Linux on any device

In case you might have liked BarPanel, and/or the way it looks and behaves, and would like to apply it as your default Panel to replace the default gnome-panel, it’s quite easy to do. I’ll try to outline here some of the things necessary to do this on a GNOME desktop (for KDE users, I have no idea; I’ll be happy to post if anyone would like to provide info on this);

Here are some steps to perform;

1. Install BarPanel

First of all, you must have BarPanel installed on your system. Download the installer first from the BarPanel project page. For Debian/Ubuntu users, the deb package installs automatically, for others you must manually extract the tarball to a convenient location on your hard drive (any location will do).

2. Make BarPanel start as part of your GNOME session

For this purpose, you can use the “gnome-session-properties” app (from terminal), which is also found under the default Ubuntu menu under System -> Preferences -> Sessions. To make BarPanel start automatically, use the “New” option under the “Startup Programs” tab;

• Under “Name”, you can type “BarPanel” (or any other descriptive name of your choosing)
• Under “Command”, you must provide the full command path to the barpanel executable; the default location is “/usr/bin/barpanel” in case you have installed the deb package; otherwise you must provide the path to where you have chosen to install it.

3. Make gnome-panel NOT start as part of your GNOME session

This is the “hard part”, as it seems that the gnome-panel is incredibly sticky; for this, you must locate the gnome-panel entry under the “Current Session” tab. Once the gnome-panel is chosen, change the style to “Trash”, then click on the “Remove” button as well. Then, when you close, make sure to save your current session.

4. Relogin and (hopefully) enjoy BarPanel

That’s it. After this, once you log out and log back in, your panel should now be the beautiful red BarPanel. Hopefully it works well for you. I would be more than thrilled to hear comments and suggestions for further improvement of the software.

Tags: BarPanel, Tips and Tricks