Desktop shell choices & integration on dom0

[David Seaward]

Hi,

Is it possible to change the desktop shell for dom0, for example from
XFCE to GNOME?

Additionally, I'm used to getting some degree of application/shell
integration: notifications, tray icons, widgets (e.g. a controller for
the music app). Do VM apps integrate with the dom0 shell?

Regards,
David

[Reg Tiangha]

If you mean the terminal program, you could probably just install it:

sudo qubes-dom0-update gnome-terminal


As for AppVM notifications, if you're asking if tray icons appear in the
notification bar or if app pop up messages appear, they usually do work.
I don't know about desktop widgets, though; I'm thinking no.

[Reg Tiangha]

Actually, if you're talking about changing the desktop environment (XFCE
to Gnome), then the answer is no. There was talk about porting it to
Gnome when they were thinking of switching from KDE, but I think that's
been put on the back burner now since XFCE works well enough. Although
if someone wanted to jump in and help out with the porting effort as a
developer, I'm sure they'd welcome patches.

[Vít Šesták]

There is official Xfce support, KDE support and (not sure how much official) i3 support. Some time ago, I wanted to add Openbox support, but Kwin is fine (and can be used with Xfce with some effort).

The main task for integrating a new shell is adding support for colored window borders and VM names in titlebar. It is usually achieved by patching the WM itself, but for recent Kwin, it is done rather by adding some Kwin-specific properties to windows and there are AFAIK no or little Kwin patches needed.

For Gnome Shell, you would need to do the same. Alternatively, you can try using Gnome Shell with Kwin or Xfwm if you dare: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=138801 . I haven't tried it and there might be some issues, but it should theoretically work.

Regards,
Vít Šesták 'v6ak'

[David Seaward]

Revisiting this after some time, it seems that GNOME is not yet
available as a desktop shell and is not being worked on right now:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/1806

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-devel/cberCRs_nFE

And it seems that KDE is or was available as an option:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-desktop-linux-kde

From those discussions, it seems that integrating the shell and VM apps
is part of the development process for any given shell.

Regards,
David