LXDE Forums

Hi There,

I had the idea to give away a laptop to my sister in law with 3 children, I would like that I can change the application menu for each user..
The youngest should just be able to play, start openoffice and learn not change settings, the mother should be able to install programs etc...
Dos somebody have any thoughts?

Thanks for reading.
Guy Forssman

This can be achieved by utilizing environment variables defined by freedesktop.org menu spec.
However, it's very difficult and I believe that only developers can understand what's that.
Put your own customized lxde-applications.menu in ~/.config/menus/ can do it.
Here is a guide by gnome.
http://library.gnome.org/admin/system-a ... -2.html.en
Enjoy the poor usability of freedesktop.org specs!

Why they always try to make things more and more complicated?

If i was gonna do this I would use the desktop menu's, for instance make sure in Preferences --> Desktop --> General make sure Show menus provided by WM when desktop is clicked is checked.

Then in /home/user/.config/openbox either create your custom menu with xml or use obmenu to create a menu to your liking for each user.

Then in the same dir there is a file called lxde-rc.xml on line 640 you will see a line that looks like this

<file>$HOME/.config/openbox/menu.xml</file>

Edit this where it says menu.xml with whatever you named the menu

Then remove the menu from the panel and make sure everyone knows to Right Click on the desktop to get at their menu. This way you can keep the menus exactly the way you want them and keep little ones from getting at applications you do now want them to.

Now you will have to do this for each user as each user has their own home but once done it will be very easy to go back later and add or remove things from the menu you created.

And do not introduce explicit stuff like terminals.
Why not let them discover the PC and it possibilites. You have a Gnu/Linux on it, so write a simply bash backup for the home directorys and explain it to the mother. The kids can try things at no fear and you must not have fear, because they are just users and cant destroy the system easily.

Hi There,

Thanks for the quick answers....
What I did was the following. I removed all the stuff.desktop files the kids where not supposed to see from /usr/share/Applications and copied that back into the
/home/mother/.local/share/applications
So the Mother see's everything and the children only see education and games.

That simply bash backup for the home directorys would be great , but I have no clue on how to do that, thanks for helping anyway
Kind Regards
Guy Forssman

Forsskieken wrote:Hi There,

Thanks for the quick answers....
What I did was the following. I removed all the stuff.desktop files the kids where not supposed to see from /usr/share/Applications and copied that back into the
/home/mother/.local/share/applications
So the Mother see's everything and the children only see education and games.

That simply bash backup for the home directorys would be great , but I have no clue on how to do that, thanks for helping anyway
Kind Regards
Guy Forssman

Actually, you should add some *.desktop files in your child's $HOME/.local/share/applications.
Those desktop files are apps that you want to disable. Add a line like this in side those desktop files.
Hidden=true
Then you'll not see them in your child's menu.

Unfortunately, the XDG menu system is not very flexible. I think it makes a lot more sense to base the menu hierarchy on a directory/file hierarchy. Everyone knows how to move files around, so there is no need for a special menu-editor utility. Trying to deal with XDG syntax is way too complicated

I would prefer to have the actual menu based on directories and files, and only use the XDG system to populate the menu directory.

However, there are some XDG menu editors that might work with LXDE. Has anyone tried using "Alacarte Menu Editor"?