Tux Training

Idesk is an app used to show icons on the desktop, which by simple or double clicking (according to users preferences) will execute a command. It’s used mostly to work with window managers. Icons can be dragged to the desired position on the desktop and that position will be remembered on next idesk startup. The formats supported are png and svg, though there might be problems with the last mentioned format so it’s recommended to stay with png.

Idesk needs some dependencies installed in order to work.
pkg-config
librsvg-2.0.1
gdk-pixbuf-2

Installing idesk

• On Ubuntu/Debian: : sudo apt-get install idesk
• On Fedora: yum install idesk
• On Gentoo: emerge idesk
• On Arch: pacman -S idesk
• On OpenSuse: zypper in idesk
• by source (download) ./configure, make, make install

Make install will copy the executable to /usr/local/bin/idesk.

We have concluded installation process.

Configuration

Now it’s time to start tweaking our idesk to make it functional. With our favourite editor we will create a file called .ideskrc inside our home directory.

vi~/.ideskrc

Inside .ideskrc we will put the following:

table Config
FontName: tahoma
FontSize: 8
FontColor: #ffffff
Locked: false
Transparency: 150
HighContrast: true
Shadow: true
ShadowColor: #000000
ShadowX: 1
ShadowY: 2
Bold: false
ClickDelay: 300
IconSnap: true
SnapWidth: 55
SnapHeight: 100
SnapOrigin: BottomRight
SnapShadow: true
SnapShadowTrans: 200
CaptionOnHover: false
end
table Actions
Lock: control right doubleClk
Reload: middle doubleClk
Drag: left hold
EndDrag: left singleClk
Execute[0]: left doubleClk
Execute[1]: right doubleClk
end

If we look well we will realize that we can play with the values of the variables. As a hint, Transparency goes from 0 to 255. 0 gives as solid color and 255 will give us transparent icons that will only be seen with mouse over them. For a more detailed explanation we have to look at readme file locatead in /usr/share/doc/idesk.

Creating icons and associated actions

Now the only thing to do is define icons what is that we want them to do. Inside home directory we have to create a directory called .idesktop

$ mkdir ~/.idesktop

Inside this directory we will creat text files with the following format.

$ vi ~/.idesktop/name_of_icon.lnk

We’ve just created an icon. If we want it to launch Mozilla Firefox for example we have to do the following.

Inside the file recentely created we have to write:

table Icon
Caption: Mozilla Firefox
Command: firefox
Icon: /path/to/image/firefox.png
X: 100
Y: 50
end
Caption: name of the icon shown on desktop

Command: command to execute

Icon: path to the icon image

X and Y indicate initial position on screen, we can leave a default value and then dragg wherever we want it.

That’s it. We are ready to use idesk. Can be executed from a terminal:

$ idesk

or add it to startup (~/.fluxbox/startup)

idesk &