Get Screenlets working with Kubuntu

Right, well, you've managed to get yourself a nice composited environment to play with. One of the coolest features of this is the "widget layer", which basically functions like the Mac OSX Dashboard. Strictly speaking, any program could be a widget, provided you define it as such in the settings. However, only screenlets are designed to be displayed on the widget layer, and I ran into problems when I tried to use superkaramba widgets with it.

Install the Screenlets Engine

So, our first order of business is to install Screenlets. Open up your apt sources list as root:

kdesu kwrite /etc/apt/sources.list

Now add the following to it, save and close the file:

deb http://hendrik.kaju.pri.ee/ubuntu feisty screenlets

Next update your list and install the screenlets:

sudo aptitude update

sudo aptitude install screenlets python-gnome2-desktop

Now, open the compiz settings manager, and select the window rules plugin. Add "class=Screenlet.py" to the widget line. Your screenlets should be working now. Test them out by opening the screenlets manager. Simply select one of the default screenlets to run and click the Launch button to start them. The screenlets can then be seen by pressing F9.

Install individual screenlet widgets

Widgets can be downloaded from here. To install them, simply extract them and add them to the /home/[username]/.screenlets folder (if the folder doesn't exist just create it).

Autostarting Screenlets

In the screenlets manager there's an option for autostarting them, but it doesn't work on KDE without some work. First, make the folder /home/[username]/.config/autostart. Now, in the screenlets manager, select the screenlets you want to load and tick off "automatically start on login" (it's in the bottom left). For each one, a file ending in .desktop will be created in the autostart folder you just made. Move each one to KDE's autostart folder which is /home/[username]/.kde/Autostart.

Create a text file named "screenlets.sh" in KDE's autostart folder. Add the following to the file and then save:

#! /bin/bash
/usr/local/share/screenlets-manager/screenlets-daemon.py

Now right click the file, select properties, then click on the permissions tab. Set the file to executable, and hit ok. Finally, add the line "Type=Application" all the various .desktop files you've transfered over.

That's it! Now your screenlets will load automatically the next time you sign in.