I admin a batch of Ubuntu 14.04 desktop machines in a public library (they are diskless and boot via DRBL). Sometime users (I'm guessing kids) remove icons from the launcher. I want to either prevent that or have a simple means of restoring the launcher's state (eg via an autostart script). How can I do that? I found this (old) thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2023390, but there are no specific details and I can't seem to figure out how to use dconf.
1 Answer
The current configuration of most areas of the desktop can be viewed using Dconf Editor, or using the command line utility gsettings
:
gsettings get com.canonical.Unity.Launcher favorites
Example output:
['application://nautilus.desktop', 'application://firefox.desktop', 'application://libreoffice-writer.desktop', 'application://unity-control-center.desktop', 'unity://running-apps', 'application://gnome-terminal.desktop', 'unity://expo-icon', 'unity://devices']
You can then use to restore it to that state (try removing things from the launcher, you can see any changes), using the set
option (note the quotes "
) with the output from the get
command:
gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Launcher favorites "['application://nautilus.desktop', 'application://firefox.desktop', 'application://libreoffice-writer.desktop', 'application://unity-control-center.desktop', 'unity://running-apps', 'application://gnome-terminal.desktop', 'unity://expo-icon', 'unity://devices']"
So if you get the launcher in the state you want, and use the get
to get it, you can then set it back later with the set
command. You could add this in gnome-session-properties
and then it should set itself on login:
See also: https://askubuntu.com/a/367590/178596