SliTaz Desktop
Introduction
The default SliTaz desktop is brought to you by many different components. JWM (Joe's Window Manager) and LXPanel combine to provide a Desktop providing simplicity and functionality.
JWM - Joe's Window Manager
Joe's window manager, written in C is quick, simple, clean, stable and efficient. JWM proposes a taskbar, a menu of icons and a pager for the management of virtual desktops, the taskbar can also act as a dock. In addition it is easily configurable with a single text file that can change the menu, fonts and their sizes and different colors.
Use and configure JWM
The application of Joe's Window Manager is very fast. To view the menu just
click somewhere on the desktop. You can resize a window through the edges or
corners, minimize or pass a virtual desktop to another via a pager. You
also have configurable keyboard shortcuts for faster access to the applications
that you use the most. On SliTaz the system configuration file is
/etc/jwm/system.jwmrc
. Apart from this file, each user can use
its own configuration file hidden in ~/.jwmrc
. This is a text file using XML
syntax, it can edited with a simple text editor - lines beginning with:
<!--
are comments that let you understand what each tag does.
To facilitate the customization of the desktop, SliTaz automatically copies at the launch of the first (graphical) session, a system configuration file to the root directory of the user. You can directly modify this file and test without risk. To edit with your favorite text editor:
$ geany $HOME/.jwmrc &
To retrieve an original configuration file, you can copy the system configuration
file and rename it .jwmrc
in your home directory:
$ cp /etc/jwm/system.jwmrc $HOME/.jwmrc
The tag RootMenu
corresponds to the menu displayed by clicking on one of the
(three) buttons on the mouse. To add a category, you must use the tag: Menu
- this contains entries for various programs. Any entry in the JWM menu can
fit on one line. Example using the GQview image management application:
<Program icon="gqview.png" label="GQview">gqview</Program>
There are still many opportunities to configure RootMenu
according to the
mouse buttons, the choice of method to move windows, create groups, etc.
The Manual is available online at the official website of the project. To view
a list of command-line options, just type jwm -h
in a terminal.
Create your own JWM style
Creating your own graphical style with JWM is relatively quick
and easy, the tags are clear and the attributes possible
are given in the comments. When preparing your work, you can
see your amendments by restarting the window manager from the
menu or via the jwm -restart
command. In the configuration
file, style tags start after the <!-- Visual Styles --> comment. To
begin, here is a short list of the main style tags with a short
description:
Background
manages the wallpaper. This tag supports thesolid
,gradient
,image
ortile
attributes, to respectively; use a solid color, create a gradient, display a resized image or tile an image.BorderStyle
controls the windows border.TrayStyle
controls a taskbar. The taskbar may, among other things be automatically hidden or only fill a part of the screen with thewidth
attribute.TrayListStyle
controls the style of the list of open windows on the current desktop.PagerStyle
controls the pager displaying different virtual desktops (4 by default).MenuStyle
defines the menu style.- The icons are defined by the
IconPath
tag, you can use your own personal icons by specifing the full path to the directory that contains them. Note that you can specify more than one path, if you want, you can use your own icons and those contained in the/usr/share/pixmaps
and/usr/share/icons
system directories. SliTaz uses the Tango theme icons: tango.freedesktop.org for the menu, they are 16x16 and are stored in/usr/share/icons/Tango
. You can add, edit, delete these... If you want to install new icons in your user space, we advise you to use~/Picture/Icons
(set as default) or a hidden directory~/.Icons
.
The colors can be defined by their name or RGB number, such
as #3A4956
. To use colors in their gradient mode, you must
specify the two colors separated by a colon, example
#6C0023:#3E1220
. You can change fonts and their sizes by
using the Font
tag. There are still some small things that
you can change to customize your desktop, such as the name
of a menu item and its icon. Before restarting JWM with your
new configuration file, you can check its syntax by using
the command: jwm -p
. To explore further, the official
handbook describes all the tags, options and valid attributes.
You can view it online at the JWM website.
JWM website
- www.joewing.net/programs/jwm/ - The official website of Joe's Window Manager, providing news and a comprehensive manual.
- #jwm on irc.freenode.net - The JWM IRC discussion channel on Freenode server.
LXPanel
LXPanel is part of the LXDE project and follows the Freedesktop standards. Menus
are dynamically generated by adding .desktop
files to the
/usr/share/applications
directory.
*.desktop files
A single .desktop file
can contain eight lines with respectively:-
the name (Name
), generic name, comment, the command to
execute (Exec
), icon, type and Freedesktop categories.
Example of a .desktop file:
[Desktop Entry] Name=XTerm GenericName=Terminal Comment=Run commands in a shell Exec=xterm -bg black -fg white -cr orange -sb -bd violet -rightbar Icon=xterm.png Type=Application Categories=Utility;Terminal;
Note that the icons are located in /usr/share/icons
or
/usr/share/pixmaps
directory. The Categories
entry states where the program will sit in the menu.
The system configuration file is located in /etc/lxpanel
and can also be stored locally in ~/.config
though it is
recommended that you configure LXPanel graphically by using the
preferences entry in the main menu.
LXPanel configurator
The LXPanel configurator has 3 tabs:-
General
handles the position, size - either dynamic or fixed, panel background and properties.Plugins
lets you add, remove, edit and move plugins around on the panel.Applications
allows you to set preferred applications like the file manager, terminal and logout command.
The official website for the LXDE project and LXPanel can be found here.