Perl applets extend a platform-independent desktop panel
Games for Speculators
© cornelius, Fotolia
One panel has a neat collection of applets and another has spectacular looks – but a combination of the two is rare. Now help draws nigh for the desktop: PerlPanel is extensible with do-it-yourself widgets.
Regardless of whether you use Gnome or KDE, every desktop offers panels. They dock at the bottom or top of your screen, giving a home to menus and icons for launching programs, showing active applications in taskbars, or helping you switch between virtual desktops. The aim of the PerlPanel project is to use Perl to provide a platform-independent panel. At the same time, PerlPanel aims to let users add their own applets, simply by hashing up a couple of scripts.
Trial Run
On Ubuntu, you can install PerlPanel and the Perl modules on which it depends by typing sudo apt-get install perlpanel at the command line. To take it for a trial run, type /usr/bin/perlpanel. Figure 1 shows the panel GUI at the bottom of the desktop.
If the space at the bottom of the screen is already occupied by another panel, you can move it to the right or left border, or just ditch it if you feel brave enough to burn some bridges behind you.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Dash to Panel Maintainer Quits
Charles Gagnon has stepped away as maintainer of the popular Dash to Panel Gnome extension.
-
CIQ Releases Security-Hardened Version of Rocky Linux
If you're looking for an enterprise-grade Linux distribution that is hardened for business use, there's a new version of Rocky Linux that's sure to make you and your company happy.
-
Gnome’s Dash to Panel Extension Gets a Massive Update
If you're a fan of the Gnome Dash to Panel extension, you'll be thrilled to hear that a new version has been released with a dock mode.
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.
-
Ubuntu 25.04 Coming Soon
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) has been given an April release date with many notable updates.
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.
-
openSUSE Tumbleweed Ditches AppArmor for SELinux
If you're an openSUSE Tumbleweed user, you can expect a major change to the distribution.
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.