A new TROMjaro ISO is out. I still hope to reach more stability in terms of releases. Meaning, to release less often and with less changes. But all of what we do is improvement and making TROMjaro better. Here are the new changes:
Rebuild a few packages.
Due to a phyton update a few packages need to be rebuilt. For the current TROMjaro users please find in your Add/Remove Software the following and choose to reinstall: easystroke, mate-hud, riseup-vpn, syncthing-gtk-python3.
Disable the dark mode for panels.
Right click any panel, then panel preferences, and in the appearance tab disable the Dark Mode. This is more suitable for when you switch to lighter themes.
Refresh the desktop.
The script for refreshing the desktop got a tiny addition that prevents it from crashing at times. Go to .local/bin and edit with a text editor the file refresh-xfce. Remove what is there and add this:
#!/bin/bash
xfce4-panel -r && xfwm4 --replace && xfce4-panel
Menu icon.
For a better consistency change the menu icon - right click it, then properties, then appearance, then click the icon. Change it to org.xfce.panel.whiskermenu. Now go and grab our patched icons from here and add all of those icons to your .local/share/icons/Zafiro/apps/scalable/ folder.
The awesome and cool TROMjaro layout toggle.
If you remember we created a TROMjaro Classic at one point. It looked like this:
With a single bottom panel. This layout was more consistent than the default TROMjaro one. But because I am so busy I could not maintain 2 ISOs. Now we have a great and simple solution to bring back that layout. We have created the TROMjaro Layout Toggle. Look at it in action (the video is not that great because my computer is struggling with so many tasks I am giving to him):
A simple layout toggle! To do this on your system, you have to have 3 packages installed (search in Add/Remove Software for them): zenity, zensu, xfce4-panel-profiles. After you install them go to the folder .local/share/applications/ and create a new empty text file. Name it tromjaro-layout-toggle.desktop and add this inside of it:
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.1
Type=Application
Name=TROMjaro Layout Toggle
GenericName=TROMjaro Layout Toggle
Comment=Change the layout between TROMjaro Classic and TROMjaro Modern
Icon=global-menu-and-hud
Exec=tromjaro-layout-toggle
Categories=DesktopSettings;GTK;Settings;X-XFCE-PersonalSettings;X-XFCE-SettingsDialog;XFCE;
Keywords=settings;layout;toggle;switch;
Save.
Create an empty text file in .local/bin/ and name it tromjaro-layout-toggle. Add the following to it.
#! /bin/bash
FILE1=/usr/lib/vala-panel/appmenu-registrar
FILE2=/usr/lib/vala-panel/appmenu-registrar.OFF
if [ -f "$FILE1" ]; then
choice=$(zenity --width=400 --height=275 --list --radiolist --title 'Tromjaro layout switcher' --text 'Select your preferred layout:' --column 'Select' --column 'Layout' FALSE 'Classic layout' TRUE 'Modern layout')
[ "$choice" = 'Classic layout' ] || exit
## Enable TROMjaro Classic
zensu mv "$FILE1" "$FILE2" || exit
killall appmenu-registrar &
xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/borderless_maximize -n -t bool -s false &
xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/button_layout -n -t string -s "|HMC" &
xfce4-panel-profiles load ~/.local/share/xfce4-panel-profiles/TROMjaroClassic.tar.bz2 &
## Reset panels and windows
xfce4-panel -r &
xfwm4 --replace &
xfce4-panel &
sleep 4 && notify-send 'TROMjaro Classic was enabled'
elif [ -f "$FILE2" ]; then
choice=$(zenity --width=400 --height=275 --list --radiolist --title 'Tromjaro layout switcher' --text 'Select your preferred layout:' --column 'Select' --column 'Layout' TRUE 'Classic layout' FALSE 'Modern layout')
[ "$choice" = 'Modern layout' ] || exit
## Enable TROMjaro Modern
zensu mv "$FILE2" "$FILE1" || exit
xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/borderless_maximize -n -t bool -s true &
xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/button_layout -n -t string -s "CMH|" &
xfce4-panel-profiles load ~/.local/share/xfce4-panel-profiles/TROMjaroModern.tar.bz2 &
## Reset panels and windows
xfce4-panel -r &
xfwm4 --replace &
xfce4-panel &
sleep 4 && notify-send 'TROMjaro Modern was enabled'
else
notify-send 'ERROR'
fi
Save. Ricgh click it, go to Properties then Permissions and mark the “Allow this file to run as a program.”
Next you need the profiles we made for the two layouts. Download the two archives from here. And put them in .local/share/xfce4-panel-profiles/. If you do not have that folder, create it.
That’s it! You can now find the TROMjaro Layout Toggle in your menu and in the Settings Manager.
The XFCE Panel Profiles, what we use for this, is an awesome little tool that allows you to switch the panels’ design as you desire, and also save your panel configuration. Basically you can tweak the look of your desktop as you wish, in terms of the panels. Add them up, down, sides, add items to them, tweak those items, etc… And then you can save the config and create more. Then switch between them at will. This is the awesome power of XFCE!
NOTE: Our TROMjaro Layout Toggle uses this tool but is more than that, since we also enable global menus for example. So although you may see our layouts in the Panel Profiles, do not use that for it. Else the global menus may not work. So keep that in mind.
Grab it from here.