KDE4 Settings: Add a WindowManager (rev2)

Created Monday, 11 January 2010 Created by Nano

Categories News::Linux | Frontpage

(1 vote)

to the dropdown list

KDE4 provides an option for chaning the default windowmanager, but you dunno how to add your favourite to the list? That's easy!

Entries in that list are simple, default .desktop files, here's an example (the one for sawfish-1.6):

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Sawfish
Exec=sawfish
TryExec=sawfish
X-KDE-WindowManagerConfigure=sawfish-ui
#X-KDE-WindowManagerRestartArgument=--replace

Explanation:

Exec = The Application to start

TryExec = Check wether this application is executable

X-KDE-WindowManagerConfigure = The Configurationtool of the windowmanager

X-KDE-WindowManagerRestartArgument = Extra commandline arguements passed

to the windowmanager to replace the existing one

Now let's check there to place it, open a terminalemulator (eg. Konsole) and run:

kde4-config --install data

it will output something like:

/usr/share/kde4/apps/

append /ksmserver/windowmanagers/ to the path and place your .desktop file there.

For example:
/usr/share/kde4/apps/ksmserver/windowmanagers/sawfish.desktop

Now you can choose your windowmanager from the KDE4 Settings.