 
Bodhi Linux 3 for Beginners

By Roger Carter

Copyright 2015 Roger Carter

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. Thank you for your support.

# Table of Contents

Preface

1 Introduction

1.1 About this book

1.2 What is Bodhi Linux?

1.3 Which Bodhi download should you choose?

1.4 Installing Bodhi Linux

2 First steps with Bodhi

2.1 The Bodhi menu system

2.2 Connect to your router

2.3 Update your system

2.4 Some initial tweaks

2.5 The AppCenter

2.6 Firefox

2.7 An email client

2.8 Install PCManFM

2.9 PCManFM's features

2.10 Single-click or double-click?

2.11 Using PCManFM

2.12 Hidden files

2.13 Setting default applications

2.14 The Enlightenment File Manager (EFM)

2.15 Terminology

2.16 Switching between the E17 and E19 desktops

3 Turbocharge your desktop

3.1 Shelves, launchers, and trackers

3.2 A first look at shelves and iBars

3.3 Change the shelf and iBar settings

3.4 Tracking launches (E19 only)

3.5 More gadgets

3.6 A second shelf with a launch trackers

3.7 The launch menu (E19)

3.8 Alt+Tab and the windows menu

3.9 The Settings Panel

3.10 Run Everything

3.11 Key bindings

3.12 Edge bindings

3.12 Borderless windows

4 Beef up your system

4.1 Download options

4.2 The Systray gadget

4.3 Osmo personal organizer

4.4 An Office suite

4.5 Printer support

4.6 Media players

4.7 Osmoma Audio Recorder

4.8 Photo and drawing applications

4.9 Imagination

4.10 Google Chrome

4.11 Get-iPlayer

4.12 Skype

4.13 Dropbox

4.14 Other applications

5 More power to your desktop

5.1 The Favorites menu

5.2 Applications name display and other menu options

5.3 Application launchers

5.4 Personal application launchers

5.5 Startup applications

5.6 Virtual desktops

5.7 The Launch Tracker iBar and virtual desktops (E19)

5.8 Different shelves for different desktops

5.9 The Tasks gadget

5.10 Enlightenment themes

5.11 GTK themes and icons

5.12 Wallpapers

5.13 Yet more dialog boxes

5.14 Profiles

5.15 Start again: the Default profile

6 Tune up and backup your system

6.1 Run PCManFM as Root

6.2 Create a launcher 'PCManFM as Root'

6.3 Clean your system: Bleachbit

6.4 Back up your system: Remastersys

6.5 Unetbootin

6.6 Running Bodhi Linux from a USB drive

6.7 Using Terminology to get things done

6.8 Conclusion

#  Preface

This book follows the same plan as my original _Step-by-Step Guide to Bodhi Linux_ , which itself had grown out of tutorial notes I had prepared for a University of the Third Age (U3A) computer group here in the UK. Although that book was a rushed job with many shortcomings (I wrote over the last three weeks of 2013 and published it on New Year's Day 2014), it has proved surprisingly popular, with almost 8,000 downloads to date (February 2015). The only serious criticism I have had was its lack of screenshots. Encouraged by this, I have completely rewritten it for Bodhi version 3, this time with screenshots and a more carefully thought-out text.

Like Bodhi itself, this ebook is given away free of charge. Bodhi is free because all the talented people who have given of their time to build such a remarkable product are volunteers. However, it does have ongoing server and other maintenance costs, and if you find this book helpful, and if you like and continue to use Bodhi Linux, I would urge you to support Bodhi financially. Even that need cost you nothing - just set DuckDuckGo as the search engine in your web browser, then follow the instructions at  http://www.bodhilinux.com/w/adding-bodhis-duckduckgo-search/. (See also Section 2.6 in this book, where I include the instructions for Firefox.)

This is not an official Bodhi Linux publication. However, I should like to thank Doug Yanez (aka Deepspeed), one of the developers, for help with proofreading and technical editing. Any errors are entirely my own.

Roger Carter

# 1 Introduction

In this first short chapter you'll learn a few basic facts about Bodhi Linux, and you'll install it on your computer.

## 1.1 About this book

It describes in easy steps how to install the Bodhi Linux operating system on your computer, how to customize it, and how to install the applications you will want to use (web browser, email client, office applications, photo software, media players, and so on).

As its title implies, this book is aimed at those who are coming to Bodhi Linux for the first time, including people migrating to Linux from Windows. It does not assume any knowledge of Linux, though it does assume you are reasonably computer-literate. (If you struggle with computers, steer clear of Linux!)

The Enlightenment desktop used by Bodhi Linux is a tinkerer's paradise - it is highly customizable and can be tweaked endlessly - and no two users will end up with the same desktop profile. However, a step-by-step guide such as this is necessarily prescriptive, so that by following it you end up with a very specific profile. Don't worry about that. The point is that having learnt how to create and save that profile, you are then in a position to set up your own profile with your own customizations and preferences, and you can do so either by playing around with what you've already produced or by starting afresh. Moreover, if you mess things up, you can easily restore your saved profile. And as for the various applications that you will be installing as you work through this guide, they can be easily removed and replaced with alternatives.

**Note:** I will not provide a glossary of terms used in this book. If you want to find out the meaning of a word you don't understand, such as 'kernel' (see below), look it up on the Internet, if necessary including _linux_ or _ubuntu_ in your search phrase.

## 1.2 What is Bodhi Linux?

Bodhi (rhymes with Jodie) is what's known as a Linux distribution or 'distro', meaning a variant of Linux packaged with a window manager or desktop. All distros are built on the same Linux kernel, so they all share a common core. Probably the most popular distro is Ubuntu, and it is on this that Bodhi Linux is based. There are a number of different desktops (i.e. window managers with added features) that are available for Linux, and the one that Bodhi uses is the Enlightenment window manager.

The latest release of Enlightenment is E19, and this is the default for Bodhi Linux v.3. The earlier release, installed with Bodhi v.2, was the much-loved E17. This earlier version runs faster on old ("legacy") computers than does E19, and to cater for these the Bodhi developers have released a legacy version of Bodhi 3 packaged with E17 instead of E19, and running on an older (and less demanding) Linux kernel.

This book covers E19, with a small amount of additional material inserted where necessary for E17 users.

Enlightenment can be used as the desktop for other distros, and it has become a firm favourite for many Linux users, as it is agile, elegant, and highly customizable. But it is only Bodhi Linux that puts Enlightenment at the heart of its design philosophy. No other distro employs Enlightenment to such good effect, and the Bodhi website is unrivalled for the Enlightenment support that it offers: the wiki with its Enlightenment Guide and other articles, the Art Wiki (currently under construction), the AppCenter with its comprehensive range of software applications, and the Forum, where you can get advice from the friendly community of Bodhi users.

Although Bodhi is based on and is very close to Ubuntu, it is not Ubuntu. In particular it adds to the Ubuntu software repositories its own repositories: these host custom bodhi-related packages as well as specific applications requested by Bodhi users.

And I should add that, in contrast to Windows, everything you'll be likely to need is free, and you don't need anti-virus software!

## 1.3 Which Bodhi download should you choose?

You will be downloading and installing Bodhi Linux in Section 1.4 below. You have three download choices: one for 64-bit computers (with E19), one for 32-bit computers (with E19), and one for legacy (i.e. non-PAE) computers (with E17). As a rough guide, computers designed for Windows Vista and later are generally 64-bit, those designed for Windows XP and earlier are generally 32-bit, and pre-Windows XP computers are generally (32-bit) non-PAE, i.e. 'legacy'. The legacy (E17) version of Bodhi Linux will run on all machines, the 32-bit (E19) version will run on all PAE machines, and 64-bit (E19) version will only run on newer machines.

So which of these downloads should you choose? The official advice is that most people should choose the 32-bit download, even if downloading to a 64-bit computer. The 64-bit version is for people with heavy-duty demands such as running a server or running virtual machines, and the legacy version is for people with old, slow computers - E19 may not run on these, or run very slowly.

You can even switch between E17 and E19, without needing to reinstall. The instructions for this are in Section 2.16.

**Note:** If you are running Linux and you want to know whether your computer is 64-bit, 32-bit, or Legacy (i.e. non-PAE), then open a terminal and enter the Linux command _grep flags /proc/cpuinfo._ The output will be a number of flags (groups of characters), which give information about the cpu (central processing unit). If one of those flags is _lm_ (meaning 'long mode'), then your computer is 64-bit. If one of the flags is _pae_ (meaning 'physical address extension'), then it is not a legacy machine. So if the output for your computer has the _pae_ flag but not the _lm_ flag, it is a 32-bit machine.

## 1.4 Installing Bodhi Linux

What you download is an ISO file (i.e. an optical disk image), which can be written to either a recordable CD (or DVD) or to a USB flash drive, and which you can then use to install Bodhi on your computer. The official recommendation is that you use a USB drive, and the instructions for doing this on a Linux computer are in the Bodhi wiki at  http://www.bodhilinux.com/w/installation-instructions/.

If you are using a Windows computer, you will either need to use a recordable CD instead (the instructions for this are given below) or you will need to download LiLi (Linux Live USB Creator) from http://www.linuxliveusb.com/§. A guide to using LiLi is at the same site, or you could use an independent guide such as at  http://www.maketecheasier.com/how-to-create-your-own-usb-linux-distro-with-lili/§.

To install to a CD using Windows you need a blank recordable CD and a computer able to write to it. Then:

1. Go to the Bodhi Linux website (www.bodhilinux.com) where you will see the download links at the right. Refer to the last section if you are not sure which download to use, but for most people the 32-bit download is the right choice.

2. Click on the appropriate download link, and after a few seconds your download will start. It will be a .iso file, small enough to fit on a CD rather than a DVD.

3. You will have noticed that alongside this download link is one labelled 'MD5'. This leads to a further _md5sum_ download that enables you to check that there are no errors in your downloaded ISO image. I have to confess that I've never used this option, but in the rare event of such an error a great deal of confusion can result, especially for new users. If you want to check for errors, there are some free Windows utilities you can use with md5sum downloads - search the Web for 'md5sum on Windows'.

4. Now burn your ISO file to a CD. If you double-click on your ISO, the Windows Disk Image Burner program should open, and you can burn your image with this. Otherwise you can use one of the free CD burning programs that are available for Windows. One is CDBurnerXP (at https://cdburnerxp.se/); this is more flexible than its name suggests, as it will burn DVDs as well as CDs, and it will run on all versions of Windows, not just XP, including Windows 10 (I have tested it on Windows 10 Technical Preview). If you run CDBurnerXP, simply insert a blank recordable CD in the drive, choose the 'burn an ISO image' option, browse to the Bodhi ISO file that you've saved, and click the Burn disk button. After a few minutes your CD will be ready.

5. Now to test the disk. Boot up the computer on which you wish to install Bodhi, and as it fires up hold down the F12 key until the boot menu opens. Insert the CD into the optical drive and choose the menu option to boot from this. (If F12 doesn't take you to the boot menu, check your computer's manual for the key to use. Also, a list of the keys you can use at startup should be displayed at the foot of the screen when the computer fires up.)

6. The disk start-up menu should then appear. It is possible (but very unlikely) that errors crept in when you burnt the disk in Step 4, and you can check for this by choosing the 'Check distro' option on this menu. Otherwise choose the top (default) option to boot the live system. The Bodhi splash screen will show for quite a while (loading from a CD is slow), but eventually the Enlightenment desktop will appear.

If after a couple of minutes nothing happens, and the disc has stopped spinning, it means that all is not well. It may be because you are trying to run the 64-bit version of Bodhi on a 32-bit machine. But if your computer is old (i.e. pre-Windows XP), the chances are it's a non-PAE (legacy) machine, in which case you will have to download the legacy version of Bodhi. If, after you've done this, Bodhi still won't run, it means that Linux has encountered some hardware incompatibility. A common problem on old laptops is to do with ACPI, and to counter this you will have to turn ACPI off: when the disc start-up menu appears (step 6), press the Tab key to show the start-up options, and at the end of this list add the command _acpi=off_. You should also of course check the md5sum (Step 3 above) and carry out the distro check (Step 6 above).

7. The desktop will include a 'shelf' (or panel) at the top of the screen, and there will also be some additional icons at the top left of the screen, including one to install Bodhi 3 on your hard disk. The screenshot below shows the central part of the top of the screen, with the shelf.

8. You can if you wish connect to wifi at this point, but there is no need to do so: you can install Bodhi without an Internet connection. The instructions for connecting wirelessly are in the Quick Start Guide that has automatically opened on your desktop - simply click the Network Manager gadget on the shelf (the downward-pointing triangle), choose your network from the list, and enter your passphrase. (If you have a wired connection to your router, that will have been automatically activated.)

9. When you are ready to install Bodhi Linux on your computer, double-click the Install Bodhi 3 icon. The installation process is very straightforward:  
\- Click Continue at the Welcome screen.  
\- It is not necessary to connect to the Internet (next screen).  
\- At the Language Selection dialog box accept the default (English), then click Continue or press Enter. (Choosing a language other than English can cause installation problems; you can change the language later - go http://www.bodhilinux.com/w/change-systemlanguage/ for the wiki article on this, and see also Section 2.4 in the next chapter.)

10. At the Installation Type dialog box you can choose either to install Bodhi alongside your current operating system to create a dual-boot computer (the first option), or to erase the current operating system and allow Bodhi to use the whole of your hard disk (the second option). If you choose the former, the next dialog box allows you to select the amount of disk space to allocate to each operating system. Click Install Now.

[10a. If you want complete control over every aspect of a dual boot installation, you should select the final option, to do something else. This takes you to the 'Installation type' dialog box. The situation in this case is more complicated, and is not for beginners, but is essentially as follows. Note that Windows should be installed before Bodhi, you can't (easily) add Windows to a Linux computer.  
\- It's easiest to create a partition on the hard disk in which to house Bodhi before starting this installation process, using a program such as Gparted (see Section 4.14). Create another small partition (2 Gb or so in size) as the swap partition. Format both of these partitions as Ext4.  
\- At the Installation Type dialog box, highlight the partition you've created to house Bodhi, click on Change, and choose to use the partition (as Ext4 Journaling file system).  
\- Highlight the small partition you also created, click on Change, and designate it as the swap partition.  
\- Accept the default option for the Mount Point (/dev/sda), and select '/' as the Mount Point.]

11. At the next dialog box click your location on the map, then Continue. Then, at the Keyboard Layout dialog box you can probably accept the default offering. Click Continue to proceed to the final dialog box.

12. Here you are asked to enter your name, and a name for your computer (you can ignore the name suggested by the software and put in anything you like - I have called my computer _bodhi3e19_ ), and you have to choose a password. Unless security is an issue for you (as it might be in a workplace setting), I suggest you choose a password that's easy to type. (Whereas with Bodhi version 2 you could tweak your system so that you almost never required to enter your password, this is no longer possible with version 3. This may be a pain, but it makes your system more secure.) Tick 'Log in automatically', then Continue.

13. You can now take a tea break, as there will be a delay of up to 10 minutes or so while Bodhi unpacks and installs all its files. When it's done, you are invited to click Restart to reboot the system from the hard disk. Do so.

14. After a few seconds the CD will be ejected. Press Enter to continue and the computer will reboot and Bodhi Linux will fire up from your hard disk. As this is the first time you have run your new system, you will have to enter your password.

# 2 First steps with Bodhi

In this chapter you'll carry out some basic tasks in Bodhi Linux, including using the menu system, doing a small amount of customization, and installing some software from the Appcenter (Firefox web browser, an email client, and PCManFM file manager). You'll also be using PCManFM for some file management tasks. Finally you'll learn how to enter Linux commands using Terminology (the terminal installed on your system).

## 2.1 The Bodhi menu system

The Bodhi Main menu, and two of its submenus, are available at the click of the mouse - i.e. a click on any any empty spot on the desktop.

\- Left-click for the Main menu (or press the Menu key, which on many keyboards is located at the right of the spacebar, or click the Start gadget on the shelf). This menu gives access to the applications installed on your system and to the many Enlightenment settings.

\- Right-click for the Favorites menu (or press Alt+Menu, i.e. hold down the Alt key while pressing the Menu key). This will only show if you have set it up with your favourite applications - see Section 5.1.

\- Middle-click (scroll wheel click) for the Windows menu (or press Ctrl+Menu). This lists all open and minimized windows, and is discussed in Section 3.8. You can also use Alt+Tab to switch between windows.

It is the Main menu (and the shelf) that you'll be using in this chapter to access what's on your system. By moving the mouse over the main menu items you get to submenus, and mousing over these leads to further submenus (see the figure). These submenus may sometimes disappear off the right of the screen, and when this happens simply move the mouse pointer to the right edge of the screen and the menus will shift to the left.

The shelf at the top of your desktop houses a number of gadgets, many of which are shortcuts to menu options. For example, clicking the System gadget (at the right of the shelf - see the picture below) is equivalent to opening _Main menu > System_ (i.e. choosing System from the Main menu) - it opens a menu offering Power Off, Suspend, and other system options. Use this to power off your computer.

**Note for E17 users:** The default E17 desktop has two shelves, one at the top and a second shelf at the bottom, which is auto-hidden (meaning that you have to hover the mouse over it to bring it into view).

## 2.2 Connect to your router

You will have to do this manually the first time you log on. Simply click the Network Manager gadget on the shelf (the downward-pointing triange), wait a few seconds for the list of networks to appear, select yours, and enter the passphrase.

## 2.3 Update your system

Before doing anything else you should update your system. In the past this has meant opening a terminal and entering a couple of Linux commands, one to update the package index stored on your system (so that it is synchronized with the online software repository), the second to upgrade any out-of-date packages stored on your system to the latest versions. With Bodhi version 3 these tasks are performed by the eepDater utility, which E19 users can run by clicking the System Updates gadget on the shelf (left of centre, marked with a blue tick in the picture above).

One of three notifications will be displayed on this gadget:

\- the number of packages on your system that need upgrading  
\- a tick if your system is up-to-date.  
\- a picture of cogwheels if eepDater is working.

If a number shows on System Updates, click it now. A dialog box opens where you should enter your password to run eepDater. It will begin by updating your package index, then it will list the packages that need updating. Click Select All, then Apply, then wait a minute or two while it installs the updates. Close the eepDater window when it's finished.

**Note for E17 users:** To update your computer, go to _Main menu > Applications > System Tools > eepDater_.

## 2.4 Some initial tweaks

### Language and Keyboard settings

If you are not from the USA, you will probably want to adjust Enlightenment's Language and Keyboard settings. (If you are running E17, you will first have to load the Language and Keyboard modules: go Main menu > Settings > Modules, where you will find Keyboard under the Utilities tab and Language under the Settings tab.)

If you are a Brit, for example, do this:

1. Go to _Main menu > Settings > All > Language > Language Settings_. The Language Settings dialog box opens.

2. Click on Advanced (bottom right) then choose United Kingdom from the list that appears, then click OK.

3. Go to _Main menu > Settings > All > Input > Keyboard_. The Keyboard Settings dialog box appears. If GB is not shown as the default keyboard, click Add, then choose English (UK) from the list, then OK.

4. Back at the Keyboard Settings dialog box, remove any non-GB keyboards, then click OK.

**Note:** Language packs for languages other than English can be downloaded from the Bodhi Linux Appcenter - see Section 3.4. Once installed the languages will appear at the Language Settings dialog box.

### Composite settings (E19)

If you have an older (and therefore slower) computer, but NOT otherwise, you may wish to speed up your E19 desktop by adjusting the compositing settings.

1. Go to _Main menu > Settings > Composite_. The Composite Settings dialog box appears.

2. At the General tab tick 'Enable "fast" composite effects'.

3. I suggest you also tick 'Don't fade backlight'.

4. For more changes to individual items, click the Advanced button and select the Effects tab. For example, you might disable composite effects for windows here.

5. Click OK when you've finished.

### Turn on Compositing (E17)

The Compositing module is not loaded by default on E17. However, some themes (see below) require it to display properly, so unless you have a very old and slow computer you may wish to load it now. Go to _Main menu > Settings > Modules > Look_, highlight Composite, and click Load.

Note that Composite will introduce a bouncy effect when you open windows. To turn this off, go to _Main menu > Settings > All > Look > Composit_e, then at the Composite Settings dialog box scroll down to the last style option ('still'), highlight it, and click OK.

### Themes

Enlightenment themes control the appearance of your desktop and its various components, including shelves, menus, icons, and dialog boxes. If you wish to change the default theme that greets you on a new installation, go to the Theme Selector dialog box shown below (at Main menu > Settings > Theme on E19, or at _Main menu > Settings > All > Look > Theme_ in the case of E17). A list of themes available on your system will be displayed \- which in the case of a new Bodhi 3.0.0 installation is just the default theme!

**Warning:** If you intend to switch desktop managers (from E17 to E19 or vice versa), do so BEFORE installing any themes. Otherwise you will have to uninstall them before you can switch. No doubt that's why only the default theme is included in a new installation.

To get more themes, E19 users should open Midori and go to the Bodhi Linux home page (www.bodhilinux.com), choose AppCenter from the menu at the top of the page, and go to the themes category. (For more on the AppCenter, see Section 2.5 below.) After you have installed one or more of these themes, open the Theme Selector dialog box, and they should appear under System. The Radiance E19 theme is shown in the screenshot below.

**Note for E17 users:** At the time of writing only E19 themes are available at the AppCenter. There are, however, many E17 themes available in the repository, but you will have to use Synaptic to install these - see Chapter 4 (Section 4.1).

To try a theme, simply highlight it in the list and click Apply, then check how the shelf and the menus look. Try others, and when you have made your final choice click OK.

**Note:** If, after applying a theme, the desktop wallpaper does not change to reflect that theme, go to _Main menu > Settings > Wallpaper_ and click 'Use Theme Wallpaper'. You will certainly need to do that if you chose the Radiance E19 theme, as the shelf is set to 'invisible' and looks horrible with the previous wallpaper! We will change this invisible setting later.

Enlightenment themes do not control the appearance of application windows, i.e. the look of such things as scroll bars and menus. GTK themes control these, and ideally you should select a GTK theme that matches your chosen Enlightenment theme. To do this, go to _Main menu > Settings > All > Look > Application Theme_ to open the Application Theme Settings dialog box and make your choice. (To restrict your selection to matching themes, tick the 'Match Enlightenment Theme' box.) For example, if you have applied the Radiance Enlightenment theme, select the GTK theme of the same name.

More details on themes, including icon themes, are given in Sections 5.10 and 5.11.

### Fonts

Another change you may like to make is to the font used by the Enlightenment theme you selected above. (We'll change the font colours and background colours later, in Section 5.9.) If your eyes are not that good, you could make the default font bigger, or you might just wish to change the font used in the title bar or menu system. (Alternatively, increase the desktop scaling - go to _Main menu > Settings > All > Look > Scaling_.)

1. Go to _Main menu > Settings > All > Look > Fonts_. The Font Settings dialog box shown in the figure below appears.

2. If you wish to change the default font used by Enlightenment you can do so here, by ticking Enable Custom Font Classes then choosing a font and a size and clicking Apply. It's easy to restore the original settings - simply untick Enable Custom Font Classes then click Apply. Most people won't want to make a global change like this, so let's instead just change the font used in the Enlightenment menu system.

3. Click Advanced, and the General Settings section of the dialog box appears.

4. Click Menu item in the Font Classes column, then Enable Font Class at the foot of this column (see the figure below).

5. Choose Liberation Sans in the Font column, then Bold in the Style column, then scroll down to 12 pixels in the size column and click that.

6. Click Apply, then click anywhere on the desktop to see how your menu looks. Try other choices at the dialog box if the results are not to your liking.

You may also wish to change the font used in the title bar of windows:

1. At the Font Settings dialog box (Advanced section), click Title Bar in the Font Classes column, then Enable Font Class at the foot of the column, then choose Ubuntu in the Font column, Bold in the Style column, and 13 pixels in the Size column.

2. Click Apply, and observe how the font used in the title bar of the dialog box changes. Again, feel free try a different font and size. Close the dialog box when you've finished.

**Note:** To restore the default settings for any of the above, untick Enable Font Class.

### The clock

You may wish to alter the position and appearance of the clock (currently towards the right of the shelf).

1. To move it to the desktop, right-click it to display the context menu, mouse over the top menu item (Clock), then Move To, then click on Desktop - remember to keep moving the mouse to the right to bring successive menus into view! (In future I'll write this sequence as _Clock > Move To > Desktop_.)

2. The clock appears on the desktop. To alter the settings of this new instance of the clock, right-click on it, then from the context menu choose _Clock > Settings_. The Clock Settings dialog box appears.

3. If you wish to, here is where you change the clock to Analog, and maybe untick Seconds. Click OK.

4. To change the size and position of the clock, right-click on it again, then _Clock > Begin Move/Resize_. A Move/Resize box appears around the clock, allowing you to change its position by dragging it with the mouse or alter its size by dragging on a border.

5. Right-click on the box to finish.

6. There is still a clock on the shelf; remove it by right-clicking on it then _Clock > Remove_.

### Sound

To check the sound on your computer, run the Firefox web browser (you will be installing this Section 2.6 below), and go to the YouTube website and play a video.

If there is no sound when you play the video, it's almost certainly because it has been muted on your computer. To unmute it, there are several things to try:

1. Click on the speaker symbol on your shelf to reveal the mixer popup box and make sure that Mute is unchecked and that the volume controls are towards the top of the slider.

2. Click on the button at the base of the mixer popup box to reveal the Mixer dialog box and check that the other channels such as PCM are not muted.

3. If you are still getting no sound, check that the speaker symbol at the bottom right of the Youtube video window is not muted.

4. It's likely that none of the above are the cause of your problem, and that you need to download and run a program called _pavucontrol_ (PulseAudio Volume Control). Section 2.15 at the end of this chapter explains how to install a program (Xarchiver) from the terminal - simply follow the instructions there, replacing _Xarchiver_ by _pavucontrol_. Then run PulseAudio Volume Control (at _Main menu > Applications > Sound & Video_), go to its Output Devices tab, and check the state of the Mute Audio button (towards the top right). If it is enclosed in a grey box it is muted - click it to unmute.

## 2.5 The AppCenter

Very little in the way of application software is supplied on the Bodhi installation CD, and what there is very lightweight. This is because part of Bodhi's design philosophy is to provide a minimal system that will run well on any hardware, including underpowered legacy PCs, and to leave it to the user to beef it up with whatever additional heavyweight (but more capable) packages they want. So Midori is a lightweight web browser that will run well on any hardware, and the Enlightenment File Manager (EFM) is also lightweight and fast.

You will certainly want to add to this minimal system your own choice of office software, media players, photo and graphics software, as well as additional utilities, and we will be exploring a few of the many possibilities later in this book. In this chapter we will restrict ourselves to adding a more capable web browser, an email client, and a full-featured file manager.

Bodhi Linux really scores here, for its AppCenter offers almost everything you could want, all conveniently organized and ready to run on your Bodhi system. To check out the AppCenter:

1. Run Midori (click on its icon on the shelf, or go to _Main menu > Applications > Internet > Midori_).

2. When Midori opens, go to the Bodhi home page (www.bodhilinux.com) and choose AppCenter from panel at the top of the page. The AppCenter opens, where you can search for the software you want either by entering its name in the Search box or by browsing for it in the appropriate category.

It's worth spending some time browsing what's on offer here, but in this chapter we'll restrict ourselves to a web browser (Firefox), an email client (Thunderbird), and a file manager (PCManFM). (Chrome is another heavyweight browser, which also enables you to access Google Drive, and I will cover this in Chapter 4.)

## 2.6 Firefox

### Install Firefox

1. At the AppCenter (see the last section), enter 'firefox' in the search box or go to the Web Browsers section to find it. The Firefox installation page will open, with information about the product.

2. Click the Install button, and the eSudo dialog box opens. Enter your password.

3. The Bodhi Application Installer runs. It refreshes the package lists held on your computer, and then it asks you to confirm that you want to install the package. Click Install.

4. The installer will now download and install Firefox, including adding it to your menu system, where you will find it at _Main menu > Applications > Internet_.

You may find it takes slightly longer than Midori to load: it is after all a more heavyweight product. You can if you wish beef it up even more by adding plugins and add-ons. Let's install the add-on which allows you to set your Internet searches so that a small donation is given to Bodhi Linux by the search provider each time you search. (Midori has this set by default.)

### Set Bodhi at DuckDuckGo for your searches

1. Click the Menu button towards the top right of the Firefox window. The menu opens (see the figure), one of the choices being Add-ons. Click this, and the Add-ons Manager window opens.

2. In the 'Search all add-ons' box enter _add to search bar_. A list of hits appears, the first of which is 'Add to Search Bar 2.8'. Click Install to install this. (You can check that it has been installed by selecting Extensions from the menu at the left.)

3. Now navigate to https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s&t=bodhi. Right-click in the DuckDuckGo search box at the top of this web page (NOT Firefox's own search bar) and choose 'Add to search bar' from the context menu. The dialog box shown below appears, where you can change the name if you wish (e.g. change '%s' to 'Bodhi' so that the name becomes 'Bodhi at DuckDuckGo'), then click OK.

4. Click the magnifying glass at the left of Firefox's Search box (to the right of the address bar) and choose 'Change Search Settings'. The Firefox Preferences dialog box opens.

5. Click the small arrow at the right of the 'Default Search Engine' box and select 'Bodhi at DuckDuckGo from the list (see below).

6. Click Close and then restart Firefox.

### Install Flash

Return to the Add-ons Manager window (Step 1 above) and choose 'Plugins' from the menu at the left. You will see that video codec from Cisco has been installed, which should enable you to play YouTube videos. However, it will not enable you to play all the videos you might meet on the Internet; if you live in the UK, for example, it will not allow you play videos on the BBC website - for this you need Adobe Flash Player.

To install Adobe Flash:

1. Go to the BBC site (e.g. bbc.co.uk/news), then go to a featured video and click on it to play it. A message to 'Download Adobe Flash Player now' will appear.

2. Click on this, click 'Select version to download', select 'APT for Ubuntu', then click the Download Now button.

3. Firefox's 'Launch Application' dialog box will appear, offering to use APTurl for this task. Tick 'Remember my choice for apt links', then click OK. Flash will be installed.

4. Close and restart Firefox, and Flash will be added to the list of Firefox plugins.

You can alternatively install Flash via Synaptic - see the start of Chapter 4 for notes on using Synaptic.

### Install Flash Video Downloader

Another Add-in that you might wish to install is one that will assist downloading videos from sites such as YouTube:

1. Return to the Add-ons Manager window and enter 'Flash Video Downloader' into the search box. A list of hits will appear, including Flash Video Downloader (with a blue arrow to its left).

2. Select this, and at the download page for this add-on click the Add to Firefox button, then at the next dialog box click Install Now.

3. After this add-on installs, you are invited to restart Firefox. Do so, and you will see that two arrow buttons have been added to the Firefox toolbar: a greyed-out arrow arrow to the right of the address bar, and a black arrow further to the right which will show the progress of any downloads.

4. To test the Video Downloader add-on, go to Youtube and select a video. You should see a download button below the video window, put there by the Video Downloader you've just installed. Click the small arrow at the right of this button, and you will get a list of download options (see the figure). If you click on one of these options, a 'Save media file' window opens, where you can if wish change both the download folder and the filename; click Save, and you will see the progress of the download displayed towards the right of the toolbar.

**Note:** Another great add-on is _NoSquint_ , which allows you to easily zoom web pages, and to set the default zoom both for Firefox and for individual pages. _Disconnect_ will block websites that track your search and browsing history, and _Adblock Plus_ (to block some of those annoying ads. (Install Disconnect first, then Adblock Plus.)

### Set Bodhi Linux as your home page

Now go to the Bodhi Linux website (www.bodhilinux.com). You will be visiting this site on many occasions as you work through this book, so I suggest you set it as your home page. To do this, close all tabs in Firefox apart from the Bodhi Linux tab, then click on the Menu button at the extreme right of the Firefox toolbar, click on Preferences, then, at the General tab, and click the Use Current Page button (see the figure below). Click Close.

## 2.7 An email client

1. Using Firefox, go to the AppCenter (via the Bodhi Linux home page), then to the Email Client category. One of the email clients on offer is Thunderbird, and I suggest you select this.

**Note:** In future I will write such a sequence as follows: _AppCenter > Email Client > Thunderbird_.

2. Click Install, and enter your password at the eSudo dialog box. The Bodhi Application Installer will run.

3. If this is the first time you have used Firefox to install some software (i.e. if you didn't use it to install Flash in the last section), a 'Launch Application' dialog box will appear, offering to use APTurl for this task. This is the right choice, so tick 'Remember my choice for apt links', then click OK.

4. At the next dialog box, click Install. Thunderbird will be installed on your computer, and added to the menu system (at _Main menu > Applications > Internet_).

5. Thunderbird will of course need to be configured for your particular email account, but this is very straightforward. Run Thunderbird ( _Main menu > Applications > Internet > Thunderbird Mail_), and at the 'Welcome to Thunderbird' opening dialog box choose 'Skip this and use my existing email', then at the Mail Account Setup dialog box enter your email address and password. Click Continue.

6. Thunderbird will now look up the details of your account settings. When it's done this, check the displayed details: for incoming emails, click POP3 if you wish to store them on your computer; if anything is wrong (e.g. if your server requires your full email address as your username) you can correct it here, click Manual Configuration to correct it. Then click Done.

7. Check that everything is working by sending an email to yourself. If the mail fails to send, or if it is sent but not received, then correct your settings. (To do so in Thunderbird, right-click on the blank area immediately below the title bar, and in the context menu that appears tick Menu Bar; the Thunderbird menu appears, where you should open the Edit menu, choose Account Settings, then check the Server Settings.)

## 2.8 Install PCManFM

If you come from a Windows background you will probably have encountered only one file manager, namely Windows Explorer. Linux, in contrast, offers a number of excellent file managers, and the choice is up to you. As always when choosing software, you have to strike a balance between power and ease of use, and that balance will vary from one person to another, depending on their needs. The Enlightenment File Manager (EFM) that is supplied with Bodhi Linux is lightweight and easy to use, but is lacking in features. Many Bodhi Linux users prefer to use something more capable, a popular choice being PCManFM. I suggest you make this your choice too.

(In the previous edition of this book I had suggested Nautilus, but the latest version of PCManFM is now, in my opinion, a superior product, and, unlike Nautilus, works straight out of the box with Bodhi version 3.)

To install PCManFM, go to _AppCenter > File Managers > PCManFM > Install_.

Once installed, you can run it from _Main menu > Applications > Accessories > File Manager PCManFM_. The figure below shows the PCManFM window, with the Home folder open - as you can see, it has automatically created a number of subfolders within your Home folder, together with appropriate icons.

**Note:** As you can see from the address bar in the figure, your Home folder is denoted _/home/ <username>_. Linux, like the Internet, uses forward slashes in its directory structure; Windows, perversely, uses backslashes.

## 2.9 PCManFM's features

If you've never used PCManFM before, it's worth spending some time exploring its features. Some are described below.

### Side pane

This is at the left of the PCManFM window, and shows either Places (the default) or the directory tree. If you insert a USB drive, it will appear under Places. And if you bookmark a folder that you frequently use, then that will appear here too. For example, I have (temporarily) bookmarked the folder where I store the many figures (screenshots) for this book, so I can instantly access them from the side pane.

**Note:** To eject a USB drive, right-click on it in the side pane and choose Eject from the context menu.

### Preferences (Edit menu)

You should explore PCManFM's many preferences (go to _Edit > Preferencies_), but a couple I should draw to your attention are:

\- In the General section of the Preferences dialog box, you may wish to set the Default View Mode to Compact View.

\- In the Layout section of this dialog box you may want to tick 'Filesystem root' (under 'Show in Places'). This will give you quick access to the Linux root filesystem from the side pane. And if you wish to connect with other (Windows) computers on your network you should also tick 'Network'.

\- In the Volume Management section, you may wish to untick 'Show available options for removable media' and tick 'Open removable media in new tab'.

\- In the Advanced section, change the terminal emulator to 'terminology %s'. (Terminology is the terminal program that comes with Bodhi Linux - you'll be using it shortly.)

### Dual pane mode (View menu, or press F3)

This allows you to see different places side-by-side in the PCManFM window. For example, you could display a folder in your Home directory in one pane and a USB stick in the other. This makes it easy to copy files or folders from one to the other by simply dragging them across with the mouse.

### Open folder in terminal (Tools menu, or press F4)

You will find this useful later on when you want to run terminal commands in a particular folder. Related to this is 'Run a command in current folder', also in the Tools menu.

### Find files (Tools menu)

This allows you to search for files by name, file type, properties, or content in any directory or in the entire file system. It understands the usual set of wildcard characters (e.g. '*' for any group of characters). It's easiest to go to the folder where you want to search first (e.g. the root filesystem, or the Home folder) and then run _Tools > Find Files_.

**Note:** 'Directory' and 'folder' mean the same thing.

### Remove files or send them to Trash (Edit menu)

The first of these options removes files permanently, the second allows you to recover them if you change your mind later: click on Trash Can (Rubbish Bin) under Places in the side pane to do this. The context menu (which opens if you right-click a file or folder) shows only the second of these options.

### The Desktop folder

Any files that you place here will show up as icons on your desktop. For example, I store the file for this book here, so that to open it in my word processing program all I need do is click on its icon. You will be copying a file to your desktop in Section 2.11 below.

### Handling compressed (ZIP) files

It's a good idea to install Xarchiver for zip files, as this integrates well with PCManFM, adding helpful items to PCManFM's context menu to handle such files. The easiest way to install Xarchiver is via the Synaptic package manager, which I will be covering in Chapter 4. You can alternatively install it from the terminal, and I will explain how to do this in Section 2.15 at the end of this chapter.

## 2.10 Single-click or double-click?

The standard way of using the left mouse button is to _select_ a folder or file with a single click, and _open_ it with a double click. It has always been possible to change this so that you can open a file or folder with a single click, but this has presented problems if you want to select a file without opening it. The latest version of PCManFM resolves this with its auto-selection feature, which allows you to select a file by hovering the mouse over it for a short while without clicking it; you can then select multiple further files by holding down Ctrl while clicking on them in the usual way. Alternatively, you can turn auto-select off and select a file either by clicking it with the scroll wheel (pressing this is equivalent to clicking the middle button), or by holding down Ctrl and left-clicking. Both methods work with folders as well as files.

You already run items on your shelf with a single click. The advantage of switching PCManFM to single-click mode is that you then have a consistent mouse interface, opening or running all files and icons, whether on a shelf or the desktop or in the file manager, with a single click.

To try this:

1. Open _Edit menu > Preferences_. The Preferences dialog box opens.

2. At the General tab, at the top, tick 'Open files with single click'.

3. If you wish to try the auto-selection method, I suggest you increase the auto-selection delay to the maximum possible (2 seconds), then reduce it as you become accustomed to this way of working.

4. Click Close, then test out this change by selecting items (by mousing over them, and making further multiple selections with Ctrl+click), and opening items with a single click.

5. Return to the Preferences dialog box, and this time set the auto-selection delay to zero. Now you can select a folder or file with Ctrl + left-click, and further multiple selections in the same way. (Or by middle click followed Ctrl + left-click, which is my preferred method.)

If you have any application icons on your desktop, you will want to run these with a single click too. To set this up, you will have to specify single-click operation in the Enlightenment File Manager:

1. Go to _Main menu > Settings > All > Files > File Manager_. The File Manager Settings dialog box opens.

2. Open the Behavior tab, and tick the 'Use single click' box.

3. Click OK.

## 2.11 Using PCManFM

Let's start by using PCManFM to copy an application launcher onto the desktop. Application launchers are central to the Enlightenment window management system, as they control, among other things, which menu (if any) lists an application, how it runs, and whether it appears as an icon on the desktop.

1. Click on Applications in the Places side-pane. A number of folders appear in the main pane, including Accessories. Click on Accessories (or double-click if you did not set up PCManFM in single-click mode in the last section), and icons for ePad and PCManFM appear.

2. Press F3 to open a second pane, then click on Desktop in the Places side-pane. You now have both the Accessories pane and the Desktop pane open.

3. With the mouse, drag the PCManFM icon from the Accessories Pane to the Desktop pane. The icon will be added to the Desktop Pane.

4. Now close PCManFM so that the desktop appears. You will see that a PCManFM launcher icon has been added to it. This means that in future you can launch PCManFM directly from the desktop by clicking this icon. Do so now.

If you wish to examine the contents of this launcher, click on Desktop in the Places side pane, then right-click on PCManFM in the main pane, then choose ePad from the context menu. (If ePad is not shown here, click _Open With... > Accessories > ePad_.) The contents of the launcher will be displayed in ePad. The main entries are at the top (specifying the type, icon, and name), and at the bottom (the menu categories, the command to execute it, whether it should appear in the menu system, and whether it should be run in a terminal).

As we will see later, it is possible to edit such launchers.

**Note:** An alternative way to copy a file from Folder A to Folder B is to open Folder A, right-click the file and choose Copy, then open Folder B, right-click on an empty space and choose Paste. To _move_ a file from Folder A to B you should choose Cut rather than Copy.

Using PCManFM to carry out other tasks is very intuitive and I won't dwell on them. To give one example, you will probably want to create additional folders (directories) either in your Home directory or within its existing folders. If you want to create a folder called Family within your Pictures folder, simply click on Home Folder in the Places side-pane, open the Pictures folder then right-click on an empty space in the main pane and choose _Create New > Folder_ from the context menu and enter the name of your new folder. You can delete folders (or files) in a similar way.

## 2.12 Hidden files

Just as most of the stuff in the universe is invisible dark matter, so most of the directories and files in your Home folder are hidden. To see them, click on Home Folder in the PCManFM side pane, then press Ctrl+H (or choose _View > Show Hidden_ from the menu). You will see that there are quite a few hidden folders there - there will be many more when you've finished installing the various applications that you'll need.

Notice that these hidden folders are all prefixed with a '.'. One important hidden folder is .local. Amongst its subfolders is Trash, where files that you sent to the Trash Can are stored. (Note: PCManFM will create this folder when you first delete a file by moving it to Trash.) To see these files, navigate to _.local/share/Trash_ ; alternatively, click on 'files', or click on Trash Can in the Places side-pane.

These folders exist in your Home directory rather than elsewhere on your system because their contents have nothing to do with any system files that are needed to run Bodhi Linux or your applications, rather they are used to store preferences and other data peculiar to you; and they are hidden because there is normally no need for you to be able to see or access them. So turn off viewing hidden files now by pressing Ctrl+H again.

## 2.13 Setting default applications

To set PCManFM as the default file manager and Firefox as the default browser:

1. Go to _Main menu > Settings > All > Apps > Default Applications_. The Default Applications dialog box opens.

2. Click on Browser and choose Firefox from the list, then File and choose File Manager PCManFM from the list.

3. Click OK.

## 2.14 The Enlightenment File Manager (EFM)

Despite the Enlightenment File Manager (EFM) no longer being the default file manager on your system, it is part of Enlightenment, and it will continue to pop up for some Enlightenment operations. It will, for example, be activated when you insert a USB drive into a USB port - which can be irritating if you have set PCManFM or another file manager as the default. To deactivate EFM in this situation:

1. Go to _Main menu > Settings > All > Files > File Manager_. The File Manager Settings dialog box opens.

2. At the Device tab (click the arrow at the top right to see this), untick all the boxes, then click Apply. (You can access all devices from the Places side-pane of PCManFM.)

3. Note that EFM will continue to control icons on the desktop. Open the Display tab and make sure that 'Icons on Desktop' is ticked (assuming you want desktop icons). Finally click OK.

**Note 1:** You can control the position of desktop icons by right-clicking on an icon and choosing View Mode from the context menu. Choose Grid Icons if you want them organized to a grid shape, or Custom Icons if you want to drag them to positions of your own choosing.

**Note 2:** You can unload EFM to turn off all its operations, including showing icons on the desktop. Go to Main menu > Settings > Modules > Files, then highlight EFM (Starter), click Unload, then OK. (You can still add gadgets like the clock to the desktop.)

## 2.15 Terminology

Nowadays you are kept at arms length from the operating system of your computer by a graphical user interface (GUI), which in our case is the Enlightenment desktop and the various graphical utilities that run in it. Unless you are heavily into Linux, you will rarely need to type commands at a 'terminal' or 'console', names that are hangovers from pre-windows/mouse days when all interactions with the computer were via the keyboard.

With Bodhi version 3 it becomes possible to dispense with the command line entirely. However, this is not very desirable, as some tasks are more easily accomplished by issuing terminal commands rather than by means of a graphical utility, and some things can only be done via the terminal. Indeed, one of the applications described in Chapter 4 can only be installed and used via the terminal.

The Bodhi Linux terminal is called Terminology, and you will find in the System Tools submenu. Open it now ( _Main menu > Applications > System Tools > Terminology_).

Before proceeding further, I suggest you customize Terminology to suit your preferences:

1. Right-click on a blank area of the Terminology window to open the context menu, and choose _Settings > Theme_.

2. Choose a theme that you like - my own preference is for Mustang, which gives a pure white text on a pure black background.

3. You can also alter the font if you wish ( _Settings > Font_).

**Note:** I will not be giving any explanation of the terminal commands used below and elsewhere in this book. If you want to know more, simply search the Web for 'linux <command>'. So to find out what the _synclient_ command below does, search for 'linux synclient'.

### Disabling your laptop's touchpad

If you use a mouse with your laptop, you will probably want to disable the laptop's touchpad. You can download a graphical utility to do this, but it's much simpler to enter a terminal command. You can even 'bind' such a command to a keypress, so that, for example, you can turn off the touchpad by pressing Win+0 (i.e. holding down the Win key and pressing 0, and turn it back on again by pressing Win+1. (I'll explain how to set this up in Section 3.10. And in Section 5.4 I'll explain how to turn off the touchpad automatically at start-up.)

To disable the touchpad, enter the following command into Terminology:

synclient TouchpadOff=1

Check that this has worked (by attempting to move the pointer with the touchpad), then turn it back on again:

synclient TouchpadOff=0

These commands must be typed in exactly as shown, with uppercase T and O, lowercase elsewhere.

Note: The Internet has plenty of advice on using the terminal - search for 'using Linux terminal'. One site is  Beginner Geek: How to start using the Linux terminal.

### Installing Xarchiver

Earlier I suggested installing Xarchiver, as it allows you to easily handle zip files from within PCManFM. To install this in Terminology, enter the following two commands:

sudo apt-get update  
sudo apt-get install xarchiver

and enter your password when asked.

Now, if you right-click on a ZIP file in PCManFM, the context menu will give you several new options, including 'Extract Here'.

## 2.16 Switching between the E17 and E19 desktops

As explained earlier, the E17 desktop is supplied on a legacy Linux kernal and is suitable for older computers, whereas the E19 desktop is supplied on a new kernel suitable for newer computers. However, there are many reasons why you might want to run E17 or a newer kernel, and you might even want to run E19 on the legacy kernel.

For example, you may find that E19 runs sluggishly on your not-so-fast computer, in which case switching to the E17 desktop might be a good idea, as that will run much faster.

I'm writing these words on a newish computer running E19 on the legacy kernel. That seems an odd thing to do, but unfortunately the newer kernel conflicts with the external monitor I'm using, causing irritating flickering at higher resolutions. The older kernel causes no problems with the monitor, so I'm using that, and I switched the desktop to E19 partly because I prefer it, and partly because I need instant access to it for this book (for screenshots etc). I have to say, though, that E19 does not run as smoothly on the legacy kernel as it did on the newer one, and I've had to disable some compositing effects, so I may ultimately switch back to E17.

Fortunately switching desktops preserves all your files and settings, though you must uninstall any Enlightenment themes that you've added and revert to the Default theme before attempting the switch.

Before installing software via the terminal you must first enter the command  
_sudo apt-get update_  
to synchronize your computer's index with that of the repositories.

Then, if you are switching from E19 to E17, you need to enter the command  
_sudo apt-get install bodhi-desktop-e17_

To switch from E17 to E19, enter the command  
_sudo apt-get install bodhi-desktop_

You may find that the shelf goes missing after the new desktop installs. Just restart Enlightenment ( _Main menu > Enlightenment > Restart_, or press Ctrl+Alt+End) or if necessary restart the computer to restore it. I find, having switched desktops from E17 to E19, that I always have to restart Enlightenment after booting up to restore my shelves.

# 3 Turbocharge your desktop

If you are fed up with navigating through the endless choices of the menu system, then this chapter is for you. By the end of it you will have an appreciation of the full flexibility and speed of the Enlightenment system, for you will have configured it to run applications and modify settings with just a click or two of the mouse. You will even have speeded up and simplified the way you use the mouse to maximize, minimize, close, and otherwise manipulate windows. The fiddle of accurately settling the pointer on those tiny buttons at the right of the title bar will be a thing of the past!

**Hint:** You will be opening a number of windows and dialog boxes as you work through this and subsequent chapters. If one of these extends off the top of the screen so that you can't see the title bar, hold down the Alt key while dragging the window with the mouse to bring the title bar into view.

## 3.1 Shelves, launchers, and trackers

The purpose of the shelf at the top of your screen (and at the bottom of the screen in the case of E17) is to house gadgets. These might include the iBar launcher from which you can launch applications (such as your web browser), and the Tasks gadget to track launched applications (so that you can easily bring them into view if they are hidden or minimized). With E19 has come an improved iBar, able to both launch and track applications, making the Tasks gadget redundant on that desktop.

In addition to the shelf, the E17 desktop can display the Engage dock, which, like the new iBar, can also track applications as well as launching them, and it can also house gadgets. In E17, therefore, it is possible to dispense with the shelf entirely and just use Engage; or you could have both, with the shelf housing the Tasks tracker and other gadgets but not the iBar launcher, and Engage acting as the launcher.

Although Engage, with its fancy effects, has become a must-have addition for many E17 users, the shelf is much more configurable:

\- Unlike Engage, which can only be positioned at the centre of a screen edge, a shelf can positioned at the centre, left, or right (or, in case of a side edge, at the top or bottom).  
\- Also unlike Engage, a shelf can be set so that it is not overlapped by windows, making it always visible (unless an application is fullscreen).  
\- You can have different shelves on different virtual desktops, whereas the same instance of Engage appears on all desktops. (You will realize the importance of this when we deal with virtual desktops in Chapter 5.)

What I will attempt to do in this chapter and Chapter 5 is to build as good a desktop environment as I can using the special features of the shelf and the E19 iBar. I will also include notes, where relevant, for E17 users. I will not be covering Engage, as that is not part of Enlightenment.

**Note for E17 users:** I suggest that at this point you delete the pop-up shelf at the bottom of your desktop. This will bring you into line with the E19 configuration described in this chapter. Don't worry about losing the content of this shelf - you will be adding it to the top shelf in the next section.

## 3.2 A first look at shelves and iBars

We'll begin by changing the contents of the shelf at the top of your desktop.

1. Right-click anywhere on the shelf, and from the context menu choose _Shelf > Contents_.

2. The Shelf Contents dialog box opens, listing the available gadgets. (There are more gadgets than these, and you will discover shortly how to load them. One is the Backlight gadget, which you will value if you have problems with your screen brightness.) You may want to make this dialog box bigger by dragging on its top or bottom borders.

**Hint:** You can vertically maximize dialog boxes such as this by pressing Shift+F10.

3. Make sure the following four gadgets are selected: Settings, iBar, System Updates, and Systray. (To select a gadget, highlight it and click Add Gadget.)

**Note for E17 users:** Ignore all references to the System Updates gadget, as it is (currently) not available on your system. Its purpose is to run eepDater (at _Main menu > Applications > System Tools_), and to indicate the number of available updates.

4. Deselect any other selected gadgets by highlighting them and clicking Remove Gadget. (You will be adding these elsewhere or accessing them in alternative ways later.)

5. You will be left with just four gadgets on your shelf, including the iBar, currently housing the Midori launcher icon. Close the Shelf Contents dialog box.

6. As you may have gathered, the iBar gadget is a container for application launchers. Right-click on the iBar area of the shelf (i.e. the space occupied by the Midori icon), and from the context menu choose _iBar > Contents_.

7. The iBar Applications dialog box opens, listing the available applications.

8. Following the procedure described in step 3 above, remove Midora from the iBar and add the applications you installed in the last chapter: File Manager PCManFM, Firefox, and Thunderbird Mail. Add Terminology as well.

9. Click on the Order tab (at the top of the dialog box), and reorder the list to PCManFM, Terminology, Firefox, Thunderbird.

10. Click OK. Your iBar should now contain icons for these four applications.

11. Since you can now run PCManFM from the shelf, there's no point having its icon on the desktop. To remove it from here, run PCManFM, click on Desktop in the Places side-pane, right-click on the PCManFM icon in the Desktop pane, and choose Move to Trash from the context menu.

**Tip:** Another way to add an application to an iBar is to open the application, right-click its title bar, and from the context menu choose the top option (application name), then 'Add to iBar', then select the iBar name from the list.

**Note:** The System gadget is no longer on the shelf, so to switch off your computer you will either have to press the computer's power button or use the menu system ( _Main menu > System > Power Off_). You will be able to add this gadget to a second shelf shortly, or you can add it to the desktop.

## 3.3 Change the shelf and iBar settings

Let's now change the position and appearance of the shelf and iBar:

1. Right-click anywhere on the shelf again and choose _Shelf > Settings_ from the context menu. The Shelf Settings dialog box opens.

2. At the Stacking tab, make sure that Below Windows is selected. This ensures that the shelf will not be visible if you wish to run an application fullscreen.

3. Click on Position, and at this tab choose the second option down at the left (i.e. the one showing the shelf positioned along the left edge of the desktop, at the top).

4. At the size tab, leave the size at 40 pixels, and make sure that Shrink to Content Width is selected.

5. Click OK.

The icons on your shelf are now located down the left edge of the screen, clustered at the top. Why have I put the shelf here? Because locating shelves at the left rather than along the top makes best use of desktop real-estate on modern wide-screen displays. If you have an older laptop with a 4x3 screen you would do better to put your shelf along the top or bottom.

**Note:** To change the order of the gadgets on the shelf, right-click anywhere on the shelf and select Begin Moving Gadgets from the context menu. You can now drag gadgets to the desired position. When you've done, right-click again and choose Stop Moving Gadgets. I like to put the iBar first.

## 3.4 Tracking launches (E19 only)

The E19 iBar keeps track of any applications that you launch. For example, if you launch Terminology (by clicking its icon), a small red dot appears to the lower right of the icon, and if you mouse over the icon its _launch menu_ appears to the right, displaying the title bar heading.

This is very convenient, for it means that if you minimize an application, you can easily restore it by mousing over its icon and clicking the launch menu. Note, though, that if you click on the icon itself rather than on the launch menu, you will instead open a second instance of the application. You might like to try this now.

**Note:** You can avoid the risk of opening a second instance of an application by going to _Main menu > Settings > All > Apps > Desktop Environments_ and ticking the 'Only launch single instances' box. You may find this unnecessarily restrictive, however, and prefer the alternative solution given in Section 3.6 below (i.e. a second shelf and iBar).

You will have noticed that the launch menu is partially obscured by the icon label that pops up when you mouse over the icon. You may wish to turn off these labels:

1. Right-click anywhere on the iBar, and choose _iBar > Settings_ from the context menu. The iBar Settings dialog box appears (see the figure below).

2. Untick the 'Show icon label' box.

3. Click Apply, but don't close the iBar Settings dialog box yet.

4. Check that this has worked by mousing over an iBar icon.

The iBar will track the launch of other applications as well. For example, if you launch ePad ( _Main menu > Applications > Accessories > ePad_), then its icon will appear in the iBar and you can mouse over it to display its launch menu. So your shelf will grow and shrink depending on what applications you have running.

You might prefer a more traditional display, where the iBar remains static and the running applications are shown separately. That way you can see at a glance what you have running, and there is no risk of opening a second instance of a minimized application rather than restoring the current instance. We'll set this up shortly, by creating another shelf and iBar.

Before doing so, we should stop our iBar tracking launches:

1. At the iBar Settings dialog box, tick 'Don't add items on launch', untick 'Track launch', and untick 'Menu on mouse over', so that the dialog box appears as in the figure below.

2. Click Apply, check that these changes have worked, then click Close.

**Note:** Several sections in this book, including those that deal with virtual desktops in Chapter 5, assume that you have stopped this iBar from tracking launches and that you have instead created a second 'Launch Tracker' iBar on a second shelf, as described in Section 3.6 below. I would therefore urge you to follow these iBar instructions, even if you subsequently decide to set up your iBars in a different way.

## 3.5 More gadgets

We need to digress at this point to discover how we might add more gadgets to those already available. Not all modules and gadgets that are supplied with Bodhi are loaded at startup: this is to keep your system as lightweight as possible.

To see what is and isn't loaded, take a look at the Module Settings dialog box ( _Main menu > Settings > Modules_). The available modules are grouped into a number of categories (Utilities, System, etc), and those that are loaded are highlighted. Some that you may want to load, if they are not loaded by default, are:

- **Backlight** (in the Utilities category). If you have problems with your screen brightness, you should load the Backlight module, and then add the Backlight gadget to a shelf (or to the desktop - see below).

- **Battery** (in the System category). If you are running your laptop on battery, this gadget will tell you how much charge you have left.

\- **Cpufreq** (System category). This tells you how fast your CPU is running (this varies according to the load); this gadget does not work on all computers.

\- **Temperature** (System category). This checks the core temperature of your computer.

There's no need to clutter up your shelf with these gadgets. You can add them to the desktop instead:

1. Go to _Main menu > Desktop > Change Gadgets_; the Desktop Gadgets dialog box opens.

2. Add (and remove) gadgets to the desktop from this dialog box. For example, you may wish to add the Pulse Mixer gadget. When you add it gadget, it will appear in a crosshatched box. You can reposition the gadget by dragging this box to the new location, and you can resize it by dragging a side of the box. When you've finished, right-click the box.

3. Right-click a desktop gadget for its context menu, where you can adjust its settings or move/reize it further..

**Note:** One of the gadgets you might add to your desktop could be another iBar. This would be a convenient way to add application icons to your desktop. The next section explains how you would customize another iBar (basically you would add another source to it).

**Coming up later:** In Chapter 5 you will be setting up a virtual desktop dedicated to your computer housekeeping and Enlightenment tasks, where you will be placing a new shelf housing all the gadgets mentioned above.

## 3.6 A second shelf with a launch tracker.

I said in Section 3.4 that as part of the exercises in this chapter you would need to create a second shelf. Do so now:

1. Go to _Main menu > Settings > Shelves_, and at the Shelf Settings dialog box click Add. The 'Add New Shelf' dialog box opens.

2. Give the shelf a meaningful name. Since we are going to use it mainly to track launches, you might call it 'Tracker'.

3. The Shelf Contents dialog box opens, allowing you to add gadgets to it. If you are running E19, add the iBar gadget. Initially this will contain duplicates of the icons in your original iBar, but we will change this shortly.

3a. **E17 users:** If you are running E17, add the Tasks gadget instead.

Note: For the Tasks gadget to look any good on a vertical shelf, you will have to increase its height. Click on the gadget, then from the context menu choose Tasks > Settings. At the Tasks Configuration dialog box increase the item height. (Do not tick any of the Display tick boxes.)

4. Also add the 'Everything Starter'. You will be using this a great deal, from Section 3.9 on. You might also like to add the System gadget.

5. Close the Shelf Contents dialog box, then at the Shelf Settings dialog box make sure your new shelf is highlighted and choose Settings.

6. The Shelf Settings dialog box opens, and at the various tabs make the following settings: Stacking - Below windows; Position - left edge of the screen at the bottom (see the figure); Size - 40 pixels and make sure Shrink to Content Width is selected.

7. Click OK, then close the Shelf Settings dialog box. Check the shelf is as you want it (left edge, bottom), and that the Everything Starter is below the iBar (or below the Tasks gadget, if you are running E17). If it is not, right-click on the shelf and choose Begin Moving Gadgets, right-click again to Stop Moving; the System gadget, if you loaded that should also be below the iBar.

Now comes the important part of the exercise for E19 users, namely to customize the iBar to track launched applications. (E17 users can go directly to Section 3.9, as the Tasks gadget will automatically track launches of both applications and Enlightenment dialog boxes.)

1. Right-click anywhere on your new iBar, and from the context menu choose _iBar > Settings_. The iBar Settings dialog box opens.

2. In the top 'Selected source' section click Add, and enter a name for your new iBar source (e.g. 'Launch Tracker'). Click OK.

3. Highlight the new source, then untick 'Show icon label', and make sure that 'Track launch', and 'Menu on mouse over' are both ticked (see the figure below). Click OK.

 Note for E17 users:

4. Right-click anywhere on your new iBar again, and this time choose _iBar > Contents_.

5. At the iBar Applications dialog box that opens, remove all selected applications, then click OK.

6. Your new iBar can now be used to restore minimized applications and to switch between open applications. Test it now by launching a couple of applications, i.e. Terminology (by clicking its icon on your first shelf), and ePad (from _Main menu > Applications > Accessories_). Minimize both. Their icons should be present in your new iBar on your new shelf, and if you mouse over them you should see their launch menus, and if you click on the ePad icon you will restore it from its minimized state.

7. In contrast to the earlier situation, the ePad icon has not been added to your original ibar on your original shelf. Also, if you click on the Terminology icon on your original shelf you will not restore it but will instead launch another instance of it.

**Note:** If you maximize one of these applications, so that it fills your entire desktop apart from the narrow strip at the left reserved for your shelves, you can click on the exposed part of the desktop between the two shelves to open the Enlightenment menu system. Alternatively press the Menu key on the keyboard.

8. Change the look of the iBar: right-click on the iBar, then _iBar > Settings > Plain_.

9. Try setting your tracker shelf to invisible - right click on the shelf and from the context menu choose _Tracker > Settings > Style > Invisible_.

Leave ePad running for the exercise in the next section.

## 3.7 The launch menu (E19)

In the last section you used the launch menu to restore a minimized application. It offers much more than this, though, as you'll see if you right-click on a launch menu:

1. Mouse over the ePad icon in your second (lower) shelf to reveal its launch menu (shown in the screenshot below).

2. Right-click on this menu to reveal a list of choices, then mouse over the top choice (ePad.py). As you can see from the options here, you could use this method to add ePad to your original (default) iBar.

Other possibilities offered by the launch menu include various Window options (including border styles), Always on Top (so that it is always above other windows, even if it does not have focus), Sticky (so that it appears on all desktops - see Chapter 5), Borderless, and Close.

## 3.8 Alt+Tab and the Windows menu

The iBar on your new shelf only tracks the launch of applications, NOT the launch of Enlightenment dialog boxes. (This is in contrast to the Tasks gadget, which shows both.) So if you open an Enlightenment dialog box and then minimize it, or if the dialog box becomes hidden behind another window, you will not find its icon anywhere on the desktop or a shelf, so there's nothing to click to restore it. Fortunately this isn't a problem: Enlightenment dialog boxes are rarely minimized or hidden, and if they are there are several ways of restoring them, including the Windows menu:

1. To try this, open the Settings Panel (by clicking on the Settings gadget or by choosing _Main menu > Settings > Settings Panel_), then minimize it.

2. Although its icon does not appear in your launch tracker iBar, it does show up in the Windows menu. To open this menu, middle-click on an empty spot of the desktop, or press Ctrl+Menu.

3. To restore the Settings Panel, click on its entry in the Windows menu. Leave the Panel open for Section 3.9 below.

A second similar (and arguably nicer) way of switching between running applications, including Enlightenment dialog boxes, is to simply press Alt+Tab for a Windows menu. Keep tapping Tab until the window you require is on top.

## 3.9 The Settings Panel

As you've worked through this book you've often had to navigate through various submenus of the Settings menu to reach the depths of the Enlightenment system. But there are easier ways. One is by using the Settings Panel:

1. If you did not open the Settings Panel in the last section, do so now (by clicking the Settings gadget on your first shelf, or from _Main menu > Settings > Settings Panel_).

2. Maximize the Settings Panel window. Across the top are the various items on the 'All' menu ( _Main menu > Settings > All_), i.e. Look, Apps, Screen, etc.

3. If you click on any of these, the same options are displayed as when you navigate to them through the _Settings > All_ menu. You may wish to explore some of these options now.

You will probably agree that this is a nicer way to navigate through the multitude of Enlightenment's possibilities than via the menu system. You might also wonder why I didn't introduce this method earlier. The reason is that there is an even better way: the Everything launcher.

**Hint:** The Settings Panel (and many dialog boxes) have more headings or tabs displayed across the tab bar than will fit into the window. (This is indicated by the clickable arrows at the left and right of the tab bar.) If you hover the mouse over the tab bar and rotate its scroll wheel, you will scroll the bar and bring the remaining headings into the view.

## 3.10 Run Everything

You can open the Everything launcher either via the menu system ( _Main menu > Run Everything_), or from the keyboard (by pressing Alt+Esc or Ctrl+Alt+Space, or Win+Space on E17), or by clicking the Everything Starter gadget on your second Tracker shelf. A second click, or pressing Esc, will close the Everything launcher.

We are going to use only the most basic feature of the Everything launcher, which is to run a program or open a dialog box by simply entering the first few letters of its name. More information on this and other aspects of Enlightenment are available at the Bodhi Linux wiki (available from the Bodhi home page).

1. Click the Everything Starter gadget to open Everything (or press Alt+Esc), and type the first two or three letters of _pcmanfm_. PCManFM's icon appears, but it isn't top of the list.

2. Launch PCManFM by double-clicking its icon in the Run Everything window. Then close PCManFM.

3. Run Everything again, and again type the first couple of letters of _pcmanfm_. Now PCManFM is at the top of the list, and now you can run it by simply pressing Enter - try it. Your earlier choice has been remembered by Everything, and it is anticipating your likely actions. Close PCManFM.

4. Run Everything again, and type the first couple of letters of _shelves_. The Shelves icon appears, and again it is not the first in the list. Double-click it, and the Shelves Contents dialog box opens.

5. As before, if you close this dialog box and then Run Everything again and type the first couple of letters of _shelves_ , the Shelves icon will be first in the list, and this time you can open the dialog box by just pressing Enter.

You'll be using the Everything launcher (rather than the menu system or the Settings Panel) in the remaining exercises in this chapter.

**Note:** An alternative way to launch an application or dialog box in Everything is to right-click the icon instead of double-clicking or to press Ctrl+Enter instead of Enter. Doing so will leave Everything open for further use.

## 3.11 Key bindings

These specify the actions that occur when you press a key combination. A large number of default key bindings have already been set up for you, one example being Alt+Esc to run Everything. These bindings are specified in the Key Bindings Settings dialog box, shown in the figure below - I've highlighted Shift+F10, which can be used to maximize a window vertically. This binding is very useful for dialog boxes, which often (like this one) have a large number of items.

For a list of default key bindings, see the Bodhi Guide to Enlightenment, Bindings section ( _Main menu > Bodhi Linux > Quick Start > The Bodhi Guide to Enlightenment_).

To set up some key bindings of your own:

1. Run Everything, then type in the first few letters of _key bindings_ and press Enter to open the dialog box.

2. Press Shift+F10 to maximize the dialog box vertically.

3. Scroll down the left pane of the dialog box: you will see that many Alt, Alt+Shift, Ctrl+Alt, and Ctrl+Shift combinations have been set up, so we need to avoid these when setting up combinations of our own. We also need to avoid Ctrl \+ another key, as these combinations are often used by applications. Win key combinations are safe, so we'll restrict ourselves to these - the only two that have been set by default are Win + Left arrow to maximize left, and Win+Right to maximize right. (The Win key is normally to the left of the space bar.)

4. E17 users also have Win+Space set up to run Everything. If you're on E19, you might like to set this up for yourself. To do so:

a. Click Add (at the foot of the Key Bindings pane) then press Win+Space.

b. Scroll down the right-hand Action pane to reach the 'Everything Launcher' section (about a third of the way through the list), then click on 'Show Everything Launcher'.

c. Click Apply at the foot of the dialog box.

5. Press Win+Space to test your binding. The Everything launcher should appear. Press Esc to close it.

6. You might like to set up Alt+Space to perform the similar task of opening the Settings Panel. To do this, click Add, then press Alt+Space, then select Settings Panel (in the 'Launch' section about half-way down the Action pane), then click Apply. Press Alt+Space to test it.

7. Now set up Win+P as the Presentation Mode Toggle (about one third of the way down the Action pane).

8. If you don't have the System gadget on a shelf, you might set up Win+Delete to Power Off Now (you will find this under 'System', about two thirds of the way down the Action pane). Don't test this, however, at least not yet, as it will turn off your computer!

9. Now set up Win+0 (zero) to disable your laptop's touchpad. In this case you should select the Command action (in the 'Launch' section, about half-way down). Then, in the Action Parameters box (at the foot of the Action pane) delete the contents (it shows the syntax for a sample command) and insert instead  
_synclient TouchpadOff=1_

10. Set up Win+1 similarly, to turn the touchpad back on. The command in this case is  
_synclient TouchpadOff=0_

11. If you don't have volume control keys on your keyboard but would like some, set up Win+Up (i.e. the Win key with the up-arrow key) to 'Increase Volume', Win+Down to 'Decrease Volume', and Win+/ to mute/unmute. You will find these actions in the Pulse Mixer section, about half-way down the Action pane.

12. When you've finished, click Close to exit.

As you continue using Bodhi, other key bindings will occur to you, and pressing Win+Space to Run Everything followed by typing _key_ makes it really easy to return to this dialog box.

**Note:** Some Win key combination bindings will not work with fullscreen windows.

## 3.12 Edge bindings

Edge bindings specify what happens when you click on different parts of the screen edge (top, bottom, left, right, or a corner - eight possible bindings in total). You have the same (large) choice of actions here that you met in the Key Bindings Settings dialog box, but I suggest that for these bindings you restrict yourself to actions that are to do with manipulating windows. We'll start by setting up bindings to make it easier to close, maximize, and minimize windows. Zipping the pointer to a screen edge or corner is much easier than trying to land on one of those tiny title-bar buttons: I find myself using these bindings all the time.

The rightmost title-bar button is the Close button, so let's bind the Close action to clicking the top right corner of the screen:

1. Run Everything, type the first three letters of _edge bindings_ , then press Enter to open the Edge Bindings Settings dialog box.

2. Click Add, and you are taken to the Edge Bindings Sequence dialog box. We're going to create a binding for the top right corner of the screen, so click the brown box at this corner.

3. Tick the Clickable Edge option (see the screenshot), then click Apply.

4. Now, in the right-hand Action pane, scroll about two thirds of the way through the list of actions to the Window:Actions section and highlight the Close action.

5. Click Apply. Now, to close the currently-focussed window, you can click the top-right corner of the screen. Try it now to close the Edge Settings dialog box.

Let's now bind the Maximize action to the top edge of the screen, and the Minimize action to the bottom edge:

1. Re-open the Edge Bindings Settings dialog box (by entering _edg_ into Everything).

2. Click Add, and then, at the Edge Bindings sequence dialog box, click the top edge of the screen. Make sure the Clickable Edge box is ticked, then Apply.

3. In the Action pane scroll down to the Window:State section (towards the bottom of the Action pane), highlight Maximize, then click Apply. Test this binding by clicking the top edge of the screen: the Edge Bindings Settings dialog box should maximize. Click the top edge of the screen again to restore it.

4. Now click Add again, click the bottom edge of the screen and Apply, then highlight Iconic Mode Toggle (in the Window:State section of the Action pane), and Apply. Test this binding by clicking the bottom edge of the screen now: the Edge Bindings Settings dialog box will be minimized. To restore it, middle-click (with the scroll wheel) anywhere on the desktop for the Windows menu (or press Ctrl+Menu), and select it from the list; alternatively use Alt+Tab to restore it. (E17 users have the edge here: they can simply click its icon in the Tasks gadget.)

The next bindings will prove useful when we deal with virtual desktops in Chapter 5. They are to do with switching desktops:

\- Right Edge: Flip Desktop Linearly. You need to set the parameters for this action (in the 'Action Params' box): enter '1' here, which specifies flipping right to the next desktop. I find this binding, and the next, invaluable.

\- Left Edge: Flip Desktop Linearly. In this case enter '-1' in the Action Params box, which specifies flipping left.

\- Bottom Left Edge: To Next Desktop (in the Window : Moving section towards the bottom of the Action pane). This will move the focussed window to the next desktop.

Finally, I suggest you bind the bottom right edge to Show The Desktop (near the top of the Action pane) - this will minimize all open windows; a second click here will restore them. And bind the top left edge to Move to Center (two-thirds of the way down the Action pane) - this is useful for working with e.g. dialog box windows.

**Note:** Some edge bindings will not work with fullscreen windows.

## 3.13 Borderless windows

In the last section you set up bindings to close, maximize, and minimize windows by clicking on different parts of the screen edge. This means that you no longer need to use the three buttons at the right of the title bar of windows. Indeed, you might decide that you no longer need the title bar or indeed any window borders. To try this way of working:

1. Run Everything, type the first three letters of _borders_ and press Enter to open the Default Border Style dialog box. (This is a short-cut for _Main menu > Settings > All > Look > Borders_.)

2. Highlight 'Borderless', then click OK.

When you run applications or dialog boxes now, they lack all borders. This gives you a bit more room on your desktop, but you can no longer drag windows by their title bars (instead you must hold down Alt while dragging with the mouse), it is no longer so obvious which window has focus, and of course you can no longer resize a window by dragging on its border.

You can however set up a key binding to restore borders to an individual window. Go to the Key Bindings Settings dialog box (see Section 3.10 above) to add this binding. The action you want is 'Set Border' (at the bottom of the Action pane), with 'default' as the entry in the Action Params box.

Most people will not want to work with borderless windows, To restore borders to the default setting:

1. Open the Default Border Style dialog box again.

2. Highlight 'default', then click OK.

If you have the default setting for borders, but there's a particular application that you always want to run borderless, then you can set this up as follows:

1. Open the application, then right-click on the title bar and choose _Window > Border > Select Border Style_ from the context menu. The Window Border Selection dialog box opens.

2. Select Borderless, and tick 'Remember the Border for this window'.

If, subsequently, you change your mind and wish to restore the border to this application's window, then you can open the context menu again by pressing Ctrl+Alt+W, this time choosing the default style from the Window Border Selection dialog box.

#  4 Beef up your system

By the end of this chapter you will have installed a range of standard applications on your Bodhi system, including office applications, media applications, photo software, media players, and some utilities. If you are new to Linux, the problem will be which out of the many competing applications should you choose? It's often a matter of balancing multiplicity of features against ease of use. A keen photographer, for instance, will want much more complex photo software then someone who takes the occasional snap. This chapter features a range of software packages that you might like to try; it's easy enough to uninstall those that you don't want and try others.

## 4.1 Download options

The various ways you can download applications are as follows.

### The Bodhi Linux AppCenter

The AppCenter (accessed from the Bodhi home page) features a great selection of good software, all of which will run without problems on Bodhi Linux. I introduced the AppCenter in Chapter 2.

### Synaptic package manager

The AppCenter can only feature a tiny fraction of the many thousands of programs that are available in the software repository, and to access the rest you need the Synaptic package manager. Synaptic is not on your system, but you can install it from the AppCenter. Once installed, you will find it _Main menu > Applications > Preferences_ (or type _syn_ into Run Everything).

When you run Synaptic and its window opens, you will see that there is a toolbar at the top with a Quick Filter box, and, to the right of it, a Search icon (see the figure below). You can use either of these to search for packages. Quick Filter is easiest and fast, Search will find all packages which include your search term in their accompanying description; you can normally use Quick Filter.

**Note:** The Quick Filter box may not appear the first time you use Synaptic.

Section 4.3 describes in detail how to use Synaptic to install a software package.

### Deb packages

Some software packages are not in the repository, but are instead archived as .deb (Debian) files. You can download a .deb package and then install it using gDebi. You can get gDebi from the AppCenter, and once installed it will appear as an option on PCManFM's context menu. Right-click the downloaded .deb package, select the gDebi option from the context menu, and the software will be installed.

I suggest, though, that you configure Firefox to use gDebi:

1. The first time you try to download a .deb file, a dialog box will open asking if you want to save or open the package, and if the latter what program you should use to open it (see the screenshot below, which was taken on a 64-bit system).

2. Click the small arrow at the right of the 'Open with' box, choose 'Other...', then navigate to the _/usr/bin_ folder in the filesystem and select _gdebi-gtk_.

3. Tick 'Do this automatically for files like this from now on', then click OK.

4. The gDebi package installer runs. Click Install Package.

Note: You must not have Synaptic running while trying to use gDebi.

### Personal Package Archives (PPAs)

These are non-official third-party repositories, often software developers' repositories, which may contain more up-to-date versions of software than is available in the official repository. Bodhi Linux does not recommend that you use such unofficial repositories, and you do so at your own risk: some files downloaded from them may conflict with what's already on your system. If, despite the risk, you do wish to make use of a PPA, you must first download _software-properties-common_ from Synaptic.

If a package you want is not available in the official repository or as a .deb file, or if it is out-of-date, your best option is to put in a request for it to be added/updated. You can do this at the Software Request Thread in the Feedback section of the Bodhi Linux Forum.

## 4.2 The Systray gadget

The Systray (system tray) is used by only a small number of applications, and hardly any actually require it. The reason why it is included in the default Bodhi installation is that the Network Manager uses it to display its icon showing the strength of your wireless connection and to provide you with instant access (by a left click) to its various options. Dropbox (described in Section 4.13) also uses it.

**Note for E17 users:** On your system, the shelf holding Systray should not be invisible.

## 4.3 Osmo personal organizer

The great thing about Osmo is that it combines a calendar, notebook, contacts list and to-do list in one easy-to-use package. But its individual components are not as capable as other products, and later in this chapter I will be suggesting an alternative calendar and an alternative notebook. But if you have only modest requirements, Osmo is certainly worth a look.

Osmo isn't available at the AppCenter, so you will have to install it from Synaptic:

1. Run Synaptic. It will take several seconds to fully open (it has to rebuild the search index), but once it is ready type _osmo_ in the Quick Filter box. A list of matches (packages with 'osmo' in the name) appears.

2. Tick the box to the left of Osmo, then select 'Mark for installation' from the menu.

3. A dialog box opens listing additional programs that need to be installed for Osmo to run. Click Mark to mark these also.

4. Click Apply (in the toolbar), then click Apply in the Summary dialog box that appears.

5. Synaptic proceeds to download and then install Osmo and its dependencies. Close Synaptic when the job's done.

You can run Osmo from the menu system ( _Main menu > Applications > Office > Osmo_) or by entering _os_ into the Everything launcher. When it opens, I suggest you try setting its window to:

\- Borderless (right-click on the title bar and choose _Window > Border > Select Border Style > Borderless_ from the context menu and tick 'Remember this border style' then click OK);  
\- Left-maximized (click the top-left edge of the screen if you set up the edge bindings suggested in Section 3.12).

Osmo will henceforth open in this way, as shown in the figure. You can use the edge bindings set up in Section 3.12 to minimize/maximize/close Osmo.

If you decide to try Osmo, you should spend some time exploring the Preferences for each of its modules to set it up the way you want. I use Osmo for keeping notes about Linux, Enlightenment, and the various applications I have on my computer. I've categorized these notes by topic, which makes for easy retrieval. I also use Osmo for my contacts. For my calendar/diary, I use a more capable product described later.

If, after playing with Osmo, you decide it's not for you, then you can uninstall from Synaptic:

1. Run Synaptic, and type _osmo_ in the Quick Filter box. The list of matches appears, with the box to the left of Osmo greyed out, showing that it's installed.

2. Click on this box, and select 'Mark for Complete Removal' from the menu.

3. Click Apply, then click Apply again from the dialog box that appears. Synaptic will then remove Osmo.

Note that the additional programs that were installed with Osmo will not be removed. I will deal with cleaning out unwanted programs such as these from your system in Section 6.3.

**Note:** You can also uninstall Osmo by entering the command _sudo apt-get remove osmo_ into Terminology. To remove the additional programs that are no longer required enter _sudo apt-get autoremove_.

## 4.4 An Office suite

Microsoft products, including Microsoft Office, do not run under Linux. Very similar to MS Office, however, is WPS Office, and you can download this from _AppCenter > Office Software_. WPS Office even gives you a choice of menu systems, either the ribbon system used on Office 2007 and later or the traditional 'classic' style used in earlier versions.

WPS Office comprises WPS Writer (a Word look-alike), WPS Spreadsheets (like Excel), and WPS Presentation (similar to PowerPoint), and it is available for both Windows and Linux. The Linux version, unfortunately, lacks a mailmerge capability, though you can utilize Google's online facilities for this - I'll explain how Section 4.10.

I'm using WPS Writer (Linux version) to write this book.

After downloading WPS Office, you will find its three products (Writer, Spreadsheets, and Presentation) at _Main menu > Applications > Office_. Alternatively you can run them from the Everything launcher, or you can add one or more to your iBar.

If you decide to try WPS Writer, here are some options you might set:

1. If, like me, you can't stand the ribbon-style menu interface, switch the User Interface to 'Classics' (click the T-shirt icon towards the right of the title bar for the Change Interface Style dialog box). Restart Writer to effect this change.

2. From the Classic menu, open _Tools > Options > General and Save_, and at the bottom of the dialog box click 'Start With New Document' then OK.

3. To maximize the amount of screen space available for your documents, you might like to:

\- Turn off the Status Bar (from the View menu).  
\- Turn off the Drawing Toolbar ( _View > Toolbars_).  
\- Reposition the Standard Toolbar so that it is at the left edge of the Writer window: grab the handle (row of dots) at the left of the toolbar and drag it to the new location with the mouse.

4. You can also if you wish choose a different colour theme at the Change Interface Style dialog box (click the T-shirt icon at the end of the Standard Toolbar for this).

5. To stop the template page loading automatically at startup, go to _Tools > Options > General and Save_, and at the bottom of the list of options set _Start With > New Document_.

The figure below shows what the Writer window looks like if you make the above changes, with the Task Window open at the right.

**Warning:** If you accidentally press the scroll wheel of the mouse (i.e. middle-click) while scrolling through a document, it will paste the contents of the clipboard's register into the document. (Middle-click pasting is a "feature" of Ubuntu, and is useful in some situations, but in this case it can seriously mess up your document.) To temporarily disable middle-clicking, open Terminology and enter the command:  
_xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 25 3 4 5 6 7 8 9"_  
More details, including how to make this command persist across reboots, are in Section 6.7 at the end of this book.

## 4.5 Printer Support

The printer support package for Bodhi Linux is in _AppCenter > System Tools_. After installing it, you will need to configure it to work with your printer:

1. Make sure your printer is connected either directly to your computer or to the network, and that it is switched on. It could, for example, by connected to a Windows computer which is itself connected to the network.

2. Go to _Main menu > Applications > Preferences > Printers_ or else enter the first few letters of 'printers' into the Everything launcher. The Printers dialog box opens, shown below.

3. Click the Add button in this dialog box; the Select Devices dialog box opens. If your printer is connected directly to your computer, it should be listed here, in which case simply select it, click Forward, and the programme will search for and install the printer's drivers. You are then given the option to describe the printer by a shorter name, and to print a test page.

4. If your printer is connected to another computer on the network, then you should choose Find Network Printer from the dialog box, and after a short while your printer's name should appear, and you can proceed as in Step 3.

**Note:** You can also run Printers from a web interface. Enter localhost:631/admin into your browser.

## 4.6 Media players

VLC is the standard application for playing media files, especially video files. It can play many different file types and is able to convert from one file type to another, should you wish to do this.

If you only want playback and don't need VLC's additional features such as file conversion, you may prefer SMPlayer. This is a graphical frontend to MPlayer with a host of excellent features, such as remembering the settings of all the files you play, including resuming play at your exit point.

Both VLC and especially SMPlayer are good for playing music and other audio files, though you may prefer a dedicated audio player for this. Audacious is a simple audio player, Clementine is more heavyweight, offering options such as listening to internet radio. Go to _AppCenter > Multimedia_, for these and other possibilities (not Audacious - run Synaptic for this).

**Note:** The current version of SMPlayer sometimes has problems synchronizing video and audio when playing HD movie files.

## 4.7 Osmoma Audio Recorder

This allows you to record anything that's played through the speakers of your computer, including radio programmes. You won't find this application in AppCenter or Synaptic, instead you will have to install it from a .deb file, which you will find at  https://launchpad.net/~osmoma/+archive/ubuntu/audio-recorder/+packages. Go for the 'Trusty' version (that's Ubuntu 14.04), and then the 386 deb file (if you are running 32-bit or Legacy Bodhi) or the amd64 deb file (if you are running 64-bit Bodhi).

(The procedure for installing a .deb file is explained in Section 4.1. Firefox will ask if you want to open the file; in the 'Open with' box navigate to /usr/bin and select gdebi-gtk. Tick 'Do this automatically from now on' and click OK.)

Audio Recorder can record in a number of file formats, but not MP3. If you want to add MP3 capability you must install a plugin called 'gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly' (use Synaptic to install this).

To test Audio Recorder, run it (either from Everything or _Main menu > Applications > Sound & Video_), and its window will open (see the figure). Then:

1. In the Format field, select a suitable recording format (e.g. MP3 if you have downloaded the above Gstreamer plugin).

2. Play some audio content through your computer and press the Start Recording button. A blue audio visualization bar should appear to the right of the Recording button, showing that the audio is being recorded.

3. Press Stop Recording, and the recorded file will be saved in your Audio folder. (This folder will be automatically created at this point, if it wasn't already present in your Home directory.)

4. Test the recording by playing it in e.g. SMPlayer.

Note that if you mute the speakers (using e.g. the Mute option on the Pulse Mixer gadget), there will be no sound for Audio Recorder to record. To record something without having to listen to it, cut the speakers by insert a headphone jack into the computer's headphone socket.

Note also the range of commands that you can use in the Timer section of Audio Recorder. The # symbols comment out commands, so delete the # preceding any command you want to activate (and modify the timings in that command as necessary). If you make a change in the Timer section, you must click the Save button for it to take effect.

You can normally ignore the Add button at the right of the File field. You should only tick this if you want to append your recording to the previously-recorded file.

## 4.8 Photo and drawing applications

If all you want to do is view your photos, perhaps as an ad-hoc slide show, together with some very basic editing facilities, then Mirage is a very user-friendly choice. You might also install Pinta, which is a drawing package that can handle photos.

If you are a keen photographer and want a really powerful (but much more complex) photo editor along the lines of Photoshop, then Gimp is the one to go for.

You will find these packages as well as others in the Image Editing and Image Viewers categories in the AppCenter. Note that ePhoto is already installed on your system.

## 4.9 Imagination

If you want to create a photo slide show with music, then this is for you. Not only is Imagination easy to use, it offers a wide range of slide transition and other effects. And you can easily adjust the slide show duration to match the length of the music. You can put your show on a DVD or save it to a .flv (Flash Video) file, which you can then play in VLC or SMPlayer. I've had to produce numerous photo slide shows for an over-50s social group, and I wouldn't be without this application.

Imagination can be installed from the AppCenter (in the Multimedia Production category). Once installed, you will find it at _Main menu > Applications > Sound & Video_. It is shown in the figure below, with the Slideshow menu open.

You can carry out essential operations from the Slideshow menu (or from the toolbar):

\- **New** to start a new slideshow. At the dialog box that opens you can set the video format (DVD, FLV, etc) and the video (display) size.

\- **Save** to save your slideshow as an Imagination project (.IMG file).

\- **Import Pictures** to import slides into your show.

\- **Import Music** to import an accompanying audio track.

\- **Preview** to run through your show.

\- **Export** to save your show in the video format selected earlier.

The right-hand pane (see the figure above) allows you to set the slide duration, either for individual slides or globally (by selecting all the slides), as well as the transition type. The Music tab shows details of the selected music, including the duration.

## 4.10 Google Chrome

Chrome is a very heavyweight browser which is sluggish on a slow machine, but if you live in the UK it works very reliably with BBC iPlayer (I've occasionally had problems with Firefox). The main advantage of Chrome, however, is that it gives you access to Google Drive, which includes 15 Gb of free online storage together a large number of apps, including Google Office, its online office suite comprising Docs for word processing, Sheets for spreadsheets, and Slides for presentations. (If you just want some free online storage, Dropbox, described in Section 4.13, is a simpler alternative. Microsoft OneDrive, also with 15 Gb of free storage, is another possibility - go to https://onedrive.live.com to sign up or sign in.)

This Google online environment can be synchronized across all your devices, and you can access documents in your Drive storage from any computer that's connected to the Internet. I am not suggesting you use Google Office for your regular word processing and spreadsheet tasks (unless you wish to work collaboratively), as the Google online system is slow and not particularly powerful, but if you are a WPS Office user it does provide an easy-to-use mailmerge facility that can utilize the data in your WPS spreadsheets.

Chrome is not in the software repository, so you will have to download it as .deb file:

1. Open Firefox and search for 'Google Chrome'. the first hit should be the official Chrome web page, with a blue 'Download Chrome' button in the centre.

2. Click this button, and at the next screen accept either the 32-bit Debian/Ubuntu option or, if you have 64-bit Bodhi installed, the 64-bit option below it. Click Accept and Install.

3. If you have configured Firefox to open .deb files with gDebi (see Section 4.1), the installation should now proceed automatically.

When you first run Chrome ( _Main menu > Applications > Internet_), at the initial Welcome dialog box, untick the box that invites you to make Chrome the default browser. Next, if you wish to take advantage of Google Drive, you need to sign in to (and if necessary create) your Google account. (You can also sign in by opening the Chrome menu - click the button at the top right.) Then, when the browser window opens, you will see a bookmark bar across the top with 'Apps' at the left. Click this button and the Apps window opens, where you will see that several apps are already installed, including Google Drive and an app that will take you to the Google Web Store.

You can access Google Office via Google Drive:

1. At the Apps window (which you opened by clicking 'Apps' at the left of the bookmark bar), click Google Drive. A new window titled 'My Drive' opens.

2. Click New (at the top left). A menu opens with options that include Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides. Choosing one of these will enable you to create a new document, spreadsheet, or slideshow, which will then appear as an icon in the My Drive window.

The next steps describe the mailmerge procedure. Note that you should have already created your data table of names and addresses in WPS Spreadsheets.

3. Choose Goggle Docs (at the New menu opened in Step 2 above). Another tab opens in Google Chrome called 'Untitled document', and its window offers word processing facilities with the usual kind of menu bar across the top (File, Edit, View, etc).

4. From this menu bar choose _Add-ons > Get add ons_. A window listing many add-ons opens, with a search box at the top right. To print mailing labels, the add-on you want is called 'Avery Label Merge'. For other mailmerge tasks you could use 'DocumentMerge' by PandaDoc.

5. The data you are going to use for the merge must be held in a spreadsheet, so you should have already created this in WPS Spreadsheets. Note that the Avery Label Merge add-in doesn't handle empty cells well (at least it doesn't on my system - it inserts a field code instead of blank data for those cells), so it's best to do a find and replace in WPS Spreadsheets to replace any empty cell entries with an innocuous character such as '-'. (At the Replace dialog box click Options then tick 'Match entire cell contents'.)

6. If necessary filter your data in WPS Spreadsheets so that only the rows that you wish to merge are displayed, then drag over the whole area of displayed data, including the top row containing the data labels ('Forename', 'Surname', etc), then choose Copy.

7. Now click on the 'My Drive' tab (at the top left of the Chrome window), then open the New menu and choose Google Sheets. A new tab opens, called 'Untitled spreadsheet', offering spreadsheet facilities. From the menu bar choose _Edit > Paste_, and your spreadsheet data should be pasted in. Now choose _File > Rename_ to give your sheet an appropriate name.

8. Return to your (blank) Google Docs document (it should still be open at the 'Untitled document' tab). To print mailing labels, choose _Add-ons > Avery Label Merge > New Merge_.

9. A window opens where you can select the Avery address label code for your mailing labels. Then a further window opens where you can select the spreadsheet containing your data.

10. Instructions now appear telling you exactly what to do. The labels for your spreadsheet data are listed at the right, and it's a simple matter to click on the ones you want and position them on the label that's displayed below the instructions (see the figure below).

11. When you've finished, click Merge (at the bottom right). You can then view the results of the merge and, if everything's OK, print.

For other kinds of mailmerge, use the DocumentMerge add-on mentioned at Step 2. The procedure is similar to that given for mailing labels above. You can use DocumentMerge to email the merge documents, or you can instead open them and print them.

**Note:** Google Docs offer you a large number of templates, from greetings cards to household expenses. Instructions for connecting these templates to your Google Drive can be found at http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201408/page01.html.

### How to speed up Chrome

One reason for Chrome's sluggishness is that it hogs computer memory, and this is noticeable on older machines with 1Gb of memory or less. It helps therefore not to have other applications open when running Chrome, and not to have too many tabs open.

Another cause of Chrome's slowness is do do with the way it looks up domain names of websites. You can speed things up by editing the file _/etc/nsswitch.conf_ :

1. Open Terminology and enter  
_esudo epad /etc/nsswitch.conf  
_ The file opens in epad.

2. Change the line that begins _hosts:_ so that it reads  
_hosts: files dns  
_ then save the file.

Other steps you can take to improve Chrome's performance include:

1. Install Adblock Plus (from the Google Web Store).

2. Disable unnecessary plugins (enter _about:plugins_ in the address bar). Note that you will want to keep the Flash Player plugin.

3. Enable 'Override software rendering list' and 'accelerated 2D canvas' (enter _about:flags_ in the address bar, you will find these two items near the top of the list).

## 4.11 Get-iPlayer

If you want to download material from the BBC iPlayer in MP4 or FLV format (for TV programmes) or MP3 format (for radio programmes), so that you can play them without restriction on any device that supports those formats, then Get-iPlayer is a must. It is a command-line program, meaning that to use it you have to enter commands in Terminology, but don't be put off by this as the commands are quite simple.

You can download Get-iPlayer from the repository using Synaptic, but at the time of writing this is an old version. To get the latest version as well as future updates, you must download it from a PPA. This is at your own risk, as explained in Section 4.1 - where it was also pointed out that you must first download _software-properties-common_.

To download the latest version, enter the following sequence of commands into Terminology:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:jon-hedgerows/get-iplayer  
sudo apt-get update  
sudo apt-get install get-iplayer

To use Get-iPlayer to download a TV programme:

1. Use PCManFM to navigate to the folder where you want the programme to be stored, then press F4 to open Terminology in that folder.

2. Enter _get-iplayer "programme name"_ into Terminology. You can use either an underscore or a hyphen between 'get' and 'iplayer', and you must obviously replace _programme name_ with the name of the programme you're seeking, within the quotes. If, for example, you type _railway_ here, a list of all programmes with 'railway' in the name will appear.

Note: In Section 6.7 I'll explain how you can shorten terminal commands like these, so that instead of entering _get-iplayer_ you can instead enter simply _get_.

3. Each of the hits will be numbered. If, say, the one you want is numbered 456, you should now enter _get-iplayer --get 456_. (That's two dashes before the 'get'). Get-iPlayer will proceed to download programme 456 into the folder you opened in step 1. Depending on the duration of the programme, this will take quite a while.

4. Once the download has finished, you can play the programme (which will be in MP4 format) with e.g. VLC. (SMPlayer is not a good choice, as it can have problems synchronizing sound and vision with these programmes.)

Radio programmes can be downloaded in a similar way, the only difference being that at Step 2 you should enter _get-iplayer --type=radio "programme name"_ .

**Note** : Unlike TV programmes, radio programmes downloaded from iPlayer may have two or three minutes of unwanted material from the previous programme at the start (as well as material from the next programme at the end). This is a nuisance if you are downloading programmes to listen to in the car. A more serious problem, on some car audio systems, is that the downloads will stop playing about 12 minutes into the programme! What I do is to use the Chrome web browser to play these programmes (as I find this more reliable than Firefox for this), and Audio Recorder to record them from the correct starting point.

Options such as '--get' and '--type' that you can add to a command are called arguments or switches. There are many arguments that you can use with Get-iPlayer, and for fuller instructions than are possible here you should search the web for 'get-iplayer instructions'.

Note the '--help' argument: this will list all the arguments that are available for a command together with a brief explanation of each. So to list all the arguments that you can use with Get-iPlayer, enter _get-iplayer --help_.

## 4.12 Skype

Skype (for making calls over the Internet) can be installed from Synaptic (at the time of writing it was not available at the AppCenter); once installed, you will find it at _Main menu > Applications > Internet_.

If you are using Skype with a webcam, you may have difficulty getting the webcam microphone going. If, when trying the Skype sound testing service, you cannot hear your own voice, proceed as follows:

1. Open Synaptic and install Pavucontrol (the Pulse Audio Volume Control).

2. Open Pavucontrol (from Everything, or from the Sound & Video section of the menu system). The Volume Control dialog box opens. Click on the Recording tab (see the figure).

3. Make the Skype test call again, and in the dialog box, at the Recording section, the webcam should appear (you may have to click on the dialog box to see it). Select it.

4. The test call should now be successful, in which case Skype is configured correctly.

## 4.13 Dropbox

Dropbox allows you to store important files in a secure location on the Internet, as well as sharing those files with other people. It provides several Gb of free storage. At the time of writing Dropbox was not available at the AppCenter, so you will have to install it from Synaptic; you will also have to install _python-gpgme_ as well. Note that Dropbox requires Systray (see Section 4.2).

You can run Dropbox from _Main menu > Applications > Internet > Dropbox_, and the first time you do so some additional files not included in the initial download will be installed. Once this is done the Dropbox icon should appear in Systray, and a Dropbox folder will be created in your Home directory. This will be synchronized with your online Dropbox storage, which means that if you use a file manager such as PCManFM to place files in that folder, they will be automatically copied to your Dropbox storage in the 'cloud' (assuming Dropbox is running in the background).

To configure Dropbox, right-click on its Systray icon for its context menu, then select Preferences to open the Dropbox Preferences dialog box. If you don't want Dropbox running all the time, untick 'Start Dropbox at system startup'. At the time of writing Dropbox wasn't correctly working with Systray, so these options could not be set.

The top option on the Dropbox context menu is Open Dropbox Folder. For this to work properly you need to integrate Dropbox with PCManFM, and to do this:

1. Open Terminology and enter the command _mimeopen -d ~/Documents_ (it doesn't have to be Documents, any folder in your Home directory will do). A list of possible file managers appears.

2. Choose PCManFM from the list (i.e. enter its number). Dropbox will now use PCManFM to display its folder.

## 4.14 Other applications

There are many other applications you will want to install, and some possibilities are listed below. Apart from Rainlendar, they are all available in the repository, and can be installed via Synaptic or by using the _apt-get install_ command in a terminal. Many of them can also be downloaded from the AppCenter.

### Leafpad

ePad is the text editor that is supplied with your Bodhi Linux installation. At the time of writing it is still under development and lacking in features, and it does have some problems. It's a good idea therefore to use an alternative editor such as Leafpad. After downloading Leafpad from the repository it will be added to the Accessories section of the menu system, and it will appear in PCManFM's context menu when you right-click a text file.

### gEdit

This is another popular text editor, very sophisticated but more heavyweight than Leafpad. It offers basic word-processing facilities such as fonts, colours, spell check, search-and-replace, and document statistics, and it also allows you to open several documents simultaneously with a side pane to switch between them. gEdit is definitely worth a try.

### Rainlendar

If you want a more capable calendar/diary than is provided by Osmo (Section 4.3), try Rainlendar. For this, go to www.rainlendar.net > Download > Rainlendar Lite (for Ubuntu) - this is a .deb file that Firefox will open in eDeb. To run it, go to the Office section of the menu system or use the Everything launcher.

To configure Rainlendar, right-click on the calendar then choose Options. I suggest the following: under General untick Show events on tray; under Advanced, untick Show tray icon, untick Show all desktops. If you don't want to display a todo list, right-click on the calendar then choose Windows then untick Todo List.

Rainlendar is best run at startup, by adding it to Startup Applications (go to _Main menu > Settings > All > Apps > Startup Applications_). That way its launch will not be tracked, so that its icon will not be (unnecessarily) added to a tracker iBar.

### Tomboy

If you want a more full-featured notes application than Osmo, try Tomboy. It has lots of nice features.

### Evince

This will read documents in PDF and other formats. This and other PDF readers can be found in _AppCenter > PDF Readers_.

### aRandR

If you want to connect your computer to a display device such as a projector to give a presentation, or perhaps to a TV or external monitor, you will need to use xrandr, which is a command-line utility that comes with Bodhi. It's easier, however, to use aRandR, which is a graphical front-end to xrandr, and you can download this from Synaptic. It will appear in the Preferences section of the menu system.

To use aRandR, connect your computer to the projector and switch everything on, then run aRandR, open its Outputs menu, and match the resolution of your computer (LDVS1) with that of the projector (probably VGA1), then click Apply. aRandR allows you to save these settings (in the .screenlayout folder) as a .sh file, which you can run with the command  
_sh <name which you gave this file>.sh_  
You can then set up a key binding to run this command whenever you connect your computer to the display device.

### Brasero

This is the standard Linux application for burning CDs and DVDs. You can get it from Burning Software section of the AppCenter, where you will also find a couple of alternative CD/DVD burning applications.

### Audacity

This is the go-to application for serious audio work.

### Calibre

If you are into eBooks, you will almost certainly want Calibre. It will organize your ebook library and interface with your eBook reader or tablet. Note that the current version of Ubuntu has problems connecting to Android tablets.

### Gparted

Gparted is a partition editor for creating, resizing, deleting, moving, and copying partitions, either on your hard disk or on a USB drive. It can also reformat a drive, offering FAT32, NTFS, ext3 and 4, and many others. It is available at _AppCenter > System Tools_.

### eInfo and Hardinfo

These provide statistics on every aspect of your computer (the operating system, CPU, memory, storage, etc). eInfo is written for Enlightenment and runs from the menu system ( _Main menu > Applications > System Tools_). Hardinfo is a more heavyweight product, giving much more detail, but it must be run from the terminal (or from Run Everything) - enter _hardinfo_.

# 5 More power to your desktop

In this chapter we cover a variety of topics, including how to organize your desktop and its launchers so that the applications you installed in the last chapter are at your fingertips, how to apply a GTK theme to your application windows, and how to apply different Enlightenment themes. Then you'll practise what you've learned in Chapter 3 and here by creating a new desktop profile.

## 5.1 The Favorites menu

Applications that you access very frequently, such as your file manager and web browser, you'll want to run from the iBar on your shelf. For this reason you may wish to add to your iBar one or two of the applications you installed in the last chapter. To save cluttering up the shelf, however, other favourite applications can be conveniently run from the Favorites menu.

To set up the Favorites menu:

1. Enter _fav_ into Everything. (Or go to _Main menu > Settings > All > Apps > Favorite Applications_; or use the Settings gadget on the shelf.) The Favorite Applications dialog box opens.

2. Vertically maximize this dialog box (press Shift+F10).

3. Add your choices of favourites here (though don't duplicate what's in your iBar), then put them in order (at the Order tab).

4. Click OK when you've finished, then right-click on any empty spot on the desktop to display your Favorites menu.

**Tip:** Another way to add an application to Favorites is to open it, right-click its title bar, and choose the top option (application name) then 'Add to Favorites menu'.

## 5.2 Applications name display and other menu options

The application names that appear in the menu system can be quite long, as they not only display the name but also, alongside it in brackets, the application type. For example, Synaptic appears as 'Synaptic Package Manager (Package Manager)'. This may be helpful if you're new to Linux, but it soon becomes irksome. You can easily change this at the Menu Settings dialog box (see the figure below):

1. Enter _men_ into Everything to display this dialog box. (Alternatively _Main menu > Settings > All > Menus > Menu Settings, or use the Settings gadget_.)

2. At this dialog box, turn off 'Generic' than press Apply.

3. Test what you've done by right-clicking on the desktop to display your Favorites menu. The generic (bracketed) entries have disappeared.

4. While you are at the Menu Settings dialog box you might also like to untick 'Favorites' so that this item is removed from the Main menu display - it is unnecessary here as a right-click on the desktop will display Favorites.

5. To speed up menu navigation (if you have a slowish computer), you might also disable icons in menus. Click the arrow at the top right of the Menu Settings dialog box until you reach the Miscellaneous tab, then click the Disable Icons button. Click OK when you've finished making changes.

## 5.3 Application launchers

These are central to the Enlightenment window management system. They control, among other things, which menu (if any) lists an application, and how that application runs. Application launchers are also known as desktop configuration files, and they have the extension .desktop.

Application launchers are stored in the _/usr/share/applications_ folder. Let's examine them now.

1. Open PCManFM and click on Filesystem Root in the left (Places) pane. The contents of the root directory are displayed in the right pane.

2. Navigate to _/usr/share/applications_. The contents of this folder are displayed, as shown in the figure below. Each of the icons in this folder represents an application launcher. One of these, as you can see, is the PCManFM launcher

3. Let's examine the contents of the PCManFM launcher. Right-click on its icon, and from the context menu choose ePad (or preferably Leafpad or Gedit, if you have installed either of those - see Section 4.14). As you can see when Leafpad/Gedit opens, the launcher is a text file consisting of a (long) list of instructions. The critical instructions are at the beginning and at the end of this file, and they specify, among other things, the display name, the icon, the menu categories, the execute command, and a couple of others. You could if you wish edit this file and so modify some of these attributes, though this is dangerous and to do so you would have to open Leafpad/Gedit as root (more on this later). Close Leafpad/Gedit and close PCManFM.

4. You could also modify this file from the Desktop Entry Editor, which is a much safer method. To try this, right-click on the PCManFM icon on your shelf then choose _Icon File Manager PCManFM > Properties_ from the context menu. The Editor opens, as shown in the figure below.

5. In the Name field delete the words 'File Manager' so that the name becomes simply 'PCManFM' (see the figure). Click Apply, and the name is immediately changed - you can see this if you right-click on the icon again, or if you check the Enlightenment menus ( _Main menu > Applications > Accessories_). Note, though, that the original desktop file (in _/usr/share/applications_ ) has NOT been changed, instead a new PCManFM desktop file has been added to the _.local/share/applications_ directory in your Home folder. Desktop configuration files in this folder are called 'personal application launchers', and they take precedence over the launchers in the _/usr/share/applications_ folder.

**Note:** To see this new file, open PCManFM, press Ctrl+H to view hidden files, then navigate to _.local/share/applications_ (in your Home folder).

6. You can examine the other settings specified in the PCManFM launcher by clicking on the Icon, General, and Options tabs in the Desktop Entry Editor, but don't change any of them. Close the Editor when you've finished.

## 5.4 Personal application launchers

You can also create personal application launchers to run other things. For example, if you use a mouse, you might like to create one to turn off the touchpad of your laptop computer:

1. Enter _pers_ into Everything. The Personal Application Launchers dialog box opens.

2. Click Add, and the Desktop Entry Editor opens. As shown in the figure, at the Basic section enter _Touchpad Off_ as the name, and _synclient TouchPadOff=1_ as the application (you met this command in Section 2.15).

3. Click on the Options tab and make sure that the first two items in this section are unticked but that Show in Menus is ticked.

4. Click OK. Your application launcher will be saved in the hidden _.local/share applications_ directory in your Home folder.

5. Open PCManFM and navigate to this folder (press Ctrl+H to show hidden folders).

6. Your Touchpad Off launcher should be listed in this folder. To test it, make sure your touchpad is active, then run the launcher (by clicking it). After it runs, the touchpad should be Off.

As you will learn in the next section, it is possible to run this launcher automatically when your computer starts, so that the touchpad defaults to Off.

## 5.5 Startup applications

You may want some applications to run automatically when you start up your computer, so that they are effortlessly and immediately available. One example is the Rainlender calendar (Section 4.14), which is best run in this way. To set startup applications:

1. Enter _startup_ into Everything. (Or _Main menu > Settings > All > Apps > Startup Applications_, or use the Settings gadget if you have added this to your shelf.) The Startup Applications dialog box appears.

2. Click the Applications tab to show the application launchers on your system, including any personal application launchers you might have set up. If you wish, highlight one or two applications in this list and add them. These might include the Touchpad Off launcher from the last section (see the figure).

3. Click OK when you've finished.

You will of course have to restart your computer to test these settings.

## 5.6 Virtual desktops

You have available to you not one but four (virtual) desktops, and more can be added if you wish. At the moment these desktops are identical, with the same shelves and iBars (though possibly different wallpapers), but this can be changed, so that you could, for example, have one desktop where your office applications are grouped, and another for your media, games, and other leisure applications. Or you could have one desktop set up for the way you want to work, and another for your partner.

In my case, I have this guide that I'm writing on my main desktop, and all the Enlightenment settings and dialog boxes that I'm writing about on another. And the left-edge and right-edge bindings I suggested you set up in Chapter 3 make it quick and easy to switch from one to the other. (If you did not set up these bindings, I suggest you do so now. The details are in Section 3.12. The Ctrl+Alt+Left/Right Arrow key bindings achieve the same thing.)

I also find a second desktop invaluable if I'm giving a presentation. I can have e.g. a slide show on one desktop, and windows illustrating points I am making open in the other, and I can instantly flip from one to the other.

My second desktop has quite different shelves, including one housing the Tasks gadget which shows all open and minimized dialog boxes. I find having a virtual desktop dedicated to computer housekeeping and Enlightenment tasks has made my computing experience much more satisfactory, and you might like to try this for yourself. The instructions for this are below and in the following three sections.

1. Enter _vir_ into Run Everything (or _Main menu > Desktop > Virtual > Set Virtual Desktops_). The Virtual Desktops Settings dialog box appears, shown in the screenshot below. Here you can see that you have four identical desktops; you can increase or decrease this number, and you can stack them vertically as well as horizontally.

2. Let's simplify matters by reducing the number of desktops to two: drag the side slider down until '1' appears as the number. You now have two horizontally-aligned desktops. (You can always add to this number later by dragging the sliders the other way.) The default names for these desktops are 0-0 for your first (main) desktop and 1-0 for the second.)

3. Click on the second (right) desktop in the Virtual Desktops Settings dialog box. The Desk Settings dialog box appears. Here you can if you wish change the name from 1-0 to something more meaningful. If you click Set, the Wallpaper Settings dialog box appears, where you can set a different wallpaper by choosing one from the list. You could also download one from the Bodhi Linux Art Wiki (when this becomes available). I will deal with this in Section 5.11 below, so I suggest you wait till then. Click OK when you've done then OK again.

4. If you have a slow computer, then back at the Virtual Desktop Settings dialog box click on the Flip Animation tab and set the animation to None. Click OK.

You can switch between virtual desktops by any of the following methods:

\- If you set up the edge bindings suggested in Section 3.12 you can switch between them simply by clicking either the left or right edges of the screen. This is the slickest method, especially if you have only two or three virtual desktops. (In the case of only two desktops, these left-edge and right-edge bindings have identical effects; if you increase the number to three or more, these bindings will cycle through them in opposite directions.

\- Ctrl+Alt+Left and Ctrl+Alt+Right will do the same thing. In my case I use my Win+Right binding.

\- Alt+F1 will go to the first desktop, Alt+F2 to the second, Alt+F3 to the third (if this exists), and so on.

\- You can add the Pager gadget to a shelf and use this to switch between them.

\- If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, hold down Alt while turning the wheel.

## 5.7 The Launch Tracker iBar and virtual desktops (E19)

I am assuming in this section and the next that you followed the instructions in Section 3.5 to set up, on a second shelf, an iBar to track launched applications. To discover how these behave with virtual desktops, proceed as follows:

1. On your first (main) desktop, i.e. the one labelled 0-0, launch two applications, e.g. PCManFM and Terminology. Minimize one of these but leave the other open.

2. Go to your second desktop (by one of the methods listed in the last section). At the moment this has the same shelves as your main desktop, including your lower shelf with the Launch Tracker iBar showing icons for your launched applications.

3. Click on the icon for your _minimized_ application. It opens on your second desktop.

4. Click on the icon for the other _open_ application. You are switched to your first desktop, to that application.

So clicking on the icon for a minimized application in another desktop moves it from its original desktop to that desktop, whereas clicking on the icon for an open application moves _you_ to its desktop.

With the two applications now open on different desktops, you can switch between applications on different desktops by clicking their respective icons on the Launch Tracker iBar. Try this now.

To move an _open_ application to a different desktop, use the edge binding I suggested you set up in Section 3.12, i.e. click on the bottom left corner of the screen. Alternatively you can use the default key binding for this: Crl+Alt+A. (The long method to achieve the same thing is to hover the mouse over the application's icon in the Launch Tracker iBar to show its launch menu, right-click on this, then choose Move To and choose the desktop from the list.)

## 5.8 Different shelves for different desktops

The top shelf on your second desktop is to be devoted to computer housekeeping, so you can remove the gadgets devoted to this from your existing shelf:

1. Right-click on your top shelf, and from the context menu choose _Shelf > Contents_. The Shelf Contents dialog box opens.

2. Remove all gadgets from this shelf apart from the iBar and Systray (holding the Network icon). Click Close.

To create a different shelf on your second desktop you first need to modify the settings of the existing shelf so that it only shows on the first desktop:

1. Right-click anywhere on your (top left) shelf, and from the context menu choose _Shelf > Settings._

2. At the Shelf Settings dialog box keep clicking the right arrow (top right) until you reach the Desktop tab. Select 'Show on specified Desktops' then highlight the first desktop, as shown in the Figure. Click OK.

3. Go to the second desktop to check that the shelf no longer appears there.

This second desktop is to be dedicated to computer housekeeping and Enlightenment gadgets and tasks, so bear this in mind as you set up a new shelf on it.

1. Go to _Main menu > Settings > Shelves_. The Shelf Settings dialog box appears, listing any shelves already on the second desktop.

2. Click Add, then at the New Shelf dialog box give your new shelf a name (e.g. 'Housekeeping') or keep the default name. Click OK.

3. The Shelf Contents dialog box opens, where you should add some gadgets to your shelf. Important gadgets are: iBar, Settings (for the Settings Panel), and System Updates (for eepDater - E19 only). Others that you might like to add are Backlight, Cpufreq, and Temperature (you will have to load the modules for these first, at the Module Settings dialog box). When you've finished, click Close to return to the Shelf Settings dialog box.

4. Highlight your new shelf and click Settings, then set Stacking as Below Windows, Position as Left, Top (i.e. the same position as the original shelf).

5. You also need to make sure the new shelf shows only on the second desktop. Click the right-arrow at the top of this dialog box until you reach the Desktop tab, where you should select 'Show on specified Desktops' and highlight the second desktop (labelled 1-0). Click OK.

6. Go to your second desktop to see your new shelf. The iBar on your new shelf is currently a duplicate of your original iBar, and you need to change this. Right-click on it then choose _iBar > Settings_ from the context menu. The iBar Settings dialog box appears.

7. Here you should click Add (to add a new source). Give your source an appropriate name (e.g. 'Housekeeping'), click OK then highlight your new source in the iBar Settings dialog box and set the bottom three options to: tick 'Don't add items on launch', untick 'Track launch', and untick 'Menu on mouse over' (see the screenshot below). You could also untick 'Show icon label'. Then click OK.

8. Now to change the iBar contents. Right-click the iBar again, and this time choose _iBar > Contents_ from the context menu. The iBar Applications dialog box opens. Here you should remove ALL the existing applications apart from PCManFM and Terminology. You might also like to add Synaptic to this iBar, and because I often connect my laptop to a projector I find aRandR useful to have here. Another useful app to have here is eSudo. Click the Order tab if you wish to change the order of the icons, then click OK when you've finished.

9. Finally right-click on the shelf and choose Begin Moving Gadgets to change the order of your gadgets. Right-click again when you've finished and choose Stop Moving gadgets.

Note that the shelf on the bottom left of the screen (which contains the Launch Tracker iBar in the case of E19 and the Tasks gadget in the case E17) shows on both desktops, which is exactly what we want. What E19 users also need on this second desktop is a way of tracking the launches of Enlightenment dialog boxes: the Tasks gadget.

## 5.9 The Tasks gadget on E19

Prior to E19, the Tasks gadget was the normal way of tracking launches. It differs from the Launch Tracker iBar in two important respects:

\- It tracks the launch of Enlightenment dialog boxes as well as applications.  
\- It tracks launches only on the desktop on which it is placed, not on all desktops (though this can be changed).

It is therefore ideal for a desktop dedicated to computer housekeeping and Enlightenment tasks. To set it up on your second desktop:

1. Open the Module Settings dialog box ( _Main menu > Settings > Modules_), and load the Tasks module.

2. Go to your second desktop and open the Shelf Settings dialog box ( _Main menu > Settings > Shelves_).

3. Click Add to add a new shelf, then at the New Shelf dialog box give your new shelf a suitable name (e.g. 'Popup' since it will an autohide shelf). Click OK.

4. The Shelf Contents dialog box opens, where you should add the Tasks gadget. Click Close.

5. Back at the Shelf Settings dialog box, highlight your new shelf and click Settings. At the dialog box make the following settings: Stacking - above everything; Position - bottom centre; Size - 32 pixels, Shrink to Content Width; Auto Hide \- tick Auto-hide the shelf, select Show on mouse in, set Hide timout to 0.2 seconds, set Hide duration to 0.05 seconds (see the Figure); Desktop - Show on specified desktops (1-0). Click OK, but leave the Shelf Settings dialog box open.

Your new shelf is at hidden at the bottom centre of the desktop with just its top edge visible. If you mouse over it, it will pop and show the icons for any running applications on that desktop, including the Shelf Settings dialog box.

Your next task is to change the settings of the Tasks gadget:

1. Right-click on your new shelf to show the context menu, and mouse over the bottom option ('Tasks') then choose _Tasks > Settings_. The Tasks Configuration dialog box opens (see the Figure).

2. I suggest you increase the Item Width to around 150 px. (Note that if you wish to show windows from all desktops rather than just the current desktop on this gadget, you can make this setting here.)

3. Click OK, then close the Shelf Settings dialog box.

From now on should aim to carry out all Enlightenment and computer housekeeping tasks, including the Enlightenment tasks in the remaining sections of this chapter and the housekeeping tasks in the next, on this dedicated desktop. To encourage this change, you might remove any housekeeping-related icons (such as the Settings gadget) from your original shelf and iBar on the first desktop.

**Remember:** You can move an open application or dialog box from one desktop to the other by simply clicking the bottom left corner of the screen (assuming you set up the edge binding to do this - see Section 3.12).

## 5.10 Enlightenment themes

As explained in Chapter 2, Enlightenment themes control the appearance of your desktop and its various elements, including colours and fonts. However, changing the theme will not change any font customizations you made in the Font Settings dialog box in Section 2.4 or any colour customizations that you may make in the Color dialog box in Section 5.13 below.

Few (or only one) Enlightenment themes are packaged with your version of Bodhi 3, but more are at the AppCenter and in the repository (enter _bodhi theme_ at Synaptic's Quick Filter box. They may also become available on the new Art Wiki, when that goes live. A large number can also be found at http://e17-stuff.org/. Note that this website has E17 as well as E19 themes, so make sure you choose the appropriate E number for your system.

When you install themes from the AppCenter or Synaptic they will appear in the System section of this dialog box. When you download themes from other sources you will have to import them into this dialog box (using the Import button), and they will then appear in the Personal section. Themes in the Personal section are stored in the _.elementary/themes_ folder in your Home directory, whereas those in the System section are stored in the _/usr/share/elementary/themes_ folder.

If you wish to try a theme from the E17-Stuff website, click on your choice, then at the next screen click on the Download link. This takes you to the download page, where you should click on the zip file download link (at the right). This file should be downloaded to your Downloads folder. Navigate to this folder with PCManFM, right-click on the zip file, and choose Extract Here from the context menu. (This assumes that you have installed Xarchiver - see Section 2.9.) The result will be an Edje (.edj) file, extracted to this folder.

You can now import this .edj file at the Theme Selector dialog box (Main menu > Settings > Theme), where you can then select and apply it.

Check out the menus, dialog boxes, and other desktop elements of any themes that you install, until you find one you are happy with.

With E17 it is possible to mix elements of different themes (at the Advanced section of the Theme Selector dialog box) to produce a fully personalized theme of your own. This facility has been removed from E19.

## 5.11 GTK themes and icons

After choosing an Enlightenment theme you need to choose a GTK theme that matches it. These are application themes, meaning they allow you to customize the appearance of windows within which applications run. GTK themes control the colour and look of application menus and dialog boxes, and the appearance of the scroll bars.

A number of GTK themes are installed on your system, and more can be added from the repository (enter _bodhi gtk_ in Synaptic's Quick Filter box) and perhaps also from the Art Wiki, when that goes live.

To list the installed themes, open the Application Theme Settings dialog box (use Run Everything to reach this, or _Main menu > Settings > All > Look > Application Theme_); if you scroll down the list, you will see that your current theme is highlighted.

To try a different theme:

1. Highlight a theme, e.g. Ambiance, and click Apply.

2. Open PCManFM, then press Ctrl+H to show hidden files. This should reveal the scroll bars, allowing you to check their appearance. You might also like to check the appearance of its dialog boxes by choosing _Edit > Preferences_. Close PCManFM.

3. Now try the Emacs theme. Test it by opening PCManFM again as well as one of its dialog boxes, then close PCManFM.

4. Repeat this for other themes, and stick with the one that suits your tastes, and which matches your Enlightenment theme. Tick the 'Match Enlightenment theme' to assist this.

Its worth exploring the Icons tab in this dialog box: it allows you to change the icon theme used on your desktop. More icon sets are available at the AppCenter.

## 5.12 Wallpapers

Virtual desktops all start out with the same wallpaper, namely the default theme wallpaper. You can of course choose any picture for your wallpaper, and you can have different wallpapers for different desktops. The Art Wiki, when it goes live, will likely have a number of Bodhi-themed wallpapers.

When you have downloaded a wallpaper you want, you can apply it as follows:

1. Open the Wallpaper Settings dialog box, untick Use Theme Wallpaper, then click Picture..., navigate to your picture and select it.

2. The Import Settings dialog box opens, where you should make sure that Fill is highlighted (as shown in the figure) and click OK. You are returned to the Wallpaper Settings dialog box.

3. Click Advanced, and here you can decide whether to place this wallpaper on All Desktops or just This Desktop. When you've made your choice, click OK.

**Note:** If you have different wallpapers on different desktops, you can speed up the transition between them by setting 'Desk Change' transitions to None at the Transition Settings dialog box.

## 5.13 Yet more dialog boxes

This almost completes our exploration of the Enlightenment desktop and its many dialog boxes. There are many more tweaks you could make, but to include these would make this guide far too long: the Settings menu has about 70 submenus, and we have visited only 20 of these! Better to spend the time consolidating what you have learned by starting afresh and creating your own customized desktop profile, as explained in the next section.

However, there are a couple of further dialog boxes I should draw your attention to. You can access these via the Everything launcher in the usual way or the Settings gadget (on your second desktop's shelf).

### Dialog Settings

In this dialog box you can turn off Enlightenment's Confirmation Dialogs that ask you if you really want to perform some action such as powering down.

Here you can also switch between normal windows for dialog boxes and borderless. (The figure below shows this dialog box with normal windows, i.e. a title bar and borders.)

### Colors

This dialog box allows you tweak the colours of the different elements of your chosen theme - title bars, shelves, menu items, and so on.

To change the colour of an item in the list in this dialog box (see the Figure):

1 Highlight it, then tick 'Custom colors', then click the attribute you wish to change (usually 'Object'). The Color Selector dialog box opens.

2. Here you can select a new colour - click Select, then Apply. Note that 'Alpha' sets the degree of opacity - you will need to experiment with this.

3. To test the change, open the menu system or an application, as appropriate.

**Note:** To restore the default colour, simply untick the Custom Colors box for that item.

You might like to try changing the colours of the following to suit your preferences: Border Frame, Border Frame Active, Border Title, Border Title Active, Menu Background Base, Menu Item, Menu Item Active, Menu Item Disabled, Menu Title, Shelf Background Base.

Note in particular the 'Composite Focus-out Color' option. Here you can set the transparency of non-focused windows (by adjusting the 'Alpha').

## 5.14 Profiles

You have made many changes to the 'Bodhi Linux' profile that was selected for you when you first installed Bodhi on your computer. All of these changed settings have been stored in this profile. They include your choice of GTK theme, what shelves you've set up, any edge and key bindings you created, the number of virtual desktops, modifications to the menus (such as turning off 'generic'), and any fonts and colours that you've modified. If you now apply a different profile, it will have none of these settings. (However, it will keep the contents of your iBars and your Favorites menu as well as any gadgets you added to the shelf, and it will keep the Enlightenment theme you chose.)

This does not mean that you have lost all those bindings and other settings that you laboriously created. By returning to the 'Bodhi Linux' profile, your desktop will be returned to its previous state, with all those settings intact.

In the next section you are going to make some radical changes to your profile that you may not want to keep. How then can you easily return to your profile as it is now? The answer is to save what you have now as a new profile under a different name, and then return to that newly-named profile. Let's save your profile now:

1. Go to the Profile Selector dialog box shown in the figure below (via Run Everything, or the Settings gadget, or _Main menu > Settings > All > Settings > Profiles_).

2. Click Add, then enter a name for your profile. Your own name will do.

3. Click OK. Your profile, with its theme, wallpaper, shelves, bindings, font, colour, and other settings, will be stored under that new name.

Note that you are NOT using this newly-added profile. The 'Bodhi Linux' profile is still selected at the Profile Selector dialog box, and any further changes to your settings that you now make will be stored in that. It also means that if you want to make changes to your newly-added profile, you must first select it at this dialog box.

**Note:** Each profile has its own folder in the .e/e/config folder in your Home directory, in which its settings are stored.

## 5.15 Start again: the Default profile

I've been using the profile described in this chapter and in Chapter 3, with its particular arrangement of shelves, iBars, virtual desktops, edge bindings, etc, for many months now, ever since the first release candidate of Bodhi 3 became available in mid-2014. It suits my needs very well, but that's not to say it can't be improved. If you have other ideas and other preferences, why not start again and create your own profile? (Remember that at any time you can return to your original saved profile at the Profile Selector dialog box.)

The Default profile will restore the Enlightenment desktop to the state it was in when you first installed Bodhi Linux, i.e. with the shelf at the top of the screen with the original default selection of gadgets (though it will keep the contents of your iBar as well as your Favorites menu). You can use this profile to start again:

1. Open the Profile Selector dialog box and choose the Default profile. The original default desktop will be restored, though any subsequent theme that you might have chosen will still be in place.

2. Next, go to the Theme Selector dialog box to choose the Enlightenment theme that most appeals to you. (Remember that more themes are available at the AppCenter and the repository.)

3. Now customize the shelf. You may want a different selection of gadgets on it, and you may want it in a different position. You may want to move the clock to the desktop and change its appearance. You may also want to create a second shelf with a second iBar, separating out the launch tracking functions onto this iBar (as detailed in Sections 3.4 and 3.6).

4. Apply an appropriate GTK theme (try to find one that matches the Enlightenment theme you've chosen).

5. Change fonts as necessary to make e.g. the menus easier to read, and create edge bindings and key bindings to make life easier.

6. When you have finished perfecting your masterpiece, save your new Profile under a new name (at the Profile Selector dialog box).

# 6 Tune up and backup your system

The topics covered in this chapter include using Bleachbit to identify and remove files that are no longer needed, becoming 'Super User' or 'Root' in order to tinker with system files, how to backup your system, and how to replicate it on a USB flash drive or another computer. We end with some terminal tweaks to make life easier.

## 6.1 Run PCManFM as Root

Let's see what happens if we try to change a system file when running PCManFM in the normal way:

1. Open PCManFM and navigate to _/usr/share/applications_. (If you have Places showing in the Side Pane, start by clicking on Filesystem Root.) You will see listed the desktop files for the applications installed on your system.

2. Right-click on 'File Manager PCManFM' in this list and choose ePad (or Leafpad or Gedit) from the context menu. The PCManFM desktop file opens.

3. In the fourth line down change Name from 'File Manager PCManFM' to 'PCManFM' (see the figure).

4. Click Save. A warning message appears, telling you that permission has been denied to change this file. Close the editor.

Let's now repeat this process, but this time running PCManFM as Root:

1. Run eSudo ( _Main menu > Applications > System Tools_), and at its dialog box enter _pcmanfm_ as the command then your password.

2. PCManFM opens, but this time there is warning symbol at the left of the toolbar. If you mouse over this symbol, the message appears 'You are in Super User mode'.

3. Navigate to _/usr/share/applications_ again, and repeat Steps 2 to 5 above (i.e. navigate to _/usr/share/applications_ , open 'File Manager PCManFM' in ePad (or Leafpad), and edit the fourth line). Now, after saving and re-opening the file in ePad, you will see that the name has changed from 'File Manager PCManFM' to simply 'PCManFM'. Being in Super User mode, you have been allowed to modify the file. Close ePad.

4. With PCManFM still open in Super User mode, press F4 to open Terminology. It opens in the _/usr/share/applications_ folder, and, at the left of its window, it tells you that you are 'root', i.e. you are in Super User mode. Notice that the prompt has changed from '$' to '#', which tells you the same thing. It means that you can issue commands to modify (and possibly wreck) your Root filesystem.

5. Close Terminology, and close PCManFM.

## 6.2 Create a launcher 'PCManFM as Root'

Depending on how often you run PCManFM as Super User, you may find it useful to have a personal application launcher for this. To set this up:

1. Go to the Personal Application Launcher dialog box (enter _pers_ into Everything), then click Add to open the Desktop Entry Editor.

2. Make the following entries in the Basic section- Name: _PCManFM as Root_ ; Application: _esudo "pcmanfm %U"_ (see the figure).

3. In the General section- Categories: _Utility_ ; Mime Types: _inode/directory._

4. In Options - tick _Startup Notify_ and _Show in Menus._

5. If you want to set an icon, click on the icon window in the Icon tab and navigate to _/usr/share/icons_ and choose from the various sets on offer. For example, I've chosen one from _/usr/share/icons/Humanity/places/48_ .

6. Click OK when you've finished. Your new launcher should show up as a menu item in _Main menu > Applications > System Tools_.

**Note:** If you wish to return to the above dialog box to edit these entries, run 'PCManFM as Root', right-click on the title bar of its window, then choose _PCManFM > Edit Icon_.

## 6.3 Clean your system: BleachBit

Once in a while (e.g. every month) you should clean your system of unwanted files. This can be done using an application called BleachBit (the equivalent of CCleaner in Windows). Bleachbit is not on your system, so install it now via Synaptic.

When you have done this, two items will have been added to _Main menu > Applications > System Tools_:

\- 'BleachBit', which cleans user files (i.e. those in your Home folder)  
\- 'BleachBit (as root)', which cleans system files (i.e. those in the Root folder).

1. Run BleachBit. Its window opens, together with its Preferences dialog box. You can close this dialog box (though you may wish to check out the Languages tab first).

2. The various categories of file to clean are listed at the left of the Bleachbit window (see the figure). Select them all except the following:

\- The Deep Scan options (these are slow)  
\- Passwords (in the Firefox and Thunderbird sections)  
\- Free disk space, Localizations, and Memory in the System section (the first two are slow, and Memory is experimental).

3. Click Preview, and a (long) list of files to be deleted appears.

4. Click Clean, and in moments the job is done.

Now run 'Bleachbit as Root' in the same way.

## 6.4 Back up your system: Remastersys

You should of course keep backups of important documents, photos, and other personal files on an external storage device or on Dropbox. PCManFM, with its twin panes, makes this backup an task easy.

Backing up your entire system is another matter, however, and one way to do this is to use Remastersys. This will create an image (ISO) file of your system, with all your Enlightenment customizations, and you can choose whether to include in this image your documents, photos, and other personal files. You can then install this image on an optical disc (recordable DVD) or on a USB memory stick (flash drive) or hard drive, which you can then use to run, and if necessary install, a copy of your system on another computer.

(Before backing up your system with Remastersys, you should first run Bleachbit and Bleachbit as Root to remove unnecessary files. You could also include the 'Free disk space' option to make the image as compact as possible, though this may take a very long time to execute, as it involves shuffling the files around on the hard disk.)

Remastersys is on your system. The instructions for using it are as follows:

1. Close all open applications. Then open eSudo (Main menu > Applications > System Tools) and enter _remastersys-gtk_ in the Command field of the eSudo dialog box and your password then click OK.

2. At the Remastersys dialog box choose the Settings tab. Here you can enter any files or directories you wish to exclude from your image. For example, if you wish to exclude your Pictures and Videos folders, you would enter  
_/home/username/Pictures /home/username/Videos  
_ here (replacing _username_ with your username).

3. Click the Actions tab, close all open windows (apart from the Remastersys window) and click Backup. Remastersys will then set to work creating an ISO image of your system, a process that will take anything from 20 minutes to over an hour, depending on the size of your installed system and the performance of your PC. Your computer will be working flat out while this is going on, and should not be used for any other tasks.

The resulting ISO file will be located in the /home/remastersys folder. This is not in the Home folder - to navigate to it in PCManFM, click on Filesystem Root in the side pane, then navigate to _/home/remastersys/remastersys_.

You can now install this image on a recordable DVD using e.g. Brasero, which you can then use to reinstall your system in the event of a disaster. A better option might be to install it on a USB flash drive (see the next section), as that can hold a much bigger image than a DVD, and you can change or add to the files stored on the image. (Note that an older computer may not be able to boot from a USB drive - though the Plop Boot Manager may solve this, see Section 6.6 below.)

**Note:** You may wish to set up a personal application launcher for Remastersys. To do so, go to the Personal Application Launcher dialog box, click Add, and then at the Desktop Entry editor type _Remastersys_ in the Name field and _esudo remastersys-gtk_ in the Application field. Then, at the General tab, type _remastersys_ in the Generic Name field and _System_ in Categories; at the Options tab, make sure that 'Show in Menu' is ticked; then click OK. Remastersys will appear in the menu system under System Tools.)

## 6.5 Unetbootin

To install your ISO image on a USB drive you need an application called Unetbootin, and you can get this from the AppCenter. Once installed, Unetbootin will appear in the System Tools section of the menu system.

1. Before running Unetbootin, you should insert the USB drive in the computer, and you should mount it (opening PCManFM should do this). Note that the USB drive must be formatted to FAT32 (this is the default format for USB memory sticks).

2. Run Unetbootin, and at its dialog box (shown in the figure) select the DiskImage option (bottom left). Then browse to the ISO image you saved in the last section (at _home/remastersys/remastersys_ ). The Browse button is at the right.

3. If you think you'll want to add files later to the system-on-a-stick that you're about to create, then you must allocate space for this. The amount is limited by the capacity of your USB stick, though the largest number you can enter in the 'Space used to preserve files across reboots' field is 9999 Mb.

4. Click OK, and an image of your system will be installed on the USB drive, a process that will take several minutes.

## 6.6 Running Bodhi Linux from a USB drive

The copy of your system that you've installed on the USB stick can be run on any computer that will boot from a USB drive. To try this on your computer:

1. Power down.

2. Insert the USB stick in a USB port.

3. Switch on, and while the computer starts up hold down the F12 key until a boot menu appears. (This assumes your computer uses the F12 key for this purpose - if not, a list of keys that you can use at startup should appear on the screen when the computer fires up.)

4. One of the options should be to boot from the USB drive. If that option is not present, then you can't boot from that drive. In that case you will bave to write your ISO image to a DVD and boot from that.

**Hint:** You can check whether your computer has this boot option prior to creating an installable USB stick by carrying out the above steps with _any_ USB stick inserted in a USB port.

**Note:** If your computer does not have this option, you can try using the Plop Boot Manager - search the web for a download.

5. If the USB option is present, select it, then accept the default choice at the next menu. The computer will run your copied Bodhi system, and after a few moments your desktop will appear. The first time you use a USB installation some of the icons may be missing from the shelf - simply restart Enlightenment (Ctrl+Alt+End) to correct this.

6. You are now able to use your USB system just as if you were running it from the hard disk. You can also use it to access the files on the computer's hard disk.

7. You can also, if you wish, use this USB stick to install your Bodhi system on the computer's hard drive. You might want to do this if the system on the hard drive of your computer has become corrupted, or if you want to install the system on another computer. To do this, Run Everything and type in the first few letters of _install RELEASE._ If the Install RELEASE applet is present on your USB stick, its icon will appear in the dialog box and you can press Enter to run it. You can try this now if you like - abort the install process by selecting Quit at the first dialog box.

**Note:** If _Install RELEASE_ is not present on your USB stick, you can download it from http://packages.bodhilinux.com/bodhi/pool/testing/u/ubiquity. Choose the download called _ubiquity-frontend-gtk_3.12.17_i386.deb_ (or _...amd64.deb_ for 64-bit systems).

8. When you've finished testing your system-on-a-stick, close it down in the usual way. All your key bindings will work, so if you set up the Win+Del binding I suggested earlier to power down, use this.

## 6.7 Using Terminology to get things done

I said at the start of this book that with Bodhi version 3 it is possible to use Linux without needing to enter commands at the terminal, and I've certainly not referred to it often in this guide. Get-iplayer is the only application I've mentioned that must be run in the terminal.

But the terminal can be very handy sometimes, and so I'm concluding with a few tips.

### Turn off passwords

You can't turn off the requirement for passwords for eSudo, eepDater, and the other system tools that Bodhi provides, but you can for other terminal operations that require administrative (superuser) privileges. This is a dangerous thing to do of course, and should never be done in a workplace setting or if your computer might be accessed by people you don't entirely trust.

To turn off passwords, you must add an entry to the sudoers file which is in the /etc folder:

1. Run eSudo and enter the command _epad /etc/sudoers_. The sudoers file will open in ePad. (Or use Leafpad or Gedit instead of ePad, if you have installed either of those.)

2. Scroll down to the bottom of this file and type in the following two lines:

# Turn off requirement for password  
username ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

The first line is a comment (comments start with a #), and is not essential. The second line must be copied in exactly, with your username replacing _username_. (Your username appears at the top of the terminal window, before the @ symbol.) Note the spaces in this command - there's a space after the username, a space between (ALL) and NOPASSWD:, and a space before the final ALL.

3. Click Save. Note that this change won't take effect until you reboot your computer - but don't do so yet.

### Aliases

_Aliases_ allow you to replace long-winded commands with much shorter words of your own choosing. For example, if you use Get-iPlayer, life would be easier if you could enter _get_ instead of _get-iplayer_ each time you type one of its commands.

Before setting up an alias you should first check that your proposed word isn't an existing command. Do so by entering it in Terminology; if the response is 'command not found', you're good to go.

Aliases are stored in the (hidden) .bashrc file in your Home folder. To create some:

1. Run eSudo and enter the command _epad .bashrc_. The .bashrc file opens in ePad.

2. Scroll down almost to the bottom of this file, and after the section headed '# some more ls aliases' insert the following:

# My aliases  
alias get='get-player'  
alias upgrade='sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y'  
alias remove='sudo apt-get autoremove'

(The 'upgrade' alias gives you a faster alternative to eepDater, and the 'remove' alias gives you an easy way to remove files that have been installed but are no longer needed on your system.)

3. Click Save. These changes will take effect when you reboot.

When you've rebooted, test the 'remove' alias by opening Terminology and entering _remove_. And next time the eepDater tool shows that some updates are available, open Terminology and enter _upgrade_.

**Note:** To see the list of aliased commands, enter _alias_ into the terminal.

### Disable middle-clicking

This will only be of interest to you if you do a fair amount of word processing and if the scroll wheel of your mouse readily performs an accidental middle-click while scrolling - the problem being that this inserts the contents of the clipboard register into your document at the point where you clicked. (This is a feature of Ubuntu, not of other distros.)

Perhaps the simplest solution is to get another mouse, but you can't tell how susceptible a mouse is to accidental middle-clicking except by testing it. Another solution is to disable middle-clicking by remapping Button 2 of the mouse; this can be done using _x11-xserver-utils_ , which should already be on your system.

To temporarily disable middle-clicking, open Terminology and enter the command:

xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 25 3 4 5 6 7 8 9"

This maps Button 2 (the middle click) to a non-existent position (25).

To have this persist across reboots, you will need edit/create the hidden file .Xmodmap in your Home directory:

1. Run eSudo, and enter the command _leafpad ~/.Xmodmap_. (Do NOT use ePad for this.)

2. If this file does not yet exist, Leafpad will create it, and you should type in the following line:  
_pointer = 1 25 3 4 5 6 7 8 9_

3. Save the file, then close Leafpad. The _pointer_ command will be run when you reboot the computer.

Note that you can still use middle-clicking in PCManFM, which appears to override this command.

## 6.8 Conclusion

We've reached the end of this guide. You will have realized that there's much more to Bodhi and the Enlightenment desktop than can be covered here, and as for Linux itself I've barely scratched the surface. Probably the best way to find out more about Linux is to search the web, including in your search phrase _ubuntu_ and sometimes _linux_. There are many guides available there. And as for Bodhi and Enlightenment, your main source of help will be the Bodhi website, especially the Documentation Wiki and the Forum.

