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Category: Konqueror / Gnome / Nautilus File Mgr Hints

kate text editor “feature” under konqueror centos7: hard to open more than one file simultaneously

Published by jweisber on 2021-04-11

JMW uses Konqueror rather than nautilus file manager under centos7. This “feature” may appear only with above config, but anyway:

if I open a file with kate it’s fine.

if i open a second, the first disappears.  only one shows on desktop and on bottom bar listing all open files.  I can toggle between them on the document tab of left sidebar, but only one at a time!

FIXES:

  1.  View>>split view and then in the document tab on left sidebar, select  each of the TWO (max) files to show in a SINGLE split window.
  2. After opening one, click on new window (control n) and a second (empty) independent window will open up. In that second empty window, you can then navigate with file>>open menu  to second desired file and open it.  This will be my favored approach

I spent a good length of time reading the manual (useless – it tells what kate can do but not how!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and some blogs and it looks like there is no way to make it automatically put every document in a separate window.  So one of the above “features” will have to do.

–Joel

setting up your centos7 desktop after machine was upgraded to that os

Published by jweisber on 2021-03-04

These notes are mostly from Bruce. The original is at /docs/centos7/

Centos 7 Gnome UI configuration
====================================================================================================

CentOS 7 comes with some UI changes from the centos6 experience that you may wish to adjust.

See below for concrete examples below for commonly changed settings.

Generally speaking, there are 4(!) tools that allow you to adjust aspects of your UI environment. 3
via the System Menu (Upper Left corner of your screen) and 1 via the ‘gsettings’ shell CLI.

Determing which of these 4 tools provides the setting you want to change can be challenging. It’s
often easiest just to google for “centos 7 change <???> settings” to find out which one[s] to use
for the given setting you want to change.

The 4 ways to change the UI:

1) “Applications > Tweaks > XXX”

This brings up the ‘Gnome Tweak Tool’ that lets you set a bunch of things.

Example:

Applications > Tweaks > Keyboard & Mouse >

let’s you map the Caps Lock key to an additional Ctrl key (see below)

2) “Applications > System Tools > Settings > XXX”

Example:

Applications > System Tools > Settings > Privacy > Screen Lock

3) “Applications > System Tools > dconf Editor”

This is a bare-bones editor that enables you to get/set the same tree of settings that can be
manipulated by the ‘gsettings’ CLI below, which is a superset of what can be changed via the
Gnome Tweak Tool above.

org/gnome/desktop/screensaver/lock-delay
org/gnome/desktop/interface/text-scaling-factor

4) The ‘gsettings’ Shell (Terminal Window) command:

This is the shell get/set CLI for the dconf Editor above

Examples:

$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-delay
uint32 300
$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-delay 600
$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-delay
uint32 600
$

Sources:

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/desktop_migration_and_administration_guide/gsettings-dconf

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/desktop_migration_and_administration_guide/browsing-gsettings-values-for-applications

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/desktop_migration_and_administration_guide/configuration-overview-gsettings-dconf

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/desktop_migration_and_administration_guide/browsing-gsettings-values-for-applications

 

====================================================================================================
Specific examples
====================================================================================================

—————————————————————————————————-
Put App shortcuts on the desktop
—————————————————————————————————-

You can click-and-drag any of the app icons from any submenu of the main ‘Applications’ menu to the
desktop and then launch it from there.

—————————————————————————————————-
Put App shortcuts on the ‘top panel’
—————————————————————————————————-

I haven’t found a way to do this yet.

—————————————————————————————————-
Shrink Desktop Icon size
—————————————————————————————————-

Desktop Icons are stupidly large. Fix with

# gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.icon-view default-zoom-level small

—————————————————————————————————-
Font sizes used on the screen are oversized
—————————————————————————————————-

Make fonts smaller via

Applications>Accessories>Tweaks>Fonts>Scaling Factor -> 0.90

—————————————————————————————————-
Make menu clock show the Date and Seconds
—————————————————————————————————-

Applications > Tweaks > Top Bar

Under ‘Clock’ header

Controls how clock appears in screen’s top menu bar

Date [on|off]
Seconds [on|off]

—————————————————————————————————-
Configure Startup Applications
—————————————————————————————————-

You can specify what applications you want to have launched at login.

Applications > Tweaks > Startup Applications

Select the apps you want to run at startup.

—————————————————————————————————-
Make ‘Caps Lock’ key an additional ‘Ctrl’ key
—————————————————————————————————-

Very useful for emacs users.

NOTE: Make sure Caps Lock is not active when you do this!

Applications > Tweaks > Keyboard & Mouse >

Under ‘Keyboard’ heading, select the ‘Additional Layout Options’ button.

In the ‘Additional Layout Options’ window that pops up, select the ‘Caps Lock Behavior’ ‘triangle’
button and then select ‘Caps Lock is also a Ctrl’.

—————————————————————————————————-
Adjust the screensaver lock timer
—————————————————————————————————-

The screensaver lock timer is very aggressive. To adjust, open “Applications > System Tools >
Settings > Privacy > Screen Lock”

In the ‘Screen Lock’ window you can select the ‘Lock screen after blank for’ value from ‘Screen
Turns Off’ to a number of minutes, such as 1, 2, 5, or 30 minutes (but not anything between 5 and 30
minutes which is odd).

If you want to set the timer to values between 5 <-> 30 minutes, you can use the ‘gsettings’ CLI.

Here’s how to do it via ‘gsettings’:

From the terminal (to set sleep timeout to 10 minutes / 600 seconds,
then require login after 15 minutes / 900 seconds):

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-display-ac 600
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-display-battery 600
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay 600
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver idle-activation-enabled ‘true’
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-enabled ‘true’
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-delay 900

—————————————————————————————————-
Set prefs for Nautilus (File Manager)
—————————————————————————————————-

Open ‘Applications > File Manager’ from the menu in the Upper Left of your screen.

The Nautilus File Manager should open.

In the top menu bar you should now see the ‘Files’ menu item

From the ‘Files’ menu, select ‘Preferences’

—————————————————————————————————-
Set prefs for Konqueror (File Manager): Joel notes that konqueror file manager is back, after being missing from centos6.  I like konqueror much more than nautilus (it shows link targets, a particular issue of mine.)  So I set it up on centos7.  Rather than telling you all the miriad of settings I needed to select and change, how about you just ask me to tell you all the settings if you are interested (ie if you are frustrated with nautilus)
—————————————————————————————————-
—————————————————————————————————-
Update Firefox UI “Experience”
—————————————————————————————————-

When you launch Firefox it will ask you if you want to update your ‘experience’. Say ‘yes’ and it
will relaunch but show the latest UI.

—————————————————————————————————-
Configure the GV.printCommand:
—————————————————————————————————-

GV’S print command dialog window has a type-in labeled ‘print command’ and it’s automagically
populated with the string ‘lpr’. However you can change that string to ‘ps2pdf %s – | lpr’. You
can also change the default print string from ‘lpr’ to whatever you want in GhostScript options, but
that would break printing of non .ps files.

To change the default print string in ‘gv’, select:

State->Setup Options

… Look for the Print Command field, and change the value from
‘lpr’ to ‘ps2pdf %s – | lpr’ (w/o the single quotes).

The change is saved to ~/.gv as the line:

GV.printCommand: ps2pdf %s – | lpr

Show if a file is a link in Nautilus File Manager (but not whence [target])

Published by jweisber on 2021-02-24

Recently I discovered the following two ways to show if a file is a link in Nautilus List View. Sadly I have not been able to find a way for list view to show the link target, which Nautilus used to do. (For an individual file, one can determine it via File >> Properties .)

  1.  In list view , each file has an icon on far left, and a link superimposes onto that icon a “badge” that is a curvy arrow. The trouble is that this is faint, which is why I never noticed it before!  After a long time of trying to change the default badge for a link to something more noticeable, I gave up. I can do it for an individual file, but not for the class of all files having a link.
  2. FInally I figured out how to  denote all files that are actually links  in the list view, via the unix “permissions”  which include a leading ℓ if it is a link.  I think this is how:
    edit>>preferences>>list columns pane: I now place checks next to:
    Name
    Size
    Date  Mod
    Group
    Owner
    Permissions
  3. Sadly, I have not found a way for the list view to automatically show the link target (i.e. the name of the file that each link is attached to), as it used to. That is, I cannot create a column showing this information in the list view. As noted above, for an individual file, one can determine it via File >> Properties .)

change default postscript viewer (and other apps too) in nautilus file manager

Published by jweisber on 2020-09-25

to change default postscript viewer (or many other apps in nautilus) go to

/home/jweisber/.local/share/applications and
open mimeapps.list with kate or another text editor.

Go to default applications category (in mine it is the bottommost of 3 categories) and change the postscript viewer to

application/postscript=kde4-okularApplication_fb.desktop. if you’d like to change it to okular

I find okular great for a number of reasons – it will print the name of displayed file on the banner, show thumbnails of multiple pages, and more.  Evince is another nice one.  The default was gv which is ok but . . .

(I stole that from the top list which gave about 5 options, presumably the ones that appear in the nautilus menu when you go to file>>open with

–Joel

How to configure Oklular to show a document’s file name in its titlebar instead of the document’s “title property”

Published by jweisber on 2015-10-07

By default, the version of Okular available to CentOS 6 does not show the viewed document’s filename in the Okular window titlebar, but rather the value of the “Document Title” property embedded in the document being viewed. This is bad news because the Document Title property is usually set to the name of the app that created the document, making it difficult to tell multiple documents generated by the same app apart.

You can force Okular to set it’s window titlebar value to the name of the file being viewed by editing the file ~/.kde/share/config/okularpartrc and appending this line to the ‘[General]’ section:

DisplayDocumentTitle=false

When you finish, the file will end up looking like this:


[General]
UseKTTSD=false
DisplayDocumentTitle=false

 

Thanks Bruce!

konqueror (nautilus?) file browser and kwrite (kate?)text editor setup hints

Published by jweisber on 2008-01-15

Added by jmw 2020 may 28: Maybe these konqueror and kwrite config hints are still somewhat useful for nautilus and kate???

I find konqueror the best file browser for linux. To customize it a little, for example to get .idl files to open with my favorite text editor, kwrite:

with konqueror running:
settings>>configure konqueror gives some options like what your home dir should be (eg /home/youusername

to make conqueror behave a certain way with a certain kind of file, i made in my home dir (/home/jweisber) a file called dummy.idl

if you select it inside konqueror (one click to highlight it)

go to edit>properties
it should pop open a window labelled “Properties for dummy.idl – Konqueror”
‘way to the right of “type” is an icon of a bunch of tools. push on it.
it should pop open a window labelled “Edit file type application/idl KDEditFileType- Konqueror”
if its not already there, add a filename pattern of *.idl
that means any file ending with that will be treated in the way you are getting ready to set up

under application preference order, enter
kwrite

if you wish, you can also associate a pretty icon with *.idl by clicking on the “?” icon to left of “filename patterns”

click ok and from now on , when you dble-click on any file ending in .idl, it should open it with kwrite (see addition below)

(you may have to entirely quit and restart konqueror for the new properties to take)

–jmw january 2008

——addition feb 2008 – to get kwrite to use “syntax highlighting” (ie to color idl files with a certain color set; fortran etc etc):

open an idl file in kwrite.

in the kwrite toolbar up top, hit settings>configure editor>highlighting

now here is what took me more time than i am willing to admit:

the panel should now be labelled highlighting rules.

the first thing to do is to select a type from the pulldown menu near the top; eg “sources idl ”

then inside properties:file extensions, type *.pro;*.idl;*.batch

inside properties: MIME types, type application/idl

then hit the icon on the far right of this line and get a panel saying “Select the mimetypes you want highlighted using sources/idl syntax highlight rules”

and check the relevant mime types.

(note if the right mime types arent there, see joel)

note that some of these properties do not “take” until you jump out of konqueror and restart it!