I am trying out MATE desktop and really liking it.
I like to use a (GNOME-Do style) keyboard-driven application launcher, and have found Kupfer really good.
Kupfer as packaged for Ubuntu MATE does not support MATE desktop, so the file manager (“Caja”) does not show up by default, along with other things like the preferences dialogs, and there is no support for actions like Log Out or Shut Down.
To get MATE applications to show up in Kupfer, all I had to do was make up a config value that is not presented in the preferences, by editing the config file:
pluma ~/.config/kupfer/kupfer.cfg
I found the line that started “desktop_type = ” and changed it to say:
desktop_type = MATE
Update [Thanks to Kristian Nygaard Jensen and Igor Santos]: if you can’t find that line in the file, add this at the bottom of the file:
[plugin_applications] desktop_type = MATE
To get MATE session commands in Kupfer, I copied the GNOME session management plugin and made a similar one for MATE.
cd /usr/share/kupfer/kupfer/plugin sudo cp session_gnome.py session_mate.py sudo pluma session_mate.py
I just changed the 3 lines after “# sequences of argument lists”, and made them look like this:
LOGOUT_CMD = (["mate-session-save", "--logout-dialog"],) SHUTDOWN_CMD = (["mate-session-save", "--shutdown-dialog"],) LOCKSCREEN_CMD = (["mate-screensaver-command", "--lock"],)
When I restarted Kupfer I was able to open MATE applications and control the MATE session using Kupfer.
There is an open pull request from 2013 for Kupfer to add MATE session management: github.com/engla/kupfer/pull/15 – thanks to its author labero, since this showed me what I needed to do for that part.
in which section in the config file […] did you find desktop_type.
My kupfer.cfg does not contain desktop_type
Same question here… There’s no
desktop_type
field.In which section was it? I’ve thrown it in some places and it didn’t work out.
I’ve added a bunch of request in the project’s launchpad page asking for the maintainer to take a look at the bugs and PRs. If it’s possible, please, join there as well: https://answers.launchpad.net/kupfer/+question/219854
https://bugs.launchpad.net/kupfer/+bug/1463500
Actually, after some fiddling I found it: if the entry is not in the file, include this section:
[plugin_applications]
desktop_type = MATE
This section can be created by Kupfer preferences if you change your default desktop from GNOME to something else on the
Applications
plugin.Ah, thanks Igor. That explains why it was there for me.
I have updated the post – thank you!