LXDE Troubles

[teh-steve]

Hello!

I've always used XFCE4 in the past, but I decided to give LXDE a shot on my new netbook. So, I went and installed lxde-meta. Unfortunately, it seems like Gentoo's LXDE support is pretty horrible. So, I'm wondering if anyone can offer me some advice. The LXDE Wiki and Gentoo LXDE project page are both rather lacking and really only explain how to unmask packages and emerge them. Here are my problems.

• No wallpaper. My configuration file seems to be set correctly and the wallpaper file that I'm trying to display absolutely exists. However, I just get a black desktop. Here's my ~/.config/pcmanfm/main.lxde configuration. And again, the jpg file absolutely exists.

  Code: Select all

  [Desktop]
  show_wallpaper=1
  wallpaper=/usr/share/lxde/wallpapers/lxde_blue.jpg

• The taskbar has a nice black gradient texture. However, the application buttons are bright and don't match at all! They're currently set to match my theme, but none of the provided Openbox themes actually seem to change these buttons.
• There are two icons on the taskbar that appear as white boxes with red "X"s in them. For now, I've just removed these plugins from the taskbar. I wonder where the icons are, though.
• The right-click desktop menu lists "PCManFM", "Xterm", and "Firefox" in the Applications list. Two of these programs aren't even installed. New programs that I do install aren't listed. Is there some way to modify this behavior so that the menu lists installed applications like XFCE does?
• LXNM (the LX Network Manager) appears to be missing from Portage entirely.
• In order to install the LXDE music player, I needed to install multiple Gnome libraries. It appears that this music player absolutely needs to have a notification daemon (why?) and the ebuilds only allows for the XFCE notification daemon or x11-misc/notifcation-daemon, which has Gnome dependencies. Does anyone know how to remove this annoying dependency from the music player? The whole point of using a lightweight DE is to get away from heavier DEs like Gnome!
• No desktop icons. They just don't exist. I'm betting that this problem is related to the no wallpaper problem. I had a similar issue once in XFCE4 and fixed it by starting the XFCE-Session process, but the LXDE-Session process is already running. So, any other ideas?
• I only have the "Raleigh" theme for the widgets. The LXDE screens always show a number of themes available. Does anyone know which package I need to get these other themes?
• The xorg-server package does not have any font dependencies. Fine. The lxde-meta package also doesn't have any font dependencies. So, a new user would install both, start LXDE, and wonder where their fonts are. Is that really a good idea? Perhaps we could at least get a warning added to the end of the lxde-meta ebuild that the user should install some fonts?

I know it's a lot, but I'm having trouble finding much on the 'Net regarding LXDE in Gentoo.

Cheers!

[Gusar]

• No wallpaper. My configuration file seems to be set correctly and the wallpaper file that I'm trying to display absolutely exists. However, I just get a black desktop. Here's my ~/.config/pcmanfm/main.lxde configuration. And again, the jpg file absolutely exists.

  Code: Select all

  [Desktop]
  show_wallpaper=1
  wallpaper=/usr/share/lxde/wallpapers/lxde_blue.jpg

You need to start pcmanfm as 'pcmanfm --desktop' if you want it managing the desktop. Or maybe it's 'pcmanfm -desktop' I'm not sure.

[*]The taskbar has a nice black gradient texture. However, the application buttons are bright and don't match at all! They're currently set to match my theme, but none of the provided Openbox themes actually seem to change these buttons.

Openbox manages and decorates windows. That's all it does. The panel, gtk theme, etc, are completely separate from that.

[*]There are two icons on the taskbar that appear as white boxes with red "X"s in them. For now, I've just removed these plugins from the taskbar. I wonder where the icons are, though.

They were shortcuts to apps you don't have installed. Firefox was one of them for sure.

[*]The right-click desktop menu lists "PCManFM", "Xterm", and "Firefox" in the Applications list. Two of these programs aren't even installed. New programs that I do install aren't listed. Is there some way to modify this behavior so that the menu lists installed applications like XFCE does?

The right-click menu is from openbox. It's totally independent from the panel and it's menu. I know of obmenu to manage it. There's also maybe an app that will automatically generate a menu, but I don't know which that would be.

[*]LXNM (the LX Network Manager) appears to be missing from Portage entirely.

LXNM never did much and I don't think is still being developed. Wicd would be my recommendation if you want a graphical network manager.

[*]In order to install the LXDE music player, I needed to install multiple Gnome libraries. It appears that this music player absolutely needs to have a notification daemon (why?) and the ebuilds only allows for the XFCE notification daemon or x11-misc/notifcation-daemon, which has Gnome dependencies. Does anyone know how to remove this annoying dependency from the music player? The whole point of using a lightweight DE is to get away from heavier DEs like Gnome!

Modify the ebuild. Or install the xfce notifier, it has less dependencies. And maybe file a bug to make the libnotify dependency of lxmusic a USE flag.

[*]No desktop icons. They just don't exist. I'm betting that this problem is related to the no wallpaper problem. I had a similar issue once in XFCE4 and fixed it by starting the XFCE-Session process, but the LXDE-Session process is already running. So, any other ideas?

Yep, it's related to the wallpaper problem. So same solution as there.

[*]I only have the "Raleigh" theme for the widgets. The LXDE screens always show a number of themes available. Does anyone know which package I need to get these other themes?

That would be x11-themes/gtk-engines. Then there's individually packaged themes in the x11-themes category.

[*]The xorg-server package does not have any font dependencies. Fine. The lxde-meta package also doesn't have any font dependencies. So, a new user would install both, start LXDE, and wonder where their fonts are. Is that really a good idea? Perhaps we could at least get a warning added to the end of the lxde-meta ebuild that the user should install some fonts?[/list]

That's a valid concern, yeah. File a bug.


Hope that helps a bit.

[teh-steve]

• No wallpaper. My configuration file seems to be set correctly and the wallpaper file that I'm trying to display absolutely exists. However, I just get a black desktop. Here's my ~/.config/pcmanfm/main.lxde configuration. And again, the jpg file absolutely exists.

  Code: Select all

  [Desktop]
  show_wallpaper=1
  wallpaper=/usr/share/lxde/wallpapers/lxde_blue.jpg

You need to start pcmanfm as 'pcmanfm --desktop' if you want it managing the desktop. Or maybe it's 'pcmanfm -desktop' I'm not sure.

It's pcmanfm --desktop, but why is this not the default behavior? It's almost like whoever packaged LXDE for Gentoo intentionally made the user experience horrible. Anyway, it just gives me this output and then does nothing until I ctrl+c:

Code: Select all

** (pcmanfm:21750): DEBUG: FmJob error: The specified directory is not valid
** (pcmanfm:21750): DEBUG: try automount

It was running as "pcmanfm -d" before, so I tried "pcmanfm --desktop -d". Same output, and it never backgrounds as it should.

[*]There are two icons on the taskbar that appear as white boxes with red "X"s in them. For now, I've just removed these plugins from the taskbar. I wonder where the icons are, though.

They were shortcuts to apps you don't have installed. Firefox was one of them for sure.

No, they weren't. One of them appeared in the "Application Launch Bar" plugin, but it was still a broken icon when I installed Firefox. If I opened the properties menu for that plugin, the icon was displayed as a gear with no label. The other appeared at the end of the taskbar, not in the Application Launch Bar. I've removed it and I don't recall what it was named.

[*]The right-click desktop menu lists "PCManFM", "Xterm", and "Firefox" in the Applications list. Two of these programs aren't even installed. New programs that I do install aren't listed. Is there some way to modify this behavior so that the menu lists installed applications like XFCE does?

The right-click menu is from openbox. It's totally independent from the panel and it's menu. I know of obmenu to manage it. There's also maybe an app that will automatically generate a menu, but I don't know which that would be.

It looks like I don't get this menu when pcmanfm is managing the desktop instead. I still don't have wallpaper or icons because pcmanfm is stuck as I mentioned above, but I do have a new menu! This new menu lists "New", "Paste", "Select All", "Invert Selection", "Sort Files", and "Desktop Preferences". It's more like a Windows menu than an XFCE menu, but I can deal with it.

I've noticed two things, though. First, when I right-click to bring up this menu, it won't allow me to focus any windows until I left-click somewhere on the desktop to remove it. Shouldn't it just go away when I focus a different window? That sounds like a bug somewhere in LXDE.

Second, the new menu matches the ugly buttons on my taskbar and I assume, then, that it's using the GTK+ theme (Raleigh, since I only have the one installed, apparently). The old menu was black and looked just like the old taskbar texture. Now, the taskbar texture is set through LXDE. You say that Openbox gave me that menu. It's rather odd that the taskbar was designed to match the Openbox menu if the Openbox menu is replaced when pcmanfm is running properly, no?

[*]LXNM (the LX Network Manager) appears to be missing from Portage entirely.

LXNM never did much and I don't think is still being developed. Wicd would be my recommendation if you want a graphical network manager.

I suppose that the LXDE folks should be more clear on their website, then. Fair enough. Wicd appears to have only a few small dependencies, so I'll give that a shot later. Thanks.

[*]In order to install the LXDE music player, I needed to install multiple Gnome libraries. It appears that this music player absolutely needs to have a notification daemon (why?) and the ebuilds only allows for the XFCE notification daemon or x11-misc/notifcation-daemon, which has Gnome dependencies. Does anyone know how to remove this annoying dependency from the music player? The whole point of using a lightweight DE is to get away from heavier DEs like Gnome!

Modify the ebuild. Or install the xfce notifier, it has less dependencies. And maybe file a bug to make the libnotify dependency of lxmusic a USE flag.

Hm. I'll file a bug later today, but I don't really have much experience working with ebuilds.

[*]I only have the "Raleigh" theme for the widgets. The LXDE screens always show a number of themes available. Does anyone know which package I need to get these other themes?

That would be x11-themes/gtk-engines. Then there's individually packaged themes in the x11-themes category.

Thanks. Again, I wish something notified me of this package when I installed LXDE. Maybe I should file a bug with the LXDE documentation folks to have them update the install guide?

[*]The xorg-server package does not have any font dependencies. Fine. The lxde-meta package also doesn't have any font dependencies. So, a new user would install both, start LXDE, and wonder where their fonts are. Is that really a good idea? Perhaps we could at least get a warning added to the end of the lxde-meta ebuild that the user should install some fonts?[/list]

That's a valid concern, yeah. File a bug.

Will do. Thanks again.