HELP: MX Tweak

MX Tweak brings together a number of small but often used customizations. Related settings applications native to Xfce are presented below for the user’s convenience.

Xfce Panel

Allows the user to make quick user interface changes to system defaults.

The user may select to display the default panel horizontally (top or bottom) or vertically (left–default–or right). Customizations, including panel plugins,will be preserved, although plugin location might be altered.

A backup of the current panel is stored in ~/.restore/. A backup is created on first launch of the app, and a new backup may be made at anytime. Multiple backups are supported.

The user may use the “Restore default panel” to get back to the original, as-shipped panel.

Tips and Tricks

• If you want to export a panel configuration from one computer to another, with both running MX-21 or later, copy the tar.xz file that you want from “~./restore/” folder from the original computer and paste it in “~/.restore/” of the second computer, and use the “Restore backup panel configuration” option to “import” the migrated panel.

Theme

The theme tab offers a quick way to set various theming choices. The options presented depend on desktop in use, but they should be relatively self-explanatory.

Xfce & Fluxbox users user may select Gtk theme, window manager theme, icon theme and cursor theme on this tab. Xfce users can also use pre-configured theme sets from the drop down combo box.

Xfce users can also save their current gtk, window manager, and icon theme settings to a new theme set. The theme-set will be saved in ~/.local/share/mx-tweak-data.

Fluxbox users get a link to the provided mxfb-look tool that can store theme combination sets.

KDE/plasma users can set global theme, plasma widget theme, and color scheme.

All supported MX desktops can select icon themes and mouse cursor themes.

Compositor

Here the user may select whether to use a compositing window manager, and which compositor to use.

Xfwm (Xfce) compositor

Xfwm is the default window manager for Xfce, and it includes its own compositor. That compositor is turned off by default in MX Linux because it can cause various problems on older machines. When you turn on its compositor by selecting it from the pull-down menu, the button “Xfwm Settings” becomes active and, when clicked, provides access to some basic settings. For details, consult the Xfce Wiki.

Under Xfce 4.14 and up, the user can set the “Vblank” mode to auto, glx, xpresent, or off.

glx - Anecdotally, this seems to work well with intel cards and some nvidia/ati cards

xpresent - uses the xpresent libraries. Anecdotally, this seems to work well with newer ati/amd cards.

off - this disables the vblank code. Anecdotally, this seems to work well with nvidia cards.

Compton compositor

Compton is often used instead of Xfwm to reduce the kind of screen tearing that sometimes troubles lightweight compositors such as Xfwm. MX Tweak gives you an easy way to start, stop, and configure the Compton compositor.

At launch, a compton.conf configuration file will be created for you in ~/.config if one doesn’t already exist.

The “Stop Compton” button will change to “Launch Compton” if its not running.

The “Configure Compton” button will launch compton-conf, an LXqt project configuraiton tool for compton. The compton-conf configuration tool works best with the compton.conf file included with the package. Changes made by compton-conf will take affect at the “apply” button.

If you have an existing compton.conf file, or want to change settings not available in the gui, the “Edit compton.conf” button will open ~/.compton.conf in a text editor for you to edit directly. Use the Start-Stop button to cycle compton for manual changes to take affect.

The “launch at login” checkmark will enable autostart of compton. this works if the compton file is the in the default location of ~/.config/compton.conf.

Tips and Tricks

• The xfce compositor will be disabled when compton is launched with the mx compton manager.
• If you have an existing compton.conf file, it may not work with the gui compton-conf tool.
• Some users have found that screen tearing can be reduced by setting Compton to autostart with the command:
  • compton –backend glx –paint-on-overlay –vsync opengl-swc

Xfce

Xfce options contains a few special items pertaining to the Xfce system configuration. Most items are self-explanatory.

Occasionally the thunar custom right-click actions maybe be updated. While these updated configurations will be present on the system, they will not go into effect automatically for upgraders. The “Reset” actions will change any thunar custom actions to the latest MX defaults.

Fluxbox

This tab is only visible when the user is running MX-Fluxbox.

• Reset defaults. Checking any of these items will replace the existing file(s) with the original released version. This includes the dock script, the root menu shown with a right click on the desktop) or the config files (init, startup, keys, etc.).
• Desktop Icons. These items are elements of iDesk (the program that draws icons on the mx-fluxbox desktop) that are otherwise not easily accessible. For more options, use mx-idesktool.
• Toolbar settings. Common settings for the Fluxbox Toolbar which are not easily found by new users. This is not the tint2 panel, which is controlled by the tint2-manager settings tool.
• Dock (slit) settings. The docks are created by scripts that join launchers together and locate them at one of the desktop locations called slits. Here the user can easily change dock location or visibility. For more options, use mx-dockmaker or consult in a terminal the detailed man file to see the many possibilities available for wmalauncher, the program that powers the docks.
• A link is provided to launch the tint2-manager panel settings app.

A more detailed description of these and other Fluxbox settings is provided by the FAQ document (F1 or Menu > Help).

Plasma

This tab is only visible when the user is running KDE/Plasma.

Most items are self-explanatory. Due to plasma's complexity, users are encouraged to use the KDE plasma System Settings tools to do plasma configuration.

Display

On MX19 and later, a Display tab is available for Xfce users. Here you can control the backlight, xrandr brightness, resolution, gtk scaling and the hidden xrandr scaling available under Xfce

• GTK scaling accepts only whole number scaling. This is the same as the scaling available under the Xfce Appearance application
• Xrandr scaling accepts fractional scales. These values will be saved in the standard xfconf system, so Xfce will automatically apply them on restart of Xfce
• The backlight control will be available on systems with an exposed backlight interface under /sys/class/brightness. This is mostly laptops and all-in-one devices.
• The Software brightness slider controls the brightness through the xrandr interface and should work on external as well as internal monitors. Clicking "Save" will preserve the current setting across reboots
• For convenience, the resolution can also be set here. This controls the same settings as the Xfce Display application
• A system tray application for controlling the brightness is also available. A menu entry is provided, or start MX-Tweak with the --tray switch.
• Left-clicking the system tray icon will give the popup brightness control shown.
• Right-clicking the system tray icon will present an option to open the full MX-Tweak display tab
• In the tray application, clicking the >> button will expose any backlight control available.
• All settings except for backlight and GTK scaling on are a per-user and per-display basis. Select the proper Display from the Dropdown box.

Miscellaneous

Configuration options on this tab require admin privledges before they go into effect. The user will be prompted for the current admin password on apply.

• Occasionally the lightdm configuration maybe be updated. While these updated configurations will be present on the system, they will not go into effect automatically for upgraders. The “Reset” actions will change any lightdm configuration to the latest MX defaults.
• Enable of kernel sandbox is only available on kernels that have a switch for user namespaces built in. Some kernels default to off, some default to on. Enabling this feature is useful for a lot of applications that require sandboxes.
• Allow or disallow auto starting of bluetooth devices when bluetooth managers load. Requiers a reboot to go into effect.
• Show/not show bluetooth battery information. This requires a system restart and may not work with all bluetooth adapters.
• The Apt installs additional "recommends" option will toggle apt and apt-based package managers to install "recommended" packages as if they are hard dependencies. This is the debian default, but MX ships with this option off by default.
• Enable mounting of internal drives by standard users (no admin password required).
• Enable options for liquorix and debian kernel updates will be shown if the metapackages that bring updates are installed. These will allow for easy enabling or disabling of auto updates, utilizing apt-mark hold/unhold operations, without the need to remove the metapackages.
• If a root account is configured, the option to choose what password to use for gui admin prompts will be enabled. Goes into effect immediately.
• Change computer name will change the "hostname" of the pc
• Change Default Init System will show on dual-init systems and allow selection between sysVinit and systemd for the top level grub boot menu entry. The grub boot menu will be updated on installed systems.
• If multiple display managers are installed, a combobox to toggle which will be used will be available.
• Some root actions may require additional authentication confirmation, so the user might get multiple prompts depending on what they choose
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The graphics driver overrides available in previous versions are now deprecated. In particular, Intel graphics users should be using the default modesetting drivers as the older "intel" driver is not supported in then modern MESA graphics stack.

If a override currently exists, the options will be present to allow the user to disable them.

Superkey

Xfce users running the default xfce-superkey utility will be able to customize what their super key does here.

Details

• There is a template file in /usr/share/mx-tweak-data that folks can use to build theme sets. The file should also be copied into ~/.local/share/mx-tweak-data. also, user files stored in ~/.local/share/mx-tweak-data will be picked up by mx-tweak on start of the app.

Development history: Dolphin_Oracle, including a wrapper for Compton-conf (LXqt)

License: here.