Customizing MDM

Customizing MDM : a few tips 

Considering we are on Linux Mint, we use MDM as Login Window, why won't we play with it?

MDM stands for "MDM Display Manager" this is a feature of Linux Mint, it has a menu for customizing the login window (but that's not enough ;) ) more info on Linux Mint website

default window is the following : 

first we can choose a new theme in the list :

We now have this login window : 

But hey! there is an issue, i can hardly read my login and password !

Let's fix it : 

open /usr/share/mdm/themes/Dark (since the choosen theme name is "Dark")

open dark.xml as root  :

and now let's edit what needs it ;) 

seek for this : 

change the color #d6d6d6 (light gray) to #000000 (black) or any color you would like for user -pw-entry : (For you, lazy guy, here is the exact line to edit) 

and now the theme is ready to use :D

enjoy ! 

m@

Customizing Xfce (5)

Playing with Xfce : part 5, Change Desktop Icon Text Color

Make sure to have a look to :

• Customizing Xfce (4) : sensors plugin
• Customizing Xfce (3) : Battery plugin
• Customizing Xfce (2) : Shortcuts
• Customizing Xfce (1) : Panels

Today we wanted a dark Wallpaper,as a consequence, the black Icon text was unreadable...

As we still wanted to keep Mint-X theme, changing theme wouldn't help, but here is a way to only change Desktop specific icon text : 

find .gtkrc-2.0 and .gtkrc-xfce in your home folder (use ctrl+h to display these hidden files) if they do not exist, then create them :)

in .gtkrc-2.0 you should find 

(if you created the file by yourself copy-paste this : include ".gtkrc-xfce" )

in .gtkrc-xfce, you may find something like this : 

What you want is the following to get white letters when icon is unselected (we choosed white BG when selected so kept black font) : 

style "xfdesktop-icon-view" {     XfdesktopIconView::label-alpha = 0 #background colors     base[NORMAL] = "#C5C5C5"     base[SELECTED] = "#C5C5C5"     base[ACTIVE] = "#C5C5C5" #foreground colors     fg[NORMAL] = "#FFFFFF"     fg[SELECTED] = "#000000"     fg[ACTIVE] = "#000000" } widget_class "*XfdesktopIconView*" style "xfdesktop-icon-view"

we now have a dark wallpaper and white icon text : 

Enjoy ! 

Source

Customzing Xfce (4)

Playing with Xfce : part 4, sensors plugin

Make sure to have a look to :

• Customizing Xfce (5) : desktop icon text color
• Customizing Xfce (3) : Battery plugin
• Customizing Xfce (2) : Shortcuts
• Customizing Xfce (1) : Panels

package : xfce4-sensors-plugin (needs hddtemp to work at full potential)

description : lets you monitor your hardware sensors, such as CPU temperature,hard drive temp, motherboard voltage, ...

overview in a few screen shots : 

NB : issues with hddtemp : 

if hddtemp is installed but the plugin notifies an issue, it might be due to permissions, fix them using the following:

sudo chmod u+s /usr/sbin/hddtemp

Enjoy !!

Customizing Xfce (3)

Playing with Xfce : part 3, Battery plugin

Make sure to have a look to :

• Customizing Xfce (5) : desktop icon text color
• Customizing Xfce (4) : sensors plugin
• Customizing Xfce (2) : Shortcuts
• Customizing Xfce (1) : Panels

package : xfce4-battery-plugin :

description : displays battery status (and time remaining) ; pops warnings at defined battery level, can run specified command at these levels...

it is possible to customize the bar colors : 

result : 

in order not to have duplicated battery icons on the status bar you may need do the following (it is better to keep xfce4-power-manager and xfce4-power-manager-plugins) : 

right click on the status bar : 

select notify plugin and click on the option icon : 

select power manager to be hidden : 

Enjoy !!

Customizing Xfce (2)

Playing with Xfce : part 2, Shortcuts

Make sure to have a look to :

• Customizing Xfce (5) : desktop icon text color
• Customizing Xfce (4) : sensors plugin
• Customizing Xfce (3) : Battery plugin
• Customizing Xfce (1) : Panels

Are you missing the quick start/search box of Unity or Cinnamon?

this allowed you to access to common apps pressing superL ("windows" KB button) and typing the begining of the app name to launch it.

This also exists in Xfce but you need more KB actions to get that box... (pressing superL, down, enter, down again, typing app name, enter, and enter)

that's why i decided to link superL directly to the box : 

seek for KB settings : 

this quick search box app is called xfce4-appfinder

as you can see it was also linked to <Alt>F3, but i didn't find it handy at all

Now pressing superL :

i linked xfce4-popup-applicationsmenu to Alt+F1 to get it with KB (in case touch pad dies or anything)

other apps i needed to shortcut : 

• gnome-system-monitor linked to Fn+F9 (called XF86Launch1)
• xfce4-terminal linked to Ctrl+Alt+T (called <Primary><Alt>t)
• gtk-redshift -l <lat>:<lon> linked to <ALt>F7
• xfce4-screenshooter linked to "Impécr/syst" (called Print)

Bluetooth apps and daemon

Why keeping BT apps and daemon on a device not having any BT extension board?

useless.

so here is what i found about : 


by eanfrid

If you want to disable BT at boot-time, you only have to blacklist the bluetooth module (=driver) in order to prevent the kernel from loading it on reboot. sudo echo "blacklist bluetooth" > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-BT.conf Then you can purge most of the Bluetooth-oriented packages (a few libs cannot be removed since it would completely uninstall some essential parts of your DE and/or destroy it). On a working bluetooth-enabled system you should have something like these results $ lsmod|grep blu bluetooth             147960  24 bnep,btusb,rfcomm rfkill                 13361  2 bluetooth crc16                   1288  2 ext4,bluetooth and if BT is disabled, "lsmod|grep blu" will return no result.

that is exactly what i did, then i removed the following packages : 

• gnome-bluetooth (that removed gnome-user-share due to dependency)
• bluez
• gir1.2-gnomebluetooth-1.0

Seems everything ok now