

xcompmgr won't work without work, that is unless there is a GL/ES port of it, and there isn't any that I'm aware of. conky should work without much effort.

xcompmgr use the COMPOSITE xorg extention. This one have a GL and a render backend.
XFVM (xfce window manager) does Xrender compositing just fine on the pandora (transparancies and shadows). I cant see why xcompmgr wont work.

 

[mindlord]

I guess some brave soul will have to try it out then.

 

[chris_c]

xsession.d seems not to be the way to go - you end up with 2 power managers on xfce - I do want these to play well together

nice find with the autostart mindlord!

 

[mindlord]

Points of interest:
I was able to install lxsession-lite after installing lx-session by:

sudo opkg --force-overwrite --force-reinstall lxsession-lite

Once I did this, I didn't actually have window decorations anymore, and there are tons of xfce-centric icons in the menu. BONUS however! Just like Pokeparadox I can reboot and sshutdown from the logout menu.

autostarting applications does not work exactly as described in the Arch wiki article. Your autostart file should be placed in the:
~/Applications/Settings/lxsession/LXDE/ folder.
My autostart now contains:

@openbox-lxde
@xfce4-power-manger

This starts openbox and the battery monitor and ensures it relaunches in the event of a crash.

You can also link .desktop files in the /Applications/Settings/autostart folder to have applications launch on start.

If you don't like clearlooks, you have a few options for window decorations.

openbox-theme-clearlooks
openbox-theme-artwiz-boxed
openbox-theme-bear2	
openbox-theme-clearlooks
openbox-theme-clearlooks-olive
openbox-theme-mikachu	
openbox-theme-natura	
openbox-theme-onyx	
openbox-theme-onyx-citrus
openbox-theme-orang	
openbox-theme-syscrash

Whichever one you install last will be the default and you can remove the ones you aren't interested in. I personally like onyx since it matches the default LXDE theme nicely.

I was not able to get xcompmgr to install.

 

[chris_c]

got the menu button working

unfortunatly using the override file mentioned in the config file doesn't seem to work so you have to

sudo mousepad /etc/xdg/openbox/rc.xml

look for the keyboard section and inside it add

  <keybind key="XF86MenuKB">
    <action name="execute">
      <command>lxpanelctl menu</command>
    </action>
  </keybind>

I think we're starting to get close to being able to make an automagical lxde install script in a pnd....

 

[mindlord]

sudo mousepad /etc/xdg/openbox/rc.xml

You shouldn't modify that file. It will get overwritten during updates. Instead, edit ~/Applications/Settings/openbox/lxde-rc.xml

 

[chris_c]

sudo mousepad /etc/xdg/openbox/rc.xml

You shouldn't modify that file. It will get overwritten during updates. Instead, edit ~/Applications/Settings/openbox/lxde-rc.xml

II was well aware of that however the config file itself told me the wrong location so I couldn't get it working


noticed quite a problem with auto mounting when inserting a card it gets mounted in another location - a right pain in the arse!

also noticed there's no gui way to unmount...

 

[zRichi]

Nice, might give that a go.

 

[chris_c]

Nice, might give that a go.

just ditch the stuff about the full session package install and use the session-lite package which is auto installed
by one of the task packages in the first post, work down post's looking at what mindlord has to say too and you should get there easily enough.