I want to disable 'app folders' in the GNOME menu, because I want to have all applications sorted alphabetically. gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.app-folders folder-children []
lets the folders disappear, but after a reboot the app folders were set back to default. How can I make the settings persistent ? What do I have to do ? Or is this just a bug in fedora 24 or in GNOME 3.20 ?
Fedora – How to disable app folders in the GNOME menu permanently
dconffedoragnome3
Related Solutions
According to Ubuntu's Wiki on Environment Variables either in ~/.pam_environment
or in /etc/environment
, depending on what you want it for all users, or just your user.
Session-wide environment variables
Environment variable settings that should affect just a particular user (rather then the system as a whole) should be set into:
~/.pam_environment
- This file is specifically meant for setting a user's environment. It is not a script file, but rather consists of assignment expressions, one per line.Note: Using
.pam_environment
requires a re-login in order to initialize the variables. Restarting just the terminal is not sufficient to be able to use the variables.
And
System-wide environment variables
Environment variable settings that affect the system as a whole (rather then just a particular user) should not be placed in any of the many system-level scripts that get executed when the system or the desktop session are loaded, but into
/etc/environment
- This file is specifically meant for system-wide environment variable settings. It is not a script file, but rather consists of assignment expressions, one per line. Specifically, this file stores the system-wide locale and path settings.
Background Information
I tested the solution on Fedora 21 with GNOME Shell 3.14.4, but I believe it can be applied to other versions as well.
First thing to understand is that GNOME desktop environment overrides the system-wide locale definitions and thus is not affected by /etc/locale.conf
. In addition, there are might be applications that have their own locale configuration and don't use the system or GNOME settings at all. In this guide I will describe a way to customize the locale settings to your needs and GNOME and the system will be consistent from the locale perspective.
Checking Current Locale Status
System-wide Settings
From Fedora 21 System Administrator's Guide:
System-wide locale settings are stored in the
/etc/locale.conf
file, which is read at early boot by the systemd daemon. The locale settings configured in/etc/locale.conf
are inherited by every service or user, unless individual programs or individual users override them.
To see the current locale status we can run:
$ localectl status
System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC=en_US.UTF-8
LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8
LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8
LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8
VC Keymap: us
X11 Layout: us
GNOME Settings
$ gsettings get org.gnome.system.locale region
'en_US.UTF-8'
GNOME has only one setting. By giving a quick look at the source code of gnome-control-center it seems that when the set_localed_locale()
function is called, it sets all the following categories (LC_TIME, LC_NUMERIC, LC_MONETARY, LC_MEASUREMENT, LC_PAPER) to the same one locale defined in org.gnome.system.locale region
.
Mixing different locale settings seems impossible without creating a custom locale, but fortunately it's not a very complex task.
Creating Custom Locale
I think the easiest way to explain is by example. In my specific case I wanted to have a custom locale, primarily based on Hebrew (he_IL) but with LC_NAME, LC_MESSAGES from en_US and LC_TIME (with modified first_weekday
and first_workday
) from en_GB.
Grabbing Locale Definition Files
You should have an idea which locales you want to mix. First we need to locate the related definition files, which can be found in /usr/share/i18n/locales/
.
Back to my example, I needed the following: he_IL, en_US and en_GB. I set up a working folder in my home and copied the required files into it:
$ cd /usr/share/i18n/locales
$ mkdir -v ~/custom-locale ; cp -v he_IL en_US en_GB ~/custom-locale/
Creating a New Definition File
I decided to call my locale hc_IL and took he_IL as a basis. The following lines create a new file hc_IL
with the contents from he_IL
and on the way replace all the occurrences of a string he_IL inside the file with hc_IL.
$ cd ~/custom-locale/
$ sed 's/he_IL/hc_IL/g' he_IL > hc_IL
Modifying the New Definition File
Now we can customize the new locale to our needs. Open the newly created file ~/custom-locale/hc_IL
with your favorite text editor. I use vim (it has proper syntax highlighting for locale definition files):
$ vim ~/custom-locale/hc_IL
For those who haven't chosen their favorite editor yet and vim is not their cup of tea, can use gedit :)
$ gedit ~/custom-locale/hc_IL
The file structure is not very complicated. Essentially, it is constructed from sections. From locale(5) man pages:
The locale definition has one part for each locale category. Each part can be copied from another existing locale or can be defined from scratch. If the category should be copied, the only valid keyword in the definition is copy followed by the name of the locale which should be copied.
The notion of copy is very useful. It saves time and the resulting file is clear and concise. For example, instead of copying entire sections around, you can have:
LC_MESSAGES
copy "en_US"
END LC_MESSAGES
The complete documentation on a locale definition file can be accessed via:
$ man 5 locale
Although, if you just want to create a custom locale, which is a mix of existing ones there's no need to understand every detail.
In my case I modified the following categories and keywords:
LC_IDENTIFICATION
title "Custom Hebrew locale" source "mydomain.ws" address "http:////www.mydomain.ws" contact "" email "admin@mydomain.ws" tel "" fax "" language "Hebrew" territory "Israel" revision "1.0" date "2015-04-21"
Note: All the "category.." lines in the LC_IDENTIFICATION section have been modified during the file creation using
sed
. So we don't need to touch them anymore.LC_TIME
I copied the complete section from en_GB and modified only the lines that indicate the first day of week and the first work day:
first_weekday 1 first_workday 1
The rest of the categories I left as they are or replaced their content with the copy directive as in:
LC_NAME copy "en_US" END LC_NAME
That's it, the definition file is ready. Don't forget to save the file :)
Compile and Copy the New Locale
Compilation of the new locale is done using the following command as root or using sudo. Replace hc_IL
with your locale:
$ sudo localedef -c -v -i hc_IL -f UTF-8 hc_IL.UTF-8
If the compilation is successful the compiled locale data is added to the archive file /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive
.
Copy the new locale definition file to the locale definitions directory. Replace hc_IL
with your locale:
$ sudo cp -v hc_IL /usr/share/i18n/locales/
Activating the New Locale
In this step we want to configure the system and GNOME to use the new locale.
System-wide Settings
Edit the /etc/locale.conf
file as root and set every line that starts with LC_
to your new locale. For example:
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC=hc_IL.utf8
LC_TIME=hc_IL.utf8
LC_MONETARY=hc_IL.utf8
LC_PAPER=hc_IL.utf8
LC_MEASUREMENT=hc_IL.utf8
GNOME Settings
To activate the new locale in GNOME run the following command. Replace hc_IL
with your locale:
$ gsettings set org.gnome.system.locale region "hc_IL.utf8"
Validating the New Settings
The last step is to validate that everything works as expected. To reload all the settings the easiest for me was to reboot.
- Refer to the section "Checking Current Locale Status" to check that the system configuration is correct.
Use GNOME Shell and locale dependent applications (graphical and console) and check that they behave as expected with the new locale. E.g. if you customized LC_TIME you can run the
date
command to validate the date format:$ date +%x 21/04/15
Note: Everything was tested on Fedora 21 with GNOME 3.14. Other Linux distributions may require additional or different steps.
Please comment if you find any issues with the instructions.
Best Answer
It has to be [''] instead of [] - Thanks and reference to the user zdenek from the ask fedora platform who helped me to figure it out and find the solution : How to make app folders settings permanent?
The command is :
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.app-folders folder-children ['']