> Desktop Use

Tribblix provides a variety of desktop environments and window managers, and you can choose which one to use. To use a desktop, you will need at least the x11 overlay to be installed, although adding the retro-desktop overlay will give more choice and enlarge the set of available utilities.

To select a desktop environment or window manager for use, the setxsession utility is provided. If run without arguments, it will list the known options and whether they're installed. For example:

• afterstep: Afterstep (installed)
• amiwm: Amiga-like Window Manager (installed)
• awesome: awesome window manager (installed)
• awm: Ardent Window Manager (installed)
• cde: CDE (installed)
• ctwm: CTWM (installed)
• cwm: OpenBSD cwm Window Manager (installed)
• e19: Enlightenment (installed)
• ede: EDE (installed)
• emwm: Enhanced Motif Window Manager (installed)
• fluxbox: Fluxbox (installed)
• fvwm: FVWM (installed)
• i3wm: improved tiling wm (installed)
• icewm: IceWM (installed)
• leftwm: LeftWM (installed)
• mate: MATE (installed)
• mwm: Motif Window Manager (installed)
• olvwm: OLVWM (installed)
• olwm: OLWM (installed)
• openbox: Openbox (installed)
• pekwm: PekWM (installed)
• piewm: Window Manager with pie menus (installed)
• qvwm: QVWM (installed)
• tvtwm: Tom's virtual Tab Window Manager (installed)
• twm: TWM (installed)
• uwm: UDE Window Manager (installed)
• vtwm: Virtual tab Window Manager (installed)
• wmaker: Window Maker (installed)
• xfce: Xfce (installed)

To select an option, just supply it as an argument, for example

    setxsession wmaker
  

will set your account up so that the next time you run a desktop session, Window Maker will be used. If the chosen desktop option is not installed, the command will tell you what needs to be installed in order to enable it.

If you are presented with a console login prompt, then type the command

    startx
  

to start up a graphical session.

You can enable a graphical login prompt. Use the su command to become root, and enable the slim service

    /usr/sbin/svcadm enable svc:/system/slim:default

If the mouse doesn't appear to work, you'll need to ensure that hal is enabled (this problem is likely to occur if you add the x11 packages on top of a minimalist install)

    /usr/sbin/svcadm enable svc:/system/hal:default
  

For most purposes, the xfce desktop is recommended.

VNC

Tribblix also allows you to run a separate desktop session using VNC. This offers a number of advantages over a regular desktop session - you can easily test out a new desktop, you can disconnect and reconnect to the session, and can connect to a session from a remote system.

Similar to the way that setxsession allows you to specify which desktop session to run, the setvncsession command will allow you to select which desktop environment or window manager will be used for a VNC session. Having specified which window manager you wish to use, the command

    vncserver

will create the VNC session and print out the connection details. To connect to a session, for example tribblix:1,

    vncviewer tribblix:1

and to terminate a session

    vncserver -kill tribblix:1

Applications

Tribblix provides a basic range of tools for desktop use.

• Terminals - apart from xterm, sakura and the xfce Terminal are recommended.
• Text editing - emacs, vim, leafpad, and mousepad are basic text editors. bluefish is focused on web content.
• Office - the LibreOffice suite is available. For lighter-weight tasks you can also use abiword and gnumeric.
• Mail - claws-mail is available, or run mutt in a terminal.
• Graphics - for viewing images, gpicview and gqview are good choices. The ImageMagick suite is also available, as is the gimp.
• Desktop publishing - Inkscape, Scribus, and Dia are available.
• Graphics - for generating graphics, there are gnuplot, ploticus, ggobi, graphviz, and the R suite.
• Messaging - for IRC, hexchat is a good choice, while pidgin and irssi are also available.

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