Tweaking inside a chroot environment

It's me again. I am creating an Ubuntu-based distribution by remastering 14.04's ISO (not with remastersys or any similar tool). I have all of my programs set up, including my default desktop enviroment (xfce4). But now I need to know which files I need to modify to change xfce's appearance from command line, in a chroot environment. I need to:

a) Set a default desktop background image;

b) Change the desktop enviroment/icon theme to Numix;

c) Tweak the window manager (xfwm4) settings.

I already went to the ground up from a command line to a full-blown desktop with the programs I need, but I don't know how to change those settings in the chroot environment. If possible, I would want to edit configuration files so I can put them in /etc/skel. Any help is appreciated.

1 Answer

You can use xfconf-query to edit Appearance settings from command line.

Set Window Manager:

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/theme -s Numix

Set theme:

xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Net/ThemeName -s Numix

Set icon theme:

xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Net/IconThemeName -s Numix

(I believe you need to install the Numix icon theme package in Xubuntu 14.04. It was not listed in mine.)

Set background image:

xfconf-query -c xfce4-desktop -p /backdrop/screen0/monitorHDMI-0/workspace0/last-image -s /path/to/your/image.jpg

In the man page for xfconf-query:

-c, --channel The channel to query/modify
-p, --property The property to query/modify
-s, --set The new value to set for the property

If you remove the -s and everything after it will tell you the current setting for what you are querying.

To make your own particular changes, you can open Settings Editor. Find the left hand menu item that contains the category that you want to change. This is the channel -c. Then for the property -p you can click on the property (for example, theme) to highlight it then click Edit to get the path. Finally type the name for what you want to change it to. It is caps sensitive. If there are two words, you'll want to put quotes around it. If there is an error in the name it goes to default. You'll need to add in the specifics of your display and background image.

The commands above change the following configuration files:

~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xsettings.xml
~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfwm4.xml
~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-desktop.xml

Enjoy! Sounds like a nice project. :)