I'm looking for a way to programmatically manipulate a windows program running on Linux under Wine.
Is there something similar on Linux to the Windows SetWindowForeground win32 command?
A function that sets a window by name to the foreground, that will work with a Windows program running under Wine on Linux?
Doe's wine use X11? If so I may be able to utilize this answer, will experiment and circle back
In Linux application windows (including your wine apps window) are managed by your desktop environment's Window Manager (WM). The Window Manager controls how windows are placed and the controls which operate on the windows (resizing, minimize, maxize etc).
Unfortunately there is no standardised Window Manager the major desktop environments (GNOME, KDE etc) have developed their own Window Managers and some people run stand alone WMs like IceWM or more exotic tiling WMs etc.
KDE's WM is called KWin, Gnome's is Mutter, Unity uses Compiz (I think - haven't used Ubuntu for a long time).
When the WM is running in an X sesion it probably uses X11 API internally to raise and lower windows.
However most modern WMs will prevent userpace X calls from popping up windows (because of security concerns etc) You will need to use the WM's wrapper functions. I think Wayland (whenever it is finally available) will have a proper secure API so this shouldn't be an issue.
The short answer to your question is any program you write will likely need to be Windows Manager specific and you should consult the documentation for your WM.
Long Answer - there is a freedesktop.org standard called Extended Windows Manager Hints I'm not sure how good conformance to the spec is among differing WMs (major ones like Gnome and kDE should be good). The property you are interested in is Window State (NET_WM_STATE)
See: http://standards.freedesktop.org/wm-spec/wm-spec-1.3.html
I hope that helps - my knowledge of WMs is probably outdated but should steer you in the right direction - I haven't really played around with WMs since GLX first came out and Compositing (wobbly windows and all that jazz) was in vogue.
You can use X11 window manager xdotool or X window manager wmctrl.
Consider the following scenario. A MS windows application titled WordWeb Installer running in wine on Ubuntu on workspace 2. Current workspace : 1. To switch to workspace 2 and focus the wine app execute
wmctrl -R wordweb or
xdotool windowactivate $( xdotool search --name wordweb )
Related
Suppose I am using Kubuntu.
So I have Kwin as Window Manager and
KDE as Desktop Environment.
I use VSCode and other software.
I am switching to other Desktop Environment and Window Manager alongside Kwin and KDE.
Note: This means I will have both KDE and other Desktop Environments installed on my computer and I will switch between these from login screen. [Same for window manager]
Now, If I switch to Cinnamon Desktop Environment or GNOME Desktop Environment or any other Desktop Environment.
or if I switch to i3, bspwm, dwm Tiling Window Manager or Fluxbox, Openbox Stacking/Floating Window Manager.
or switched both Desktop Environment and Window Manager.
Now can I use the same VSCode and other softwares on these different Desktop Environment and Window Manager? or do I need to install same software for each of these Desktop Environments and Window Managers?
All your self installed programs will work fine in whatever environment you choose.
For maximum compatibility, you should still prefer x11 over Wayland as display server - for example screen sharing in ms teams needs x11, last time I checked. This depends on your personal needs.
Although you can always start any program from a terminal, we usually like to have a graphical menu of some kind that lists all available GUI apps. Desktop environments all contain their own menu.
If you go down the window manager route, you are expected to install a launcher yourself (such as dmenu or rofi), and configure keyboard shortcuts to launch each one of your favorite apps.
I recommend watching DistroTube on YouTube for lots of good info about tiling window managers and Linux in general.
How do I enumerate all top level windows on the desktop (and further fetching its titles and other properties) on Ubuntu 17.10 using the new default display server Wayland?
Before we used X11 / XLib to achieve this, but now with Wayland this does not work reliable any more. Some windows, like gedit and LibreOffice do not show up any more in the window list, and other tools like xwininfo also do not work any more with these windows.
Currently we use the following technologies:
Ubuntu 17.04 with X.org as default display server:
X11-XLib / X_QueryTree
Windows:
Win32-API / EnumerateWindows (there also exists Windows Automation API)
macOS:
NSAccessibility / AXUIElementCreateApplication, AXUIElementCopyAttributeValue, kAXChildrenAttribute
Ubuntu 17.10 with Wayland:
???
I have not found any API documentation about Wayland and accessibility or UI automation so far.
Can anybody help? A future-proof solution/technology how to access desktop windows on Linux/Ubuntu would be nice.
Regards.
Actually, I think you don't. Wayland is designed in the way that clients don't know about each other. There may be a special API in that specific Wayland composer you are using - but its not part of the protocol. (E.g. GNOME's composer has a DBus API to capture screens)
I'm using cygwin/X-Sever to ssh into several other machines and then open the same control pannels on each machine. Is it possible to color the Top window bar differently for each one? Either using X11 or windows?
Clientside: Win7 - Cygwin
Serverside: Unix & Linux
If you were using Linux as a client, this could be done clientside using a nice window manager like i3 by just applying a different window decoration style based on namespace.
Now because you're using Windows 7 with cygwin, my best guess is that you're using XWin for Xserver. I am not aware of built-in functionality to XWin that would allow you do to this easily client-side. You said you're opening remote "control panels" on each machine, but not if they are GUI or CLI applications.
For CLI applications, you can set the background and foreground colour on a remote xterm session when connecting with startxwin as the Examples section of the man page shows.
For GUI applications, the simplest solution may be to follow what I described in the first paragraph but server-side. Using ssh this would be easy to script, just set a custom window manager theme on the remote host for the application at runtime. Your remote host window manager's documentation should explain how to configure there.
I've just finished the LFS book and my Linux system is working right now. I want to use OpenGL to display graphics on the screen, while the only installed package right now are those described on http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/chapter03/packages.html.
I don't want to install something like Gnome, KDE or X.org. Instead, I want to use OpenGL directly from my software. Is this possible, and how can I do this? Or is it just as easy (I don't think so :'p) as writing an OpenGL application which runs full screen?
You don't have to install Gnome or KDE. These are used to managed windows, and you can launch graphical applications without having a window manager.
Therefore, you'll have to install a X server. The X server is responsible of drawing things on your screen. Without X server, you can't launch graphical applications.
Once X has been installed, launch it, export your DISPLAY environment variable, and the rest is like writing an OpenGL application which runs full screen :-)
You can use Pygame as well to create custom launch UI. Also try looking at Wayland compositor as it has replaced XServer in verisons like Fedora and Ubuntu.
kmscube DRM example
https://github.com/robclark/kmscube
This is possibly the most popular demo available, it uses OpenGL and EGL.
Unfortunately, the Ubuntu 18.04 package with NVIDIA proprietary drivers it does not work for me after going into Ctrl + Alt + F3:
drmModeGetResources failed: Invalid argument
failed to initialize legacy DRM
bug report: https://github.com/robclark/kmscube/issues/12
But I did get it working on emulator.
It takes over the entire display, and shows a colorful spinning cube.
Enlightenment DR16 is packaged with openSUSE 11.1 but it's a bit painful to use with KDE apps as there's no obvious (on the Enlightenment site, google etc.) way to provide a systray for KDE apps that require one (e.g., ktorrent).
Anyone know of a way around this?
I'm not using e for the eye-candy - I'm running on a 2.6GHz Celeron and KDE (4.1) performance isn't exactly stellar so I'm trying out a few alternatives.
trayer is a standalone system tray. It should work regardless of what environment you're in, including e16.
Use Docker
I don't know if it works with e16 but it works with Openbox which
is a good window manager for low end machines
Have you tried openbox in your "few alternatives"?