Q4OS Forum

bugmenot

Member

Registered: 2021-09-28

Posts: 6

Trinty Win Key and start menu

First I have to thank q4os team for the great work they are doing.
Second, in trinty I want it to open kickoff menu or classic menu when the Win key is pressed and released (like in KDE or Windows), not just on press
So I can use win key +D to show desktop without popup the start menu everytime.

theasmitkid

Member

From: New Delhi

Registered: 2025-01-26

Posts: 66

Re: Trinty Win Key and start menu

Not yet implemented in Trinity, but I have posted a request in https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=5536
There is a program named xcape which might help fix this issue but I haven't tested it personally yet
Install using

sudo apt-get install xcape

Learn more at: https://github.com/alols/xcape

Update: complete solution in next post

Last edited by theasmitkid (Yesterday 15:41)

theasmitkid

Member

From: New Delhi

Registered: 2025-01-26

Posts: 66

Re: Trinty Win Key and start menu

After installing xcape,
Open control panel,
Open "Regional & Accessibility"
Open "Keyboard Shortcuts"
Save the current scheme as "DEFAULT" (for backup purposes)
Search for "Popup Launch Menu"
Below, click on button next to "Custom"
In primary shortcut, click clear button and then enter a new key combination for showing up the menu (it's just in case win key doesn't work so keep it anything, in my case I've kept it as "Win+ctrl+z")
Click apply, then ok

Now open your konsole and type

xcape -e 'Super_L=Control_L|Super_L|Z'

replace "Control_L|Super_L|Z" with the key combination you had set in control panel previously

You have to run this command everytime you boot into q4os to get the start menu to work with win button
To automate it,, the best way is to use trinity's autostart manager
For tutorial, refer to https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=5151

type enter

Now try pressing the win key and releasing it, it should show up the menu

Bug 1: sometimes the menu shows but but kicker in case of autohiding kicker, and moving cursor to kicker may cause the menu to cover kicker

What's next?
You can now bind win+d to perform certain tasks
The best way to do it is to use trinity's input actions, refer to my post here for tutorial https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=5123

bugmenot

Member

Registered: 2021-09-28

Posts: 6

Re: Trinty Win Key and start menu

Thank you , I followed  your way and it working very good,
can you help me to show thumbnail of windows on taskbar whilehopering overthem instead of the text tooltip?

theasmitkid

Member

From: New Delhi

Registered: 2025-01-26

Posts: 66

Re: Trinty Win Key and start menu

Glad it worked out for you~

To show thumbnail,
right click on your panel (kicker)
click "configure panel"
go to the "Taskbar" tab
Go to "Appearance" tab inside "Taskbar" tab
Check "Show thumbnails on hover"

Maximum Dimension can be 500px

bugmenot

Member

Registered: 2021-09-28

Posts: 6

Re: Trinty Win Key and start menu

thank you so much, you helped me, i formely use xfce4 and cinnamon, and i like to add widgets or applets to show network speed  download and upload rate>
in cinnamon i add system monitor, just for network speed which is great
https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/applets/view/88
in xfce4 i add netgraph
https://github.com/dlzr/xfce4-netgraph-plugin
is there something in trinty?
i dont want conky i need some thing in taskbar

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 5,158

Website

Re: Trinty Win Key and start menu

@theasmitkid
Thanks for this tip https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.ph … 055#p31055 , would you please sum it and create as new topic in the "Tips and tutorials" section https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewforum.php?id=7 ?

theasmitkid

Member

From: New Delhi

Registered: 2025-01-26

Posts: 66

Re: Trinty Win Key and start menu

thank you so much, you helped me, i formely use xfce4 and cinnamon, and i like to add widgets or applets to show network speed  download and upload rate>
in cinnamon i add system monitor, just for network speed which is great
https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/applets/view/88
in xfce4 i add netgraph
https://github.com/dlzr/xfce4-netgraph-plugin
is there something in trinty?
i dont want conky i need some thing in taskbar

With as much features are xfce4 and cinnamon? Nope, I wish there were~

There's an inbuilt applet named "System Guard" which somewhat works, to me it was too ugly and lacked feature so i don't use it..
You can try it out by right clicking the panel
Click "Unlock Panel"
Right click on panel
Click Add Applet to Panel
Search for System Guard/Browse through other plugins if you want to
Add

You can also install other applets available in the repo, here are some I can remember

sudo apt install kmoon-trintiy kicker-applets-trinity fifteenapplet-trinity eyesapplet-trinity kweather-trinity

For system monitoring, i currently use a tray item I wrote in gtk/python, but it's quite heavy and I haven't ported it to tkinter/python yet and hence not available publically..

However there are some available solutions, for example xsmon, it doesn't have that much features but do check it out

Also look at
https://github.com/seb3773/qsidebar
https://github.com/seb3773/umbatts
https://github.com/seb3773/diskact

Last edited by theasmitkid (Today 09:30)

bugmenot

Member

Registered: 2021-09-28

Posts: 6

Re: Trinty Win Key and start menu

Thank you for your great help, and thank you for pointing out these infos and utlities.
i think of even using an updated trayicon graph like on for icewm in antix which is great and its tooltip diplays alot of useful info.
i install multiload-ng-indicator
https://github.com/udda/multiload-ng
it worked for once, i installed it from .deb file may be i will compile it from source, or use another panel like tint2,
i think in aloud voice, but ii am sure you will have better ideas

theasmitkid

Member

From: New Delhi

Registered: 2025-01-26

Posts: 66

Re: Trinty Win Key and start menu

multiload-ng-indicator looks great for your use case, but it hasn't been updated in 9 years, so there must be a lot of optimisations made in the libraries used by this app but not been used by it.  It's written in gtk2 and i have a bad history with gtk so i will not be updating it..
There's also TQT which is really interesting and would probably the best for TDE, but i dont really know how to set it up as of now, @seb3773 has made a couple TQT based apps..

I will implement a tkinter based systray resourse monitoring app later and release it, its almost complete except for the trayicon graphs, i will have to look into it as drawing such graphs in tcl/tk every second might cause performance issues..

I would not personally not recommend using another panel application along with kicker as it might not be compatible with TDE and customization might get complex later on..

since multiload-ng-indicator works out for you, you could use it for the time being, compiling from source wouldn't make sense as it hasnt been updated in a long time