Linux GUI Tips

Show hidden files in file chooser dialog boxes

By Default, Linux Desktop enviornments such as Gnome, Cinnamon, Xfce do not display hidden files in file chooser dialog boxes. I found it to be really inconvienent.

The fix depends on the GTK version used by the application.

For GTK 3.0

gsettings set org.gtk.Settings.FileChooser show-hidden true

For GTK 2.0, enter the following in ~/.config/gtk-2.0/gtkfilechooser.ini

ShowHidden=true

Setting up default session for User

If the user has multiple DE’s installed such as Gnone, Xfce, Cinnamon etc, the default environment is configured in

/var/lib/AccountsService/users

[com.redhat.AccountsServiceUser.System]
id='centos'
version-id='8'

[org.freedesktop.DisplayManager.AccountsService]
BackgroundFile='/home/madhur/Desktop/1r1kk9qi00961.png'

[User]
Language=en_US.utf8
Session=xfce
XSession=bspwm
Icon=/usr/share/cinnamon/faces/2_10.png
SystemAccount=false

This is atleast the case for Redhat based systems such as Fedora.

If you want the user to get the option to choose the session before logging in, better install the greeter such as lightdm-gtk-greeter for LightDM display manager. There are others available similarly for GDM display manager

There are various suggestions to user ~/.xinitrc . Note that this file is not used in case of interactive graphical login. It is only used when starting from terminal such as startx