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Gonzalo edited this page Feb 20, 2021 · 3 revisions

Purpose

Fildem menu is an app to (try to) bring back the global menu like it was on the Unity Desktop Environment. I think it was a really functional DE, and a lot of people seem to think that. I added the ability to unmaximize the window from the top panel, a colourful window switcher to recognize apps at a glance, and a better overview, all inspired by Unity

State of the art

Unluckily I don’t know how much this app will live, Gnome has made clear they will remove support for loadable modules. So even though global menus and searchable huds are becoming a trend (Gimp has a menu on the right click and a hud) it seems Gnome devs have made their mind.

Luckily, a lot of other distros are willing to keep this trend, so maybe there’s a future for this.

Installation

Ubuntu 20

You can install the modules with

sudo apt install libbamf3-dev bamfdaemon libkeybinder-3.0-dev appmenu-gtk2-module appmenu-gtk3-module unity-gtk-module-common

And install the python dependency:

pip3 install fuzzysearch

And then configure the following files:

  • Create the file ~/.gtkrc-2.0 and append gtk-modules="appmenu-gtk-module"
  • The file ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini should have the line gtk-modules="appmenu-gtk-module" under [Settings]. If it doesn’t exist create it and paste the following
[Settings]
gtk-modules="appmenu-gtk-module"

Arch

I got it to run on a vm, since Arch is so customizable I can’t guaranted it will work on all system, but the modules installed were

pacman -S bamf appmenu-gtk-module libkeybinder3 libdbusmenu-gtk2 libdbusmenu-gtk3 libdbusmenu-qt5

You also have to install fuzzysearch with pip (pip3 install fuzzysearch) and edit the files explained on the Ubuntu section.

Customization

Menu always visible

If you don’t want to have to hover the menu to view it, change FORCE_SHOW_MENU in extension.js to true, and reload the shell (Alt+F2, r).

AppMenu Button always visible

The AppMenu button is the gnome button that appears on the top panel. You can set SHOW_APPMENU_BUTTON to true if you want that. If you are using Unite extension, you can set the button to show the app name instead of the title, otherwise it will be to long and the menu will appear at the right side of the panel.

Remove space in between buttons

In some gnome themes, the buttons have a small spacing beetween them. This can make the buttons easy to miss and unfocusing our window if it’s not maximized. To fix this, add this somewhere on your gnome-shell.css theme:

#panel #panelLeft {
  spacing: 0px; }
#panel #panelLeft .panel-button {
  spacing: 0px; }

Running the program at startup

If you manage to make the program work and want to have it running automatically at startup you can add an entry to gnome-session-properties with the name of the program and the path to execute it.

Customization

State of the apps

The tracking of the apps that don’t work is being made on this issue. Here is a non-extensive list of the most common apps:

  • Chrome ✓
  • Audacity ✓ — You have to remove UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0 from /usr/share/applications/audacity.desktop
  • Firefox/Thunderbird ✗ — The menu is not exported. On Arch there’s a patched version firefox-appmenu and thunderbird-appmenu
  • Gnome apps ✗ — Most of them doesn’t even have a menu to export, this are the ones that do have:
    • Gedit
  • Gimp ✓
  • Sublime text/merge ✓ — Doesn’t work on Wayland
  • Qt apps ✓ — No Qt app work on Manjaro, I still don’t know why. I haven’t tested Qt5 apps, if you know someone (without compiling) please tell me
  • LibreOffice ✓
  • Viewnior ✓
  • Electron apps ✓
  • Jetbrain IDEs ✓ — You have to install the plugin JavaFX Runtime for Plugins
  • SmartGit ✓
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