How to replace your GNOME panel with BarPanel
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.
what about back to gnome-panel ?
Perhaps the easiest way to get gnome-panel back is to just delete your ~/.gnome2/session file — then disable barpanel from the “Sessions” applet under System/Preferences
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I’ve just downloaded and installed barpanel with ubuntu 8 and I am quite happy with the look.
But is there a documentation for the features?
The main question for me is how to adjust the panel (adding new applications, integrating all in one panel etc.).
Right click (as I am used to configure things) doesn’t work.
Is there something like a config file?
And how to change the theme?
Thanks for any reply.
First of all, I am glad you were happy with it:)
Unfortunately the documentation is still lacking, as well as a graphical configuration tool. However, in a nutshell, the configuration basically takes place in one file, ~/.barpanel/config.xml. All configurable aspects can be modified there. This file will automatically be created for you upon first running Barpanel. After making changes, Barpanel should then be restarted. The file may hopefully be self-explanatory enough to help get started with the tweaking. If you encounter substantial learnings during the tweaking, I would be more than happy to post any instructions you may find for other newcomers.
Hopefully also we would get a chance to code in a graphical configuration utility to make all this very much easier.