Help! What have I done?

I was playing around with some of the tips to make the most of the screen `real estate`, but what I've done is to make the `task bar` (or whatever it's called in Linux) go away. You know - the bit at the bottom of the screen with the click, network icon, volume etc.

What i'd played with was the compwiz thing, and the panels. I kept getting these little windows with sort of stars inside (someone else posted a similar problem with a screen shot but I can't find it now) which was panel related. I reduced the number of panels to 1 - not that I really know what a panel is - but there's still 1 window, which I've managed to move to the bottom of the screen, but it's blank. If I want to get rid of that last one I have to go to remove the panel and it warns it'll quit the program. The old task bar, with the little arrow on the bottom left which you could toggle, is no more.

The other thing I've played with is the option to make the title bars go away, so you just use the task bar at the bottom, but I've got the title bars back now.

Any help for this would be appreciated!


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20 mins later:

I found this:

xfce4-panel -a

Which seems to help!

 

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Ok, so it's sort of back to normal, but there are still some things which aren't right. If there's anyone still reading this, perhaps you can help a new Linux user out.

1) that xfce4-panel -a lets me drag icons to the taskbar (at least, that's what it's called in windows). Is it called a Panel in (this flavour of) Linux? If I move the panel to the top of the screen, I get a 3 and a half empty panels underneath the one that I'm using (ie the 30 pixel high one I just moved from the bottom of the screen). Well, usually it's 3 and a half panels high - sometimes it's just one big panel of the same size. Moving it to the left or right of the screen results in normal behaviour. Why can't I have it at the top? Is this panel buggered in some way, in which case how do I just reset it to the default behaviour.

2) I have title bars back at the top of my windows but now if i type compiz-manager (which i understand I have to type to make changes to some of the effects in compiz ) it makes the title bars go away and although I've spent some time looking I can't find an answer to this. Is there a hidden `hide title bar` check box I'm failing to locate?


Cheers.

 

compiz-manager launches compiz, so running it a second time is probably what's confusing things if it's already running. Use compizconfig to make changes to the effects used within compiz. If you have right-click enabled for fedora menus, then Settings --> CompizConfig Settings Manager is the same thing.

You can try running Emerald Theme Manager and that will certainly give you a titlebar on your windows in compiz.

Cheers.

 

BTW, installing Fusion-icon from pirut makes dealing with using compiz much easier. Places an icon in your panel that you can then use to control compiz.

Cheers.

 

I'm using right click/settings to get to the manager, but I read somewhere that you still have to type something on a console to make the changes take effect. I'm not home now, so I can't check what I type, but if it's not `compiz-manager' then it's something similar.

I looked at the Emerald thing but I don't know what it does. I'll check it out, and i'll check out `Fusion-icon from pirut`, whatever that is, too.

Cheers.

 

Hmm. I boot up, and there's no wobbly windows, but I have title bars. I right-click/settings/compizconfig settings manager, and I can see a bunch of options. I can see that wobbly windows is ticked. To make sure, I untick and tick it, then click close. No change whatsoever - it's completely ignored me. I don't know what/where 'compizconfig' is, but if it's the same as clicking 'CompizConfig Settings Manager' then it'll be no good.

But if I `run program` from the right click menu, and type 'compiz-manager' I get a bunch of writing about checking for Xgl, texture_from_pixmap, etc, ending in `starting emerald` and something about region blur being disabled. Still no wobbly windows, but my title bars have gone.

I reboot and things are restored (which raises the question of how do I not lose my changes, should I manage to successfully configure my windows etc).

I've started playing with emerald. There are a lot of preset themes. I've picked one, and tried to apply i but I can't. There's no `apply` button, which without wishing to appear overly sarcastic would seem to be the obvious thing to add to an app which seemingly lets you load and modify a theme. I've tried saving and exporting it, but obviously that doesn't do very much. Googling has people responding that one should type "emerald --replace" but it doesn't work - hardly surprising, as how would it know which theme I've picked? "Then click on a theme" they say. Nothing happens - it's as if I've not typed "emerald --replace" first.

I can't install anything as I'm not online on my Aspire yet. I mean, if I could find and download stuff on my desktop PC then perhaps I could give it a go.