lxpanel for a wide screen

LXDE in Arch, with a left-side, vertical panel:

Right-click anywhere on the panel and select "Panel Settings" to open up the Panel Preferences window:

LXDE has never been the most polished desktop environment, but I like that it's lightweight, configurable, and comfortable to use for getting work done. Looks like LXDE's days are numbered, though; Lubuntu, for example, has switched to LXQt. I think I'm gonna try to keep LXDE for maybe a couple more years, until LXQt matures a bit.

lxde applications menu in openbox

In Openbox, I like to set up a "static" menu by editing the ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml file manually or by using the obmenu GUI. But I do like the "dynamic" LXDE Applications menu that's used in SalentOS (website: https://www.salentos.it/); I decided to try adding that  to a couple of my other Openbox desktops.

I found helpful information in post #2 of the "Dynamic menus on BunsenLabs - a comprehensive guide" thread at the BunsenLabs forums (here's a link: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=3387).

In the shot below, the LXDE Applications menu is added directly above the Debian menu; this is in my Openbox desktop on a Debian Stretch system that had KDE Plasma installed first (note the KDE apps in the menu):

I had to install the lxmenu-data and openbox-menu packages, then I edited ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml, adding the following just above the <menu id="/Debian"/> line:

<menu execute="openbox-menu lxde-applications.menu" id="apps" label="Applications"/>

Saved the file and did a "Reconfigure" in Openbox for the changes to take effect (might be necessary to Restart Openbox as well).

I followed the same steps for the Openbox desktop in another Stretch installation (this one has no desktop environment installed, though), except I also added the lxappearance and lxappearance-obconf packages in this case:

This gives me the "dynamic" Applications menu from LXDE as well as the "static" menu entries that I'd already set up myself (under the web browsers, file managers, utilities, etc., submenus). That's more of a menu than I really need; if I get around to it, I may trim things down and go with a simpler menu like what I'm using in SalentOS. Here's a shot of that Openbox desktop:

knoppix live

I played around with Knoppix live CDs when I was first starting out with Linux. Knoppix sold me on Linux more than anything else did. I decided to take another look at Knoppix this week; the live session is still great for "demo" purposes, and of course it's also a great maintenance/rescue tool to have sitting around in the toolbox.

I downloaded KNOPPIX_7.7.1DVD-2016-10-22-EN.iso, the English language Knoppix 7.7.1. It's a hefty 4.3GB download.

Supposedly, you can now run flash-knoppix [iso name] from within another distro (from Debian, for example) to get Knoppix onto a flash drive. I didn't find any good documentation for this procedure, so I didn't try it. But users can also run flash-knoppix from within a running Knoppix live session, and that does a fine job of creating the bootable Knoppix flash drive.

Or you can order a flash drive from an online vendor such as OSDisc:

The default LXDE desktop in Knoppix 7.7.1:

LXDE is the default desktop, but GNOME and KDE sessions are available. The GNOME session failed to boot up for me, but I did get a KDE Plasma 5 session with the knoppix desktop=kde boot option. For some reason, there are no application icons on the default panel, but the Application Launcher works ok. Here's KDE in Knoppix 7.7.1:

Knoppix is loaded with apps -- probably more apps than I've seen shipped with any other distro. The Accessories submenu alone contains too many items to show in one screen shot:

Here's a link to the release announcement at DistroWatch: https://www.distrowatch.com/?newsid=09610

You'll want to check out the release notes, for sure: http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/knoppix771-en.html

a simple fix

Geeqie, one of my favorite image viewers for Linux:

Some may recall an image viewer from several years back, called GQview; Geeqie is a fork of that app. You can still find GQview in Arch AUR, but I don't think it's being maintained.

Running Geeqie, you can toggle back and forth to/from fullscreen mode by tapping the "f" key. However, I noticed that I couldn't get fullscreen mode to work in either LXDE or Openbox in Arch. I couldn't understand this, because it worked fine in Xfce on the same Arch installation.

When trying to go to fullscreen mode in LXDE or Openbox, I did get a second Geeqie icon on the panel, but that was it:

I started up Geeqie from the command line and tapped the "f" key to see what output I got:

From The Geeqie User Manual, section 10.3 ("Window Options"):

10.3.3.  Full Screen

Location

Selects the location and position of the full screen window. 'Determined by window manager' will leave the window placement up to the window manager. 'Active screen' places the window on the same screen as the Geeqie main window. 'Active monitor' does the same, but limits the full screen window size to the monitor containing the main window [...]


So, I went into Geeqie's preferences, to the Windows tab; in the "Full screen" section, I changed "Location" from "Determined by Window Manager" to "Active screen":
 

Now, Geeqie's fullscreen mode works fine in Openbox. Command line output now looks like this:

fullscreen.c:301: Original vindow is not visible, enabling std. fullscreen mode


Problem solved. Hope this helps somebody.

trying lxde in arch

I first set up this Arch installation with Xfce and the xdm-archlinux display manager. Decided later to add LXDE; and, I switched display managers, going with LightDM, which is nice for choosing from different desktop environments/window managers at login.

# pacman -S lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter
# systemctl -f enable lightdm.service


For info and instructions about display managers for Arch, man pages and the documentation at the Arch wiki prove essential.


To get a screenshot of the greeter screen, first I had to add xorg-server-xephyr:

# pacman -S xorg-server-xephyr

Then I used dm-tool to run start a nested display of the greeter screen, and took a screenshot of that:

$ dm-tool add-nested-seat --fullscreen
 

Alt-F4 gets you back to the desktop. Also, see dm-tool --help.

In Arch's default LXDE, I wasn't able to change the number of desktops/workspaces. The thing to note here is that not all options for configuring Openbox are available with the lxappearance-obconf plugin (and that obconf is needed to change the number of desktops in LXDE). So:

# pacman -S obconf

A clean look at how I've got the desktop set up at the moment:

easy on the eyes

antiX-15 is nice, but finally I decided to replace it with Debian Jessie's LXDE spin. I used debian-8.2.0-i386-lxde-CD-1.iso for the installation.

Here's a shot of the default desktop in Jessie LXDE:

I set up LXDE like this:

I like LXDE, but after awhile, I logged out, logged into the Openbox session, and set that up. Once again, I went with the tint2 panel, and I chose Nitrogen for handling wallpapers. This was a quick and easy process because I had config files for Openbox and Nitrogen saved from earlier installations; I just copied them over, tweaked 'em a bit, added a few other things (like obmenu, volumeicon-alsa, a script for random wallpapers, etc.), and everything was good to go. A couple of shots:

Simple, speedy, and set up nicely for getting work done. Kinda pleasant to look at, too.