Settings in LineXinBar: accents, wallpaper, languages, updates
Accent colour
An accent is a whole palette, not one colour. Choosing one changes the light on the chosen row, the glass, the glow — and the wallpaper with them, since its ribbons, veils and sparkles are drawn in the accent.
Nothing is reloaded: everything travels to the new palette together, on every display at once. Try it — this page is drawn from the same twelve palettes, and the one you choose stays with you on every page of this site.
In the shell it is Settings › Appearance › Accent colour, saved as one line you can also edit by hand: accent = "Blue" in ~/.config/lxb/shell.toml.
Theme
What the shell is made of — the drawings never change, only their material. Three rows, each on its own because each is its own expense and its own taste.
- Wallpaper. Default is a band of water, three sheets thick, lit as bodies. Simple is the three fine glass-silk ribbons the shell drew before it, and costs about half as much to draw.
- Icons. Default stands every mark up as a bead of water, shaded out of its own shape. Simple draws the flat shape of it.
- Particles. The glitter the current sheds — it appears in the middle of the ribbon, is pushed out of it and fades the further it goes, the way the PlayStation 3's wave carried it.
The login screen, the start of the session and the sibling applications follow the same choice.
Your own wallpaper
The third answer under Wallpaper is a picture or a film of your own, standing where the shell's scene would be.
It is chosen in the shell's own file browser, which lists only what could stand behind a screen — pictures and films — each showing itself on its row. It is cropped to fill the screen rather than stretched, dimmed behind the guide, and kept by the shell, so moving or deleting the original does not take your wallpaper away.
Language
Ten languages: Deutsch, English (UK), English (US), Español, Français, Polski, Português (Brasil), Русский, हिन्दी and 简体中文.
A choice here is the language of the machine, not a private setting of the shell: the shell changes its words on the spot, on every display, and then makes the system speak the same language — so the applications you open next agree with it. A restart may be needed for everything to follow. The login screen speaks the same ten.
Network and Bluetooth
Join a Wi-Fi network from a list of what is in the air, strongest first, and type its password on the on-screen keyboard.
A wired connection has its own page, with automatic or manual addresses and name servers, and Connection information answers "what is my IP address" without a terminal. The start screen's corner shows the wireless mark while you are connected.
Bluetooth pairs headphones, controllers and keyboards from the same kind of list, asks for a PIN where a device needs one, and remembers whether the radio should be on when the session starts.
Sound
Choose what the whole machine plays through and records from — every application, not just the shell.
Then the shell's own voice: a sound for every move and press, a different voice for the guide so you can hear which screen you are driving, a chime for an announcement, and music on the start screen while nothing is open. This site uses the same sounds and plays the same music — turn either off, or set how loud they are, from its guide.
Power
What a console does when it is put down: a little later the screen dims, then goes dark, and left long enough the machine sleeps.
Pick it up — any key, the mouse, a finger, or a button on a controller — and it is where it was. You choose the four waits, what the power button does, and on a machine that has them, the power mode and battery saver. These belong to the device, not the account, so the login screen follows them too.
Users and storage
Users adds accounts, sets who is an administrator, changes passwords and pictures, and removes an account — with the system asking for a password where it has to.
Storage lists every partition on every drive with how full it is, and lets you choose which ones are mounted whenever the machine starts. System information says what the machine is, in plain words.
Updates
Press Update everything and see a bar. That is the whole of it for most people.
Under each row is what a press would do — 4 updates, Up to date, Could not check — and the panel says how many updates there are and whether a restart may be needed afterwards. Update now is the only question; the system, Flatpaks, firmware and the AUR are brought up to date with one password, with a bar that counts them off and Restart now at the end when one is owed.
The shell and its sibling projects update themselves too, from their own releases on GitHub, where no repository carries them.
Low-end hardware mode
For a handheld or an older machine the shell is too much for. On, the shell draws itself the cheap way, and nothing about how it works changes.
- The wallpaper stands still and is drawn once, instead of for every pixel of every frame.
- The Simple materials and no sparkles, whatever the Theme page says.
- The bar still glides at the display's own refresh while something moves, and drops to ten frames a second while nothing does.
On the machine it was written on, the start screen went from 44 ms of graphics time a second to 2. Nobody has to find the switch on a machine that needs it: it turns itself on where there is no graphics chip, and says so.
Anything you cannot see is not drawn at all, mode or no mode — a covered shell and a covered application both drop to nothing, so a game in front gets the whole GPU.