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# LXDE

From ArchWiki

Summary
LXDE is a GPL-licensed open source desktop environment for Unix and other POSIX-compliant platforms, such as Linux. This article covers its installation, configuration, and troubleshooting.
LXDE uses the GTK+ toolkit.
Overview
The Xorg project provides an open source implementation of the X Window System – the foundation for a graphical user interface. Desktop environments such as Enlightenment, GNOME, KDE, LXDE, and Xfce provide a complete graphical environment. Various window managers offer alternative and novel environments, and may be used standalone to conserve system resources. Display managers provide a graphical login prompt.
Related
Openbox
PCManFM
LXDM

From project home page:

  The "Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment" is an extremely fast-performing and energy-saving desktop environment. Maintained by an international community of developers, it comes with a beautiful interface, multi-language support, standard keyboard short cuts and additional features like tabbed file browsing. LXDE uses less CPU and less RAM than other environments. It is especially designed for cloud computers with low hardware specifications, such as, netbooks, mobile devices (e.g. MIDs) or older computers.

## Installation

LXDE is considered modular, meaning that choosing a specific package for a task is usually accomplishable; the minimal required packages which you have to install to run LXDE are lxde-common and openbox (or another window manager).

The complete LXDE suite can be installed with the group lxde, available in the official repositories. It contains the following packages:

- gpicview - Lightweight image viewer
- libfm - Library for file management
- lxappearance - Utility to configure themes, icons and fonts for GTK+ applications
- lxappearance-obconf - Plugin for LXAppearance to configure Openbox
- lxde-common - Default settings for integrating different LXDE components
- lxde-icon-theme - Icon theme for LXDE
- lxdm - Lightweight display manager
- lxinput - Small program to configure keyboard and mouse for LXDE
- lxlauncher - Application launcher mainly for netbooks
- lxmenu-data - Collection of files intended to adapt freedesktop.org menu specification
- lxmusic - Lightweight XMMS2 client
- lxpanel - Desktop panel for LXDE
- lxpolkit - Simple polkit authentication agent for LXDE
- lxrandr - Screen manager
- lxsession - Standard-compliant X11 session manager with shutdown, reboot and suspend support
- lxshortcut - Small program used to edit application shortcuts
- lxtask - Lightweight task manager
- lxterminal - Lightweight terminal emulator
- menu-cache - Daemon which automatically generates the menu for LXDE
- openbox - Lightweight, standard-compliant and highly-configurable window manager typically used with LXDE
- pcmanfm - Default lightweight file manager for LXDE which also provides desktop integration

leafpad and epdfview are some lightweight applications that are typically used with LXDE and are also available in the official repositories.

## Starting the desktop

There are lots of ways to start a LXDE desktop.

### Display managers

If you are using a display manager like GDM, KDM, or SLiM, switch the session to LXDE. Please consult the display manager's wiki page for instructions.

Instructions for using LXDM, an experimental display manager provided by the LXDE project, are included in LXDM page.

If you are not using a display manager you might want to add

    export DESKTOP_SESSION=LXDE

to your `~/.bash_profile` in order for xdg-open to function properly.

### Console

To be able to start the desktop from the console, several other options exist.

To use startx, you will need to define LXDE in your `~/.xinitrc` file:

    exec startlxde

If you want to run startx at boot automatically, take a look at the Starting X at boot guide.

For other tasks you will want to be sure that dbus is running as a daemon.

See xinitrc for details, such as preserving the logind session.

## Tips and tricks

### Application menu editing

The application menu works by resolving the `.desktop` files located in `/usr/share/applications`. Many desktop environments run programs that supersede these settings to allow customization of the menu. LXDE has yet to create an application menu editor but you can manually build them yourself if you are so inclined. Third party menu editor can be found in AUR - lxmed

To add or edit a menu item, create or link to the `.desktop` file in `/usr/share/applications`, `/usr/local/share/applications`, or `~/.local/share/applications`. (The latter two have the advantage of putting your application outside of directories governed by `pacman`.) Consult the desktop entry specification on freedesktop.org for structures of `.desktop` files.

To remove items from the menu, instead of deleting the `.desktop` files, you can edit the file and add the following line in the file:

    NoDisplay=true.

To expedite the process for a good number of files you can put it in a loop. For example:

    $ cd /usr/share/applications
    $ for i in program1.desktop program2.desktop ...; do cp /usr/share/applications/$i \
    /home/user/.local/share/applications/; echo "NoDisplay=true" >> \
    /home/user/.local/share/applications/$i; done

This will work for all applications except KDE applications. For these, the only way to remove them from the menu is to log into KDE itself and use it's menu editor. For every item that you do not want displayed, check the 'Show only in KDE' option. If adding NoDisplay=True will not work, you can add ShowOnlyIn=XFCE.

### Auto mount

PCManFM#Volume_handling

### Autostart programs

Note: More methods to autostart programs can be found in Autostarting

By default, Openbox is the window manager for LXDE, so Openbox#Startup programs affects LXDE too.

#### .desktop files

First you can link a program's `.desktop` in `/usr/share/applications/` file to `~/.config/autostart/`. For example, to execute lxterminal automatically at startup:

    $ ln -s /usr/share/applications/lxterminal.desktop ~/.config/autostart/

Once `.desktop` files have been added you can manipulate them with the GUI configuration tool lxsession-edit.

#### autostart file

The second method is to use a `~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart` file. This file is not a shell script, but each line represents a command to be executed, if a line begins with a @ symbol, the command following the @ will be automatically re-executed if it crashes. For example, to execute lxterminal and leafpad automatically at startup:

    ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart

    @lxterminal
    @leafpad

Note: The commands do not end with a & symbol.

There is also a global autostart file at `/etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart`. If both files are present, all entries in both files will be executed.

### Bindings

Mouse and key bindings (i.e. keyboard shortcuts) are implemented with Openbox and are described in detail here. LXDE users should follow these instructions to edit the file ~/.config/openbox/lxde-rc.xml

An optional GUI for editing the key bindings is obkey available in the AUR. The default edit for obkey is rc.xml, but you can direct it to the LXDE configuration as follows:

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

More information on obkey is here.

### Cursors

Main article: Cursor Themes.

lxappearance provides functionality to change cursor themes.

### Digital clock applet time

You can right click on the digital clock applet on the panel and set how it displays the current time. For example, to display standard time instead of military time in the format of HH:MM:SS:

    %I:%M

And in YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS format:

    %Y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S

If you wish to display standard time with and AM/PM:

    %I:%M %p

See the man page on `strftime (3)` for more options.

### Font settings

Most users of LXDE usually try to use GTK+ programs because GTK+ is the backend for LXDE. To set the fonts, you can use lxappearance and set the main font. For other fonts you will need to use the Openbox configuration tool obconf.

### Keyboard layout

See Keyboard Configuration in Xorg for generic instructions.

See #Autostart programs for a way to automatically start setxkbmap in LXDE.

#### Add the “Keyboard Layout Switcher” to our taskbar

1. Right-click on your taskbar
2. Choose “Add/Remove panel items”
3. Choose “Add”
4. Choose “Keyboard layout switcher”

### Gnome-screensaver with LXDE

Install the needed packages gnome-screensaver and gnome-session.

Create a simple launcher for gnome-session to allow the screensaver to work in `~/.config/autostart/gnome-session.desktop`

    [Desktop Entry]
    Exec=/usr/bin/gnome-session

Now logout and log back in to enjoy gnome-screensaver.

### Disabling screen blanking without installing GUI screensaver

If you do not want to install GUI screensaver, to disable screen blanking add these lines below to `~/.xinitrc` before exec command.

    xset s off &
    xset -dpms &

### lxpanel icons

Default icons used by lxpanel are stored in `/usr/share/pixmaps` and any custom icons you want lxpanel to use need to be saved there as well.

You can change default icons for applications by taking the following steps:

1. Save the new icon to /usr/share/pixmaps
2. Use a text editor to open the `.desktop` file of the program whose icon you want to change in `/usr/share/applications`.
3. Change

    Icon=/default/icon/.png

to:

    Icon=/name/of/new/icon/added/to/pixmaps/.png

### LXNM

Note: LXNM is no longer under active development. It's suggested to use NetworkManager and nm-applet.

LXNM is a program based on scripts that attempts to manage the network connections. It is script-based and strives to make networking configuration as automatic as possible. It is not a full blown networking system like NetworkManager. If you want greater control, Wicd and Gnome's versions of NetworkManager works well with LXDE. You can install lxnm from the official repositories. The main script will need to be run as root. LXNM works with the network status monitor applet in lxpanel. LXNM works well most of the time, though at times it can take a while to get a connection.

### PCManFM

PCManFM is the standard file manager in LXDE. See the main article PCManFM for details.

If you want to be able to access the Trash, mount volumes, and folder/file tracking you will want gvfs support:

    pacman -S polkit-gnome gvfs

polkit-gnome provides an authentication and will need to be started on login:

    $ mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart
    $ cp /etc/xdg/autostart/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1.desktop ~/.config/autostart

Arch's polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1.desktop currently does not exempt certain desktops. If you have trouble launching it remove the line:

    OnlyShowIn=GNOME;XFCE;

PCManFM @ LXDE wiki

### Replacing window managers

Openbox, the default window manager of LXDE, can be easily replaced by other window managers, such as fvwm, icewm, dwm, metacity, xfwm4, compiz, etc.

LXDE will attempt to use window manager from the user lxsession configuration file `~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/desktop.conf`. If it does not exist, it will then attempt to use the global configuration file `/etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/desktop.conf`.

Replace the openbox-lxde command with the window manager of your choice:

    [Session]
    window_manager=openbox-lxde

For metacity:

    window_manager=metacity

For compiz:

    window_manager=compiz ccp --indirect-rendering

### Shutdown, reboot, suspend and hibernate options ( LXSession-logout)

To have all Shutdown, Reboot, Suspend and Hibernate Options working you need to have dbus running. You also need to have upower installed.

See xinitrc#Preserving the session for details on avoiding breaking the logind/consolekit session.

## Troubleshooting

### SSH key management

A very lightweight solution to ssh key management can be found by using keychain. See the using keychain article for details.

### NTFS with chinese characters

For a storage device with an NTFS filesystem, you will need to install the NTFS-3G package. Generally, PCManFM works well with NTFS filesystems, however there is one bug affecting NTFS users that if you have files or directories on an NTFS filesystem, the names of which contain non-latin characters (e.g. Chinese characters) may disappear when opening (or auto-mounting) the NTFS volume. This happens because the lxsession mount-helper is not correctly parsing the policies and locale options. There is a workaround for this:

Remove the `/sbin/mount.ntfs-3g` which is a symbolic link.

    # rm /sbin/mount.ntfs-3g

Create a new `/sbin/mount.ntfs-3g` with a new bash script containing:

    #!/bin/bash
    /bin/ntfs-3g $1 $2 -o locale=en_US.UTF-8

And then make it executable:

    # chmod +x /sbin/mount.ntfs-3g

Add or edit the following line to `/etc/pacman.conf` under the [options] tag to prevent modification of this file in case of upgrading:

    NoUpgrade = sbin/mount.ntfs-3g

### KDM and LXDE Session

As of KDE 4.3.3, KDM will not recognize the LXDE desktop session. To fix it:

    # cp /usr/share/xsessions/LXDE.desktop /usr/share/apps/kdm/sessions/

### GTK+ warnings with lxsession 0.4.1

When starting GTK+2 programs you get the following message:

    GTK+ icon them is not properly set

This usually means you do not have an XSETTINGS manager running. Desktop environment like GNOME or XFCE automatically execute their XSETTING managers like gnome-settings-daemon or xfce-mcs-manager. This is caused by the migration of lxde-settings-daemon config files into lxsession. If you made customizations to these config files, you are in need of merging those config files:

- `/usr/share/lxde/config`
- `~/.config/lxde/config`

into

- `/etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/desktop.conf`
- `~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/desktop.conf`

Alternatively, you can use lxappearance from the community repository to fix this.

## See also

- LXDE wiki entry related to Arch Linux
- LXDE project (Sourceforge)
- LXDE forum
- The Latest lx* Packages

Retrieved from "https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?title=LXDE&oldid=280055"
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