The joy of X - master the Linux GUI

David M Williams
Sunday, 12 October 2008 11:11

Opinion and Analysis

There’s a fun little program called xeyes. From a terminal window launch xeyes & and you’ll see a pair of eyes following the mouse pointer around. It’s not so useful but mildly amusing.

Back in my University days I had a black and white background wallpaper of a tiger. In a moment of reflection on an assignment (ok, I was procrastinating doing work) I sat the xeyes window over its own eyes and suddenly this handsome fierce beast looked positively ridiculous.

Of course, even if I launched xeyes automatically when I logged in, the window still had to be moved into the right position. It would start up somewhere other than where I wanted it.

Fortunately, xeyes takes a parameter which lets you specify its geometry, that is to say its width and height, plus its X and Y position on the screen defined as a distance from the top-left corner. The format is –geometry WIDTHxHEIGHT+XOFFSET+YOFFSET. This command

xeyes -geometry 160x160+800+300 &

launches the program window with a height and width of 160 pixels each, positioned 800 pixels from the left of the screen and 300 pixels from the top of the screen.

You might find it takes some experimentation to work out the height and width and position you like. Or, it would if you did it manually, tweaking those values and re-running the command over and over.

Alternatively, you can launch xeyes then resize and move it so it looks how you like. Start another program called xwininfo. This prompts you to click on a window of interest and it will report to you all sorts of useful information about that window – including its current geometry. So, now you can just use the numbers xwininfo advises.

If you want to make this program always run when you log in the easiest way is to click the System/Preferences/Personal/Sessions menu. You will see the programs which are already starting for you – like the Bluetooth Manager and Network Manager and Update applet and so on. Click Add to add a new startup program. You’ll be asked for a descriptive title as well as the command to use; here is where you specify the command name and any parameters as above.

Now, startup programs is one thing. If you want to adjust the programs listed under the menus and across the toolbar you will need to modify these shortcut items. Fellow iTWire contributor Hamish Taylor explains how to do this.

Let’s conclude with something funky. Here is how to replace the window manager you use with something totally different.

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