Is it possible to customize the app menu in the “task bar”(sorry I do not know how it is called in Unix :D)
What I want to achieve is to organize it just a bit more, reducing the “chaos” and accessibility etc.
For example creating something like a folder where I can find all my templates.
I am using R4.1 stable with XFCE Desktop environment. I rather would avoid using KDE because I only ran into a bunch of issues on R4.1 recently with that, so I rather want to stick to XFCE.
I would like to get some tips on this, too. I am using i3wm and the dmenu is just a mess with many options, such as debian-11, debian-dvm, personal, etc. etc.
The menu can then be added to the XFCE panel as a widget, with Panel → Add New Items → Launcher, and in the Launcher add the Open Qubes Application Menu option. Normally, the process that provides the menu with data will be running in the background, but it will only start on the next reboot. To avoid the need for a reboot, you can just run the following in a dom0 terminal:
[user@dom0 ~]$ qubes-app-menu &
There are also several helpful options in the command line for users who want more customization, like --keep-visible (if you want the menu to be always visible) or --page [N] to select the page at which the menu should be opened (0 for apps, 1 for favorites, and 2 for system tools). The entire option list is available, as usual, through qubes-app-menu --help.
We’d also very much welcome anonymous feedback on the new menu through our survey tool.
The current plan is to have this menu become the default in Qubes 4.2, but of course compatibility with other menus will be maintained. Our current development status can be seen in the GitHub project for the new application menu.
Thanks @dom0 for your explanation, it worked “somewhat” and was exactly what I wanted. Sadly that it will be stable only at 4.2.
But after restarting I ran across of a couple issues
App Menu could not be open via Launcher in the panel. The process for app menu was active and running (qubes-app-menu --background) also I was unable to enable the menu via command, it just did nothing - no error message or feedback from dom0 at all. I had to kill the process and then running the command. This worked.
So I uninstalled the menu via dnf remove and restarted my system, also removed the autostart entry for the app menu.
now to my second issue:
After restarting, my dom0 GUI seems to be not loading correctly.
The panel is partialy white instead of a dark color as selected via the appearance. The background of the tray icons has the correct color.
I also tried to add a new panel to see if that has the correct color, but this was white also.
Qubes Manager has also the correct color (loaded in vie QT5 command in /etc/environment)
See screenshot:
Is it maybe possible to revert dom0 to a snapshot just like VMs or are there no automated snapshots for dom0?
Could not really find any info about this, only about snapshots from VMs
After some research and some restarts, I think it is best to backup my AppVMs without dom0.
My system becomes to behave strangely i.e. sys-usb not booting correctly on startup, so I have to restart it to use my usb mouse
I reinstalled Qubes OS in the meantime and restored my backup (without dom0 backup).
sys-usb now works like it should, but the strange appearance from the panel is still the same as shown in my screenshot when I switch system appearance to something different than the default one (i.e. my favorite Adwaita-dark)
Panel appearance is set to use the systems appearance.
I think I or my laptop is cursed
EDIT: Ignore this, I do not know what I did to fix my panel, but now it is showing the correct one
It’s not mentioned in the first post, but in dom0 you should also create ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini and ~/.gtkrc-2.0, as mentioned in the Debian section.
Since I see no one else mentioned it, you could try Whisker. I populated the “favorites” with all the things I use daily (around 15 items/apps) and that’s all I use. When I need things like backup or anything else I use the “regular” qubes menu which is just next to it on the Panel. Whisker has a search option as well, if you need it.
