CrunchBang Linux

Thimoteus

New Member

Registered: 2012-09-23

Posts: 2

How to: Pseudo 'show desktop' for embedded terminals

Hey guys,

So I followed this tutorial for an embedded desktop Terminator, but quickly ran into a problem -- the default ToggleShowDesktop also makes the terminal disappear, and I couldn't find an easy way of fixing it.

So then I ran into this on the ArchWiki, but simply substituting in

wmctrl -a <WIN>

in rc.xml didn't work. Whatever window I had open would lose focus, but it would not minimize. So then I tried putting in something like

wmctrl -k on &amp;&amp; wmctrl -a <WIN>

, but that still didn't work for some reason.

SO FINALLY I came upon a solution that works for my purposes. I put the following into an executable bash script in the ~/bin folder:

#!/bin/bash
wmctrl -k on
sleep 0.01
wmctrl -a <WIN>

and then the following into rc.xml:

    <keybind key="W-d">
      <action name="Execute"> <!-- ToggleShowDesktop -->
        <command>
          /home/username/bin/show_desktop
        </command>
      </action>
    </keybind>

and this seems to work. Of course, the drawback is it's a one-way show desktop, so if you need a toggle then this won't work for you.