Xfce Forum

ampersun

Member

Registered: 2015-05-14

Posts: 3

"search and install software from the whisker menu"

My tip almost replicates the Mint Mate "mintmenu" feature that  permits you  to duplicate the "Search for" and "Install" software using the Whisker Menu instead.

You need to make sure apturl is installed on your system first if you are going to want this to work.

First the steps:

1:) "right-click" the Whisker Menu icon on the panel, "Properties", "Search Actions".

2) "left-click" the "+" (plus sign) on the right of the name/pattern window to add a new option.

3) enter these details in the appropriate fields,

Name: Install Package (or call it whatever you like since name is arbitrary),

Pattern: ! (shebang/exclamation mark... also arbitrary, can be anything you like but should pick some symbol instead of letters),

Command: apturl apt:%s (leave Regular expression box unchecked).

4) now Close

5) Open Whisker menu, in Search field type !supertux (or type whatever program you want to install after the shebang, supertux is a game and you can just cancel when apturl dialog appears and asks if you want to install this item. I only use supertux for demonstration only.)

6) then press "Enter"

"Install additional software?" dialog should appear and allows you to either "Cancel" or "Install".

If the program you are trying to install is already installed you will get a dialog telling you so.

If you misspell you will get the error dialog or "doesn't exist" dialog. Clicking install will install the package using apturl interface just like in Mint Mate Mint menu!

Now if you just want to search for software in a similar fashion, first the steps:

1:) "right-click" the Whisker Menu icon on the panel, "Properties", "Search Actions".

2) "left-click" the "+" (plus sign) on the right of the name/pattern window to add a new option.

3) enter this information in the appropriate fields

Name: Search Package

Pattern: *

Command: xfce4-terminal --execute /bin/bash -c "/usr/bin/aptitude search %s | less"

4) Close

5) open Whisker Menu

6) in search field, type *supertux

A terminal window will open and display the available programs for install according to the name you enter after the "*" symbol in the Whisker search field.

Instead of "xfce4-terminal", enter the name of the terminal program you use but keep the rest the same. The path of the user/bin/aptitude can be the path of the program you use for normal installs (aptitude is what I use, if you want to use that as well you have to install aptitude first. Else use your own program path instead.)

This search and apturl install feature is default in Mint Menu Mint Mate 19.
If you do not have the Search Actions tab then you may have to update to get it?

I am using:

Mint xfce 19 Tara

Whiskermenu-plugin 2.3.1

I hope you find this useful?

Jerry3904

Member

Registered: 2013-11-09

Posts: 863

Re: "search and install software from the whisker menu"

It looks pretty interesting, thanks for posting. I will test it later today on our distro's latest release.

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MX-23 (based on Debian Stable) with our flagship Xfce 4.18.