Ubuntu – How to start dconf and gconf in a non-Gnome environment

dconfgconfgnomeopenboxqt

I am running Openbox without any DE. And I also use some Qt apps such as VLC, Virtualbox and Skype. However, they require some gconf / dconf settings to be set.

For instance to set the correct icon theme:

$ gconftool-2 --set --type string /desktop/gnome/interface/icon_theme Faenza

When running Gnome, these settings are loaded and used by the Qt apps. However, when running native Openbox, these settings are ignored and I presume that this is due to some gconf / dconf services not being loaded when running Openbox without Gnome.

Therefore my question, how can I run gconf / dconf without Gnome to have my Qt apps having access to the relevant gconf / dconf settings?

Best Answer

I am not entirely sure if this is all but I have compared my Gnome environment with Openbox and found the following additional processes to be started by Gnome:

gsettings-data-convert &
/usr/lib/Gconf/gconfd-2 &
/usr/lib/dconf/dconf-service &

In addition it might help to export the following variables:

export DE=gnome
export DESKTOP_SESSION=gnome

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – the relationship between .gconf, .gnome2, .cache, .local, and other dot-file hierarchies in the home directory

.local, .cache, and .config are part of the FreeDesktop Base Directory Specification. They should not actually be hard-coded but instead use the environment variables (i.e. $XDG_DATA_HOME, $XDG_CACHE_HOME, and $XDG_CONFIG_HOME). There are GLib and Python wrappers for the spec that may be helpful as well. Here's an example in Python:

>>> import xdg.BaseDirectory
>>> print xdg.BaseDirectory.xdg_data_home
/home/andrew/.local/share
>>> print xdg.BaseDirectory.xdg_config_home
/home/andrew/.config
>>> print xdg.BaseDirectory.xdg_cache_home
/home/andrew/.cache

.gnome and .gnome2 are indeed deprecated and should not be used. These were used by libgnome's gnome-config module.

.gconf does indeed contain the settings that gconf-editor accesses as xml files. For instance, compare the output of the following commands:

gconftool -a /desktop/gnome/applications/browser

cat ~/.gconf/desktop/gnome/applications/browser/%gconf.xml

Ubuntu – What are the differences between gconf and dconf

gconf typically uses an XML backend, while dconf uses its own binary blob. From that change alone you can draw up some points:

Binary read access is far faster than parsing XML
According to dconf's design section, a Gnome login consists of thousands of read operations and only a few writes. To gconf that's thousands of stats, thousands of reads and thousands of parsings. dconf's binary blob would blitz through those without bogging the system down with umpteen thousand IOPs.
XML is more portable
XML is largely human -readable and -editable.
A file-based system can be separated and portioned without much hassle
Corruption of a monolith binary file could mean the whole thing dies. Single file corruption only hurts that segment in gconf.

A lot of the arguments are those levelled for and against the Windows registry.

As I understand it, the interface onto this settings back-end would be the same as gconf: through GSettings. This would allow distributions and users to chose one and switch out if they needed to.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – the relationship between .gconf, .gnome2, .cache, .local, and other dot-file hierarchies in the home directory

Ubuntu – What are the differences between gconf and dconf

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