Lubuntu 20.04 - several questions

[Multibrelch]

Dear all.

First of all: thanks for this superb Gnu/Linux distribution, I use Lubuntu already for several years on different computers, after Canonical has shut down Unity.

I have some questions with respect to the 20.04 version, which I installed some days ago:

Q1: Is there some GUI program that allows modifying the application menu in the task bar? Under 18.04 I used menuelibre which worked well. I tried the latter and also alacarte under 20.04 but they seem to not work well.

Q2: I run compiz because of its superb functionalities. Lubuntu 20.04 and compiz work very well together! What I also use is gkrellm2 and its invisible layout. The layout normally shows gkrellm2 in a transparent style. The transparency works very well under Lubuntu 18.04. However, under 20.04 there is no transparency. Do you have any idea why that is?

Q3: Don’t feel offended by this question : Is it in general possible to use again the old ‘LXDE’ under Lubuntu 20.04?

Otherwise, I’m quite satisfied with Lubuntu 20.04. Thx a lot!

Cheers.

[wxl]

@Multibrelch

I used menuelibre which worked well. I tried the latter and also alacarte under 20.04 but they seem to not work well.

Then that’s likely a regression in those programs. LXQt implements the freedesktop.org Desktop Menu Specification like any other reasonable desktop environment (18.04’s LXDE included) so they should all work the same everywhere.

I run compiz because of its superb functionalities.

Since LXQt is window manager-agnostic and compiz is a window manager, there should be no problems. Again, this is probably some sort of compiz issue.

Is it in general possible to use again the old ‘LXDE’ under Lubuntu 20.04?

Sure but it’s totally not maintained by the Lubuntu team so you’re sort of on your own. Also, development of it has stalled long ago, so I would expect bugs. For example, I do know of a regular crash in pcmanfm that has been reported but all but ignored.

[stilnovo]

The issued subject ‘several question’ is quite nice, I was doing one post with the same subject, so I am following to this one.
I manage several notebooks and some servers (the oldest is from 2011, the newest 2020), all with Lubuntu 18.04 installed.
In one of those I have done a dual boot with Lubuntu 20.04 before to update all of them.
All the machines actually regularly work under the 18.04 version.

My problems with 20.04 I’ve encountered so far are:

1. I wasn’t able to find the corresponding program to gnome disk utility (maybe a scheme for the ‘dunderheads’ like me, with the LXDE programs and the similar LXQT ones you’ve chosen could be very useful at the beginning);

2. since on most of my machines the ‘f’ keys don’t work for the screen brightness, I used to click on the battery icon of the xfce power manager to quickly adjust that setting. Now the fastest way I’ve found is to open a terminal and write the xrandr command… is there another way?

3. problematic printers: We have also two Epson Workforce (2510, that is wifi and 2630 that is wifi and AP direct) printers. The Epson proprietary drivers and also the escpr one don’t let the scanner function works and after some printing works (4-5) the printers get stuck, so they must be restarted after a short time. I’ve tried to manage them also from the CUPS interface.

4. task manager: is it possible to have a more immediate way to see ram and cpu usage? I didn’t find the right setting for sure, but I only see a kind of old-fashion chart and to know the numeric values I have to put the pointer over the graph and wait in order to see the values.

5. Gdebi: which is the corresponding program to this useful program? I mainly like the clear Gdebi check of the dependencies.

That’s all folks! Jokes apart, those are the points that I found in these first days of use.

Thanks in advance for your support!

[Multibrelch]

First of all, many thanks wxl! – Here some comments to my first post.

1. With respect to pcmanfm-qt, I filed meanwhile a bug report (see here), which got confirmed. However, it remains unassigned … let’s see. Reason: when executing ‘pcmanfm-qt -w <path_to_image_file>’ the wallpaper of the desktop gets normally updated by the image <path_to_image_file>. However, this is not the case on Lubuntu 20.04,

2. With respect to the menu, I do it manually now, by creating a .desktop file in the directory /home/<user>/.local/share/applications.

3. The compiz problem is not yet solved … hmmm … and I also have no idea so far what to do.

@stilnovo

so I am following to this one.

Oh, yes, okay, thanks.

@stilnovo

I wasn’t able to find the corresponding program to gnome disk utility

It seems so … . Otherwise, there still is GParted (you have to manually install it) and kdepartitionmanager.

@stilnovo

… the ‘f’ keys don’t work for the screen brightness

I have a HP EliteBook 2170p and the fn and brightness keys work.

@stilnovo

… to see ram and cpu usage?

Yes, this always is of importance. This is why I use gkrellm2, which you could try (sudo apt install gkrellm2). It works well, despite this invisible theme.

Cheers all.

[wxl]

These “several question” threads are totally unmanagable. Please, separate into unique threads.

[stilnovo]

@Multibrelch: thank you for your useful reply!

@wxl: I liked a post where to find several subjects in one place, specially for beginners like me… but I understand that it could be unclear.

Ok, I will try to create several posts.

Thanks again.