borderless transparent terminal (a how-to)



At a recent LUG meeting a member had a gnome desktop with a borderless
terminal console, transparent showing wallpaper through like Eterm's
transparent mode. It is quite cool looking. So I asked him how he does
that and below is his set of instructions for anybody else looking for a
frameless/borderless transparent terminal in linux:

-----------------------------------
First you need to install alltray:
open a terminal window
take root "su"
then type "gedit /etc/apt/sources.list"
this will open the text editor gedit. the file you see is your
repository list at the end of the file add these two lines.

deb http://asher256-repository.tuxfamily.org dapper main dupdate french
deb http://asher256-repository.tuxfamily.org ubuntu main dupdate french

don't worry about the French part it will not change your language
preferences. save the changes to the file. close the editor.

then type "apt-get update"
then type "apt-get install alltray"

Once this finishes you will have alltray installed. you can close the
terminal window now. right click on the desktop and select "Create
Launcher..."

A new dialog box will pop up. you leave the type set to application. the
name will be the text displayed under the icon. the command is going to be
this long string (this is all on one line):

alltray -x -st -g +828+146 "gnome-terminal
--window-with-profile=default --geometry=85x50"

include the quotes. to alter the size of the window adjust the geometry
part of the command. the second number "50" is the height, and first
number "85" is the width...I known that sounds backwards but it's true.
the numbers do not represent pixels either so it will be a trail and
error till you get the window to the size you want. once you got the
size you want use the alt+left mouse click to move the windows to where
you want it. once it's in the area you want it in close it, type exit to
close it. then when you double click on the launcher it should reopen to
the same spot.

now to get rid of the scroll bar and other things in gnome-terminal.
double click on the launcher. right click in the terminal window. select
"edit current profile..."

on the general tab uncheck "show menubar by default in new terminals"

on the Effects tab click the Transparent background radio button. this
is of course if you want the terminal to be transparent.

finally on the scrolling tab, from the drop down menu select the
Disabled option for "Scrollbar is:" even though you won't see the scroll
bar the mouse wheel will still be able to scroll through the terminal
window.

.



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