[Tips] Improving LXDE

Since a good part of the blog articles are intended for Xfce, KDE, and one that another occasional criticism of Gnome, I wanted to give his place to LXDE. We know that by default LXDE it is not as complete as, e.g., Xfce. Sometimes you even have to resort to parts of other desks to leave it at ease. Today I bring you several Tips that will allow you to have a LXDE more at ease 😉

Before we start, I assume you already have at least the distro ready (if they are going to start from scratch ...). That is, they already have Xorg, session manager (if they use) Y LXDE installed. For LXDE it is recommended LXDM as a session manager, although I like it better LightDM.

In case you have not yet installed the distro, or the desktop, it would be convenient to leave some here:

• Archlinux: base installation (DesdeLinux) (Gespadas), LXDE installation (DesdeLinux) (Gespadas).
• Debian: base installation (Taringa), LXDE installation (Wiki).

Those are Two examples that I can give. I don't rewrite them by hand because they are already there, you just need to link them. In my case, I did it in Archlinux, and I used the 4 guides, comparing them and adding in one what was missing in another. I recommend that.

I also noticed that Elav had made a mini guide before, I will include some things here since you have to give it some merit 😉

Good. Let us begin.

LXMED, a menu editor for LXDE

 First thing's first. This will be needed for some parts of this tutorial. LX Menu Editor was designed with the aim of providing LXDE un Menu editor simple, but effective. And in fact, Not only It works with LXDE, also I have successfully tested it with Xfce : )

The only thing that requires LXMED to work is Java (OpenJDK / Oracle whatever works) and, depending on the distro, gksu / beesu / etc ...

We download it here. Then, we unzip it, we enter the folder, and in a terminal we do:

sudo ./install.sh

And it will have been installed. We will find it in the menu LXDE under the category «Preferences«, Although curiously there will be the Name in english. Do you think the same as me? We will edit the menu entry, of the menu editor, with the menu editor itself: Menu-Inception 😛

We open LXMED and it will ask us for the root password. We introduce it, click on «Accept" and ready. Let's go to the category «Preferences»And click on«Menu Editor", Then in "Edit«. In name, then place what you want. I wrote "Edit the main menu«.

Desktop shortcuts

Whoever has used other desks like Xfce, you may have noticed that from the beginning there are a few Shortcuts for Personal folder, Trash, etc.

LXDE I used to bring one for the Personal folder, it was called My Documents (Windows Detected? XD), but it is gone. So, we will modify algunos pitchers to get a similar result.

We open the menu of LXDE, and we look for the File Manager »Right Click» Add to Desktop. In total, we will do that about 3 times. The following is to open each one of them with a text editor and modify the parts indicated below:

For the computer icon:

Icon=computer
Name=Equipo (o como prefieran).
Name[es]=Igual que en Name.
Exec=pcmanfm computer:///

For the Personal Folder icon:

Icon=user-home
Name=Carpeta Personal (o como prefieran).
Name[es]=Igual que en Name.
Exec=pcmanfm ~

For the trash can icon:

Icon=empytrash.png
Name=Papelera (o como prefieran).
Name[es]=Igual que en Name.
Exec=pcmanfm trash:///

With that we should already have the three basic icons on the desktop 🙂 With those same steps you can create other shortcuts.

Edit LXDE keyboard shortcuts

LXDE it doesn't come by default with a tool like this. But since LXDE uses Openbox, we can use obkey 🙂 To install it on Debian it would be:

sudo apt-get install obkey

And for Arch:

sudo pacman -S obkey

By default Obkey opens the file open box who is in ~ / config / openbox / rc.xml. But, if we launch it this way:

obkey ~/.config/openbox/lxde-rc.xml

So if you open the file LXDE. Now, let's say we want pressing the key [Print] run scrotum to take a screenshot… We execute the previous command, click on the second top bar icon (the one to add). In the section Actions, we select «Run«, And at the top, where it says«command»We write, for example:

scrot '%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S_$wx$h.png' -e 'mv $f /home/usuario/Capturas/'

I must not say that «user»Is your username or yes? That would create a screenshot with time and date, and I would keep it in the folder "Catches" from your Home. Finally, click on the keyboard shortcut in the list, and press the key [Print]. We save, and voila! A new keyboard shortcut.

Add important shortcuts to the LXDE menu

Since i knew that LXMED let me modify the menu, I ran to create some shortcuts to modify common LXDE options Instantly.

The one that says «LXDE autostart»Is a shortcut to modify applications or processes that are started with LXDE.

«LightDM GTK Greeter»Is to modify the GTK appearance of LightDM.

I also created one in the accessories section, called «File manager (root)" That opens PCManFM as root.

Coincidentally, there is also one that opens Obkey pointing to the LXDE file 🙂 It's called «Edit LXDE keyboard shortcuts«.

Replace LXPanel with LXPanelX

The truth, to the panel LXDE it's missing some features that would make it more customizable / useful, so… why don't we change it? Some time ago a LXDE panel fork, LLAMADA LXPanelX. Maybe it's a little heavier than the LXPanel traditional, but if they are willing to spend a little more RAM do not hesitate to try it 🙂

First of all, we must make a change in the file LXDE autostart. So as root, using our favorite editor, we will open it. For example:

sudo leafpad /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart

Inside it, we will see a line that says:

@lxpanel --profile LXDE

We will simply change it like this:

@lxpanelx --profile LXDE

And ready. Now, to apply the change immediately, and start configuring LXPanelX at will, just open a terminal, and do:

killall lxpanel && lxpanelx --profile LXDE

That will be enough. Or just restart the PC xD

There is also a certain detail. The launcher of LXPanelX it won't open when you press [Alt] + [F2], because it comes by default to open the de LXPanel (yes, the command is different). So with obkey, we will open the file LXDE and we will look for the part where the shortcut of [Alt] + [F2], and we will edit your command. We will leave it like this:

lxpanelxctl run

Now the application launcher will open.

Replace PCManFM with SpaceFM

Already once there was talk of SpaceFM hereIs a PCManFM fork, Also called PCManFM-Mod, and it is nothing more and nothing less than a PCManFM with even more functions, and practically the same consumption. Personally, I still use PCManFM, I don't need so many options. But if you want use SpaceFM by default, I teach them.

We will edit the file LXDE autostart. There is a line that goes like this:

@pcmanfm --desktop --profile LXDE

We will change it to look like this:

@spacefm --desktop --profile LXDE

With that SpaceFM will manage the desktop instead of PCManFM. In this respect they are both identical, so I don't use it 😛 Although the fonts look a little better with SpaceFM I would say. Now, for the change to be immediate, we execute in the launcher LXDE:

killall pcmanfm && spacefm --desktop --profile LXDE

With that it will be ready 🙂

Configure Openbox from LXAppearance

Default LXAppearance it only takes care of the theme GTK, icons, source y cursor. But we can save ourselves having to open ObConf, installing the package lxappearance-obconf, which should be present in most (if not all) distributions.

Recommended layouts with LXDE

To finish, I leave you a small list of distros that I have tried with LXDE and that I think are worth it.

• Mini Trisquel. Based on Ubuntu. It only has free packages, and an LXDE similar to Lubuntu but simpler. Maxwell analysis, available Trisquel 5.5 STS Brigantia, Official Site.
• PC Linux OS LXDE (Mini, what was the iso that went down). A nice custom LXDE, although somewhat loaded for my taste. It comes with a multitude of drivers by default. It uses RPM packages, but manages them with APT. Pandev92 analysis, Official Site.
• PINK Linux Marathon 2012 LXDE. A simple, semi-personalized and very complete LXDE, as well as beautiful. It's LTS, and it's a fork of Mandriva. Released ROSA Linux Marathon 2012, Official Site (LXDE community version page).
• Lubuntu. An official Ubuntu derivative (adopted by Canonical as of version 12.04 LTS) with LXDE. Recommended, low consumption (about 80MB), good artwork, with light applications and others. Official Website.
• Fedora Spin LXDE. This is another one that I recommend. Lightweight, with a very good package manager, LXDE's default appearance (but can still be customized). Spin LXDE official page.

Those are distros ootf (Out of the Box, or ready to use). There are also other options, like Debian, Arch, Gentoo, Mageia 2, Slackware… Which are minimal, and more suitable for some. Of those I would stay more with Debian and Arch 😉

And well, that was my guide to LXDE. You know, this guide can keep growing ... Oh, idea! If they have cheats for LXDE, leave them in the comments, and I will gladly add them to the guide. Cheers! 😀