#Depreciated: See this guide instead.
#Introduction
Some people just prefer how a certain desktop works. While certainly not the most smart thing to do, mixing together stuff from different desktop environments, if you really prefer how XFCE does things, you’ll be glad to know it’s possible to use XFCE’s desktop without breaking everything.
If you’ve followed my previous guide on installing Nemo for MATE, then you’ve already done some of this stuff, just, some things are going to be different. Instead of the file manager providing a desktop, the desktop is provided by a dedicated application, while the file manager plays second-fiddle.
#Chasing mice
To get the XFCE desktop onto MATE, two programs need to be installed, as follows;
sudo apt install exo-utils xfdesktop
I am not entirely sure about what’s below; Reply if this breaks anything.
After you’ve done the above, perform the additional steps in a terminal as follows;
mkdir ~/.local/share/applications xdg-mime default exo-file-manager.desktop inode/directory application/x-mate-saved-search application/x-gnome-saved-search
This will make it so xfdesktop will use whatever is defined as preferred file manager in exo-preferred-applications. Run the latter to set which terminal and file manager is in use.
Lastly, let’s make xfdesktop the desktop we want;
- Do
gsettings set org.mate.session.required-components filemanager xfdesktop4 - Alternatively, navigate to org/mate/desktop/session/required-components in
dconf-editor and set _filemaanager_ asxfdesktop` - Open
mate-session-propertiesand if it’s there already, delete the autostart for Nemo, or modify it / add new entry forxfdesktop. - My autostart as follows, if you’d rather use
nanoorplumato make it in~/.config/autostart;
[Desktop Entry] Type=Application Exec=xfdesktop Hidden=false X-MATE-Autostart-enabled=true Name[en_US]=XFCE Desktop Name=XFCE Desktop Comment[en_US]=The XFCE Desktop Comment=The XFCE Desktop
After, log out, log back in, and enjoy your shiny new desktop.
#Desktop background
As this is an entirely new desktop, the same problem as Nemo is ran into. And since this is XFCE stuff, it’s obviously different. Because I have been unsuccessful in specifying from command line these options, here’s what needs to be done;
After, go into xfdesktop-settings and navigate to the directory where the symbolic link was made; You can then select it as image, and whatever you’ve done to make it cycle (instead of using xfdesktop's image cycling) should pick right up where it left off, or you can find a way to make the symbolically-linked image change every so often.
Else, go into mate-appearance-properties and specify a solid colour, using xfdesktop's image cycling.
#What else this can go with
If sticking with marco (or marco + compton), check this out for a window picker that can be activated via hot corner
#Caveats
There might be some dead weight, but from what I’ve seen there isn’t much extra that is added aside from the bare minimum required for xfdesktop to work (that includes xfconf) so it shouldn’t be that weighty.
Any file operations from desktop will not work because of missing dbus file provided by thunar (?), any time a transfer is attempted a dialog box saying that org.xfce.FileManager (/usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.xfce.FileManager.service) is missing. I have found no means around this yet.
#Information sources