Editing XFCE Applications Menu

 Menu After Editing

Menu Before Editing

Since Gnome 3 has been messed up, many Linux folks finally switched into another Desktop Environments. One of the favorite destination is XFCE Desktop. It is very typical to the old Gnome 2 Desktop and still actively maintained by its developers, so people feel safe to use this Desktop.

Unfortunately, IMHO, XFCE folks didn't write enough manual about XFCE Tweaking. One of the missing part about XFCE manual is in Editing XFCE Applications Menu.

Why is editing XFCE Menu necessary? For me, as an ex-Gnome 2 user, it is necessary. IMHO, XFCE Menu arrangement is too bloated. There are many shortcut at the menu and too many separators and that is annoying my sight every accessing the menu. And I want to remove all the shortcuts and the separators at the menu, so how do I do this? Let's dive.

XDG

XFCE, just like another DEs in Linux, follow the FreeDesktop standard. The file configuration about the menu is put in /etc/xdg/menus and named as xfce-applications.menu. So, the file configuration for the XFCE Applications Menu is located in /etx/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu. All we need to do is to edit this file.

Editing Menu

As I told above, to edit XFCE Applications menu is by editing file /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu. To do this, just simply use our favorite, available text editor (for now, some XFCE based distro has switched from mousepad to leafpad for the sake of speed).

First, backup the original file. As root, backup the file :

sudo mv /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.old

Second, edit the file :
sudo leafpad (or mousepad or gedit or whatever) /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu.

Find the line : Layout
started from this line Layout block all lines to the line /Layout and delete those lines. Last, Save. Now access the menu and see the change. Our XFCE Applications menu now becomes simpler.

Xubuntu Tweaking
Not like Fedore XFCE and or another XFCE based distro, Xubuntu doesn't put the file configuration in /etc/xdg/menus but put the file in the /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/xfce-applications.menu instead.

So, to edit Xubuntu Applications menu, the way is just same, but the file is different.

sudo mv /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/xfce-applications.menu /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/xfce-applications.old

sudo edit /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/xfce-applications.menu

Note
If we want to let one or some shortcut left, such as Ubuntu Software Center, don't delete all the lines from to

but leave the lines we want :

Layout
Filename ubuntu-software-center.desktop /Filename
/Layout
Reverting Back The Menu

If we want to revert the XFCE menu to its default, just delete the edited one and rename the backup.

sudo rm /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu

sudo mv /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.old /etx/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu
In Xubuntu :
sudo rm /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/xfce-applications.menu
sudo /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/xfce-applications.old /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/xfce-applications.menu

Menu Editor
As I know until I was writing this post, there is no an existed menu editor that compatible with XFCE Menu. I've heard about LXMenuEditor but seems for long ago has been abandoned by the developer.

Take A Look Into Thunar 1.6 ( Xubuntu 13.04 Daily )

The dynamics of the Linux Desktop is going to be very interesting. Fedora finally adopts MATE Desktop Environment in its official repo, Linux Mint forks Nautilus 3.4, SolusOS forks Gnome Fallback, Ubuntu decided to follow Gnome team and use Nautilus 3.6 in the next 13.04 release, and now, Thunar, the default file manager for XFCE, finally reached 1.6 version.

So, is there any change? Or improvement? Yes. For us who love Gnome 2, I probably can say, we will, we should be very impressed by this release version of Thunar File Manager. Last day I downloaded the daily release of Xubuntu 13.04 in the sake of curiosity. Lets dive into it !

1. Tabbed File Manager

This feature presented finally, I guess, because, almost all of file managers in current Linux Desktop have this feature and so, it will be a stupidity if Thunar doesn't present this very common feature. Actually not a big deal, but for those who use XFCE for long time, this is the awaited one.

2. Volume Management

Now, Thunar is able to show, to put the mounted our harddisk partition at the side pane, just like Nautilus, PCManFM, and or Dolphin. Even, the default view, at the side pane there are DEVICES, PLACES and NETWORK. Very modern. One step forward compared to PCManFM.

3. Tree View
Tree view is a very Microsoft Windows feature, but there are so many (include me) people who love this simple feature. I can't imagine, how hard our daily work will be, without this feature.

4. Send To Mounted Volumes

This is a long ago featured feature that exists in Microsoft Windows OSes, started at Windows ME version. But as long as I know, this feature still only presented in Thunar File Manager.

This is my short review about Thunar 1.6 and XFCE 4.10 in Xubuntu 13.04. Now it is really hard for me to decide, which Desktop to use. Every Linux Desktop seems growing into a mature, full-featured, and very modern, easy to use user interface.

For those who love, and or prefer to traditional UI, XFCE with Thunar 1.6 probably is the best replacement for Gnome 3, alongside, or instead of MATE Desktop. Cheers !

How To Make XFCE Application Menu Keyboard Shortcut

Since Gnome 3 came as a disaster, many people later switched to some directions. One of then the destination for Gnome 2 folks is XFCE Desktop. It is light, gtk+ based and highly customizable just like the old Gnome 2 desktop.

Overall we can say, XFCE is great. But there is one question about this Desktop that is not yet answered : How to make the keyboard shortcut for XFCE Menu ? In Gnome 2, or LXDE we can use Alt+F1 combination to pop up the Application menu, but how about in XFCE ?

I've sought the way but I got nothin'. In the end, I was just looking around the XFCE Desktop and I found that the shortcut Alt+F1 is used to show the XFCE4 Help page. And so, I think about replacing the executable into the command to pop the XFCE4 Application menu up.

Here are the steps :

1. Open text editor and put this simple script

xfce4-popup-applicationsmenu

Save as xfhelp4

2. Make the script executable

chmod +x xfhelp4

3. Rename the default xfhelp4 executable in the system to any name

sudo mv /usr/bin/xfhelp4 /usr/bin/xfhelp4.bak

4. Move the script we have made into the system

sudo mv xfhelp4 /usr/bin

5. Try to press Alt+F1

Now, I can easily access the XFCE4 menu by keyboard shortcut :)

How To Make PCmanFM Shows All Images Thumbnail

 Change the amout of image file size we want to generate

 PCmanFM shows the thumbnails for all images

Since GNOME went to version 3 (which is a disaster), LXDE is now one of the most popular and most used desktop environments in Linux, alongside MATE and XFCE. It is good looking, modern and amazingly fast.

But don't you aware? That PCmanFM, the default File Manager for LXDE, ain't able to show all of our images/pictures/photos thumbnail. At the first time I realized this, I was lil bit confused. Why, and what happened ? Was this a bug ?

Apparently, this is not a bug. It is the default setting of PCmanFm for the sake of speed. This file manager won't show thumbnails for images/pictures with file size more than 2 MB.

So, to make PCmanFM able to show thumbnail for images with size more than 2 MB, we have to set it. To do that, just go to menu Edit > Preferences > Display, and at the bottom, change the value of  "Do not generate thumbnails for file exceeding this size" from 2000 KB to bigger size we want. Maybe 10000 KB (10MB) is enough, but if you are a photographer, you probably need more value because better image (in resolution and quality) will produce bigger file size.

That's all.

Fixing nm-applet (Network Manager Applet) icon in LXDE/XFCE/MATE Desktop

If we use MATE or LXDE, we probably often got a bug in Network Manager Applet (nm-applet) particularly if we use a mobile broadband connection. The bug is there is no icon when the connection is established. What does really cause this ? Well, apparently, the cause is very small, actually not a big deal. The cause is in the crappy default gnome icon theme (yeah, tango icon theme and the gnome icon theme is the ugliest icon themes ever).

To fix this, just follow these simple steps :

1. Choose a good icon theme for 24 pix panel size
   (I took an icon from /usr/share/icons/Faenza/status/24/nm-signal-100.png
2. Rename the icon to be nm-wwan-tower.png
3. Move the icon into the system
   sudo mv nm-wwan-tower.png /usr/share/icons/hicolor/22x22/apps
4. Logout login, or reboot the system, and last, try it by connecting to the Internet.

Install XMMS 1.2.11 on Any Current, Newest, Debian Based Linux Distribution : The Best Music Player in Linux Ever

To play music, there are many choices now in Linux. But as I've tried those stuffs, from Amarok, gMusicBrowser, Rhythmbox, Banshee to Clementine, I found that the best is XMMS in sound quality.

Yes, it's an obsolete app. Even we can call it "an ancient app" from the ancient world. It uses an ancient technology gtk+1.2, but strangely, it has very great sound quality : Clear in the Treble, Soft in the Bass,

But, how and where we could get this app and install it onto our current, newer Linux distro ? I know, even the libraries for this app is not available anymore in any current Linux software repository. And so, I share my collection to you HERE.

Installation

1. Stay online and connect your apt to your official Linux distro's software repository (Ubuntu,   Debian).
2. Extract the .tar.gz enter to the folder by terminal 
3. Install them manually by terminal : sudo dpkg -i *.deb
4. If you found a dependency error, just fix it  : sudo apt-get -f install

Tweaking

Sound Output

It won't produce any sound before we set its sound output into ALSA (the default is OSS). To do this, just simply go to the preferences menu by clicking at the top left corner of XMMS's main window, and select Options>Preferences. Set the Output Plugin to ALSA 1.2.11. Click Apply.

Equalizer Presets

Don't forget, it has a great feature to use Winamp's equalizer configuration file. I've included it named winamp.q1 in the .tar.gz. To use it, just click at the Equalizer window, and select PRESETS>Load>From File and point it to the file winamp.q1. Last, go to the Equalizer window again, do the similar by select PRESETS>Load>Preset. There are several presets we can choose (I vote Rock preset).