Tint2, a very versatile panel

tint2 is a panel / taskbar for Linux. Its developers describe it as simple, light, and that does not get in your way. It is highly customizable, and items such as clock, notification area, application list, and battery monitor can be added or removed.

tint2 is a project created especially for users of desktop environments or window manager that don't have a certain panel, like open box; but this does not mean that if you use where, gnome, xfce or other, you can't use this panel. Also, I think it is important to mention that consumes very few resources, and has no gtk or qt dependencies.

Features

In its most recent version, 0.11, its features are:

• Notifications area
• Clock and date
• Battery status
• Easy to customize (color, transparency, border, background)
• Send tasks from one desktop (workspace) to another
• Ability to switch desktop (workspace)
• Work with multiple monitors
• Respond to mouse actions
• Self-hide

Installation

En Ubuntu (from version 9.10):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa: killeroid / ppa && sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude install tint2

En Ubuntu 9.04:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/killeroid/ppa/ubuntu jaunty deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/killeroid/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com C4412AEB3B1D5F58E8149B7DD9DAAF25C26CCF8E

En Debian:
Add to / Etc / apt / sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/killeroid/ppa/ubuntu lucid main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/killeroid/ppa/ubuntu lucid main

Add the authentication key, update and install

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys C26CCF8E sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install tint2

En Gentoo:

emerge -av tint2

En Arch:

sudo pacman -S tint2

To start running the panel, with Alt + F2 or from a terminal:

tint2

For tint2 start running from the beginning, you can add it to your list of startup applications.

Configuration

To configure the panel to your liking, you must edit the file found in /home/user/.config/tint2/ and is called .tint2rc.

The complete setup guide is located here, I recommend reading it to know what options you have to configure, and how to do it. I must tell you that the configuration it is made by hand, with a text editor like nano, gedit, kate o leaf pad.

A tip: if you want to have notification area (system tray) in tint2, make sure you don't have another one running in another panel or in a dock; since they can only have one at a time.

Some screenshots of how your panel may look:

In a friend blog, Linux Paradise, its author was given the task of collecting different configuration files, you can download them below:

tintwizard

For those who feel uncomfortable editing the tint2 configuration file by hand, this program is a graphical interface for editing them.

After downloading it, they extract its content into a folder, and open a terminal in that folder. To make it executable, use the following command:

chmod + x tintwizard.py

And to use it, they can double click on tintwizard.py, or from the same terminal:

./tintwizard.py