Category:

Desktop Managers

GNOME, KDE, LXDE, XFCE, MATE, Cinnamon and any other Linux Desktop Managers are listed in this category.

Enable full gnome instead of gnome-fallback in Kali Linux

by blackMORE January 8, 2014

written by blackMORE

Kali Linux runs gnome-fallback by default for most installation. The reason being, Kali is a pentest distro and not a fancy Desktop distribution that includes all drivers for most graphics card. You can install graphics drivers for your card but Kali won’t enable full gnome. It will keep running in gnome-fallback mode. So instead of the “pretty” gnome-shell and mutter you get the old metacity and gnome-panel. Gnome got it’s perks, it’s fancy and it’s shiny. You might be interested to Enable full gnome instead of gnome-fallback in Kali Linux. This guide shows you how to do that and if you don’t like it, roll back those changes.

Determine current gsettings value

To get your current value,open a terminal and run:

gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.session session-name

Enable full gnome instead of gnome-fallback

To enable full gnome instead of gnome-fallback in Kali linux copy paste the following command.

dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session session-name 'gnome'

As you can see from the following screenshot, I’ve switch to full gnome and verified it using previous command mentioned in this guide.

Finally you need to reboot and login again to verify if you managed to enable full gnome instead of gnome-fallback in Kali Linux.

reboot

Full GNOME

Once restarted this is what your gnome Desktop look like.. pretty cool for a pentest distro.My screen looks like this:

I immediately hated it as it broke Kali Menu, so now I want to revert back my changes. (that’s 5 mins of my time wasted).

There’s no solution for for Full gnome breaking Kali Menu as full gnome behaves pretty much similar to Windows 8 menu or touchscreen friendly more like!

Rollback changes

To revert back to the default gnome-fallback just run

dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session session-name 'gnome-fallback'

As you can see, I’ve used all 4 commands in here, first to show which session I’m running (which is ‘gnome’), next change session to ‘gnome-fallback’ and then again verified that if the changes took place (output shows ‘gnome-fallback’ instead of ‘gnome’ again). Finally reboot.

Once reboot is done, I get my same old Desktop and Kali Menu back.

Conclusion

In case your Kali Menu is broken (i.e. you deleted menu items and managed to scramble them somehow), following guide will help you to fix it: How to fix broken Menu in Kali Linux

In case you’re trying out MATE Desktop in Kali Linux, here’s the guide to fix MATE Menu MATE Desktop Environment in Kali Linux

Thanks for reading. Please share.

January 8, 2014 19 comments

Desktop Managers

Auto login root user at system start in Kali Linux – GNOME and KDE

by blackMORE December 19, 2013

written by blackMORE

Kali Linux is a Debian-derived Linux distribution designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. It is maintained and funded by Offensive Security Ltd. Mati Aharoni and Devon Kearns of Offensive Security developed it by rewriting BackTrack, their previous forensics Linux distribution.

By default root is the only user account in Kali Linux. It doesn’t present any option to create another user during installation. It however presents an option to set root password during installation. You need root privileges to run pretty much everything in Kali Linux. You can create another non root standard user (See previous post: Add remove user (standard user/non-root) in Kali Linux) for day to day use given that Kali is your Primary Linux distribution but it might get tedious to type in the root password every time you login. This guide will show you how to make a simple few line changes to allow your auto login root user at system start or boot time in both KDE and GNOME Desktop.

Auto login root user at system start in Kali Linux

By default Kali uses gmd3 (GNOME Display Manager). However, you can install KDE and use kdm in Kali Linux. I’ll show both auto login here.

Auto login – GNOME gmd3

Like I said it’s a simple change. Just open and edit the file called /etc/gdm3/daemon.conf, assuming you’re using GNOME Display Manager(gmd3) a your main Display Manager. You might want to try out other desktops as well. Here’s a link to Add/Remove different desktop Managers in Kali Linux.

root@kali:~# leafpad /etc/gdm3/daemon.conf

In the daemon section un-comment the 2 lines for automatic login. It should finally look like this

[daemon]
# Enabling automatic login
  AutomaticLoginEnable = true
  AutomaticLogin = root

That’s it. Too easy. In case you’re wondering how to use a different user than root, here’s how

[daemon]
# Enabling automatic login
  AutomaticLoginEnable = true
  AutomaticLogin = myanotheruser

Reboot

Last but not the least, reboot to check if it worked. (which it will, cause it’s Linux and Kali is awesome)

reboot

Enjoy your auto autologin to Kali Linux GNOME gdm3.

Auto login – KDE kdm4

If you managed to install KDE and using KDM instead of GMD, the above process won’t work for you. So we need different instructions to auto login root user in Kali Linux KDE environment. In case you’re wondering how to install KDE, there’s a nice guide on How to Install KDE in Kali Linux.

Again this is a simple process. Edit the file called /etc/kde4/kdm/kdmrc, assuming you’re using KDE Display Manager(kdm4) a your main Display Manager.

root@kali:~# leafpad /etc/kde4/kdm/kdmrc

Add the following lines to the end of this file:

[X-:0-Core]
AllowRootLogin=true
AutoLoginAgain=true
AutoLoginDelay=0
AutoLoginEnable=true
AutoLoginLocked=false
AutoLoginUser=root
ClientLogFile=.xsession-errors

In this example AutoLoginUser specifies which user will auto login into KDE using kdm4. You can change it from root to myanotheruser.

Here’s the catch, you can’t autologin as root in KDE unless you specify AllowRootLogin=true. There’s multiple forums that talks about this, I have yet to find any other solution than outlined here. However, depending on how you’ve setup your KDE, you might already have some of stuffs in the section mentioned above. Just change values to match the code above and you’re all set.

Don’t forget to share with KDE buddies about this.

Reboot

As always reboot to confirm if auto login root user is working or not.

reboot

That’s it for Kali Linux KDE kdm4 auto login .

Conclusion

I can’t say if it’s a good idea to autologin to ANY linux system as root, (or to enable it to start with), but I am hoping you will not do this and leave your system unlocked in open area. I mean how hard it is for someone to come and erase your whole disk and you know what… Too easy. Some might argue to put a different username and then sudo into root account, but then again, it’s really upto the user on what they want to do.

I do this in my VirtualBox, so I can go away for a cup or coffee (cause coffee is absolutely utterly important to run Linux or Kali in general) and when I come back my Vbox is ready and all logged in.

Finally I would like to finish it up with a nice quote from Linus Torvalds
I started Linux as a desktop operating system. And it’s the only area where Linux hasn’t completely taken over. That just annoys the hell out of me.

This is so true about Kali..

December 19, 2013 22 comments

Desktop Managers

How to install/remove MATE Desktop Environment in Kali Linux

by blackMORE October 29, 2013

written by blackMORE

MATE is a fork of GNOME 2. It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop environment using traditional metaphors for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.

MATE is under active development to add support for new technologies while preserving a traditional desktop experience. See the Roadmap or Stefano’s presentation at the OpenSUSE conference to find out more about how MATE has evolved and what is planned for the future. The MATE Manifesto outlines some of the principles that guide the project.

GNOME 3 replaced the classic desktop metaphor; this concept design is realized through its native user interface: GNOME Shell. It led to some criticism from the Linux community. Many users refused to accept the new interface design of GNOME and called for someone to continue development of GNOME 2. The MATE project was started by an Arch Linux user in order to fulfill this task.

How to install MATE Desktop Environment in Kali Linux

At first we add the correct Debian repo and install the Keyrings.

echo "deb http://repo.mate-desktop.org/debian wheezy main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list && apt-get update
apt-get --yes --quiet --allow-unauthenticated install mate-archive-keyring

The above two commands used to do the trick, but as Debian removed Wheezy support, the above command didn’t work any more. Use the following solution provided by Simon (thanks Simon).

Simon P. provided the fix below. Snipped IP/email details for obvious reasons. Simon’s G+ profile is linked.

Author : Simon Parsons

Fantastic guide! I’ve been using this as an install reference since it was published with perfect results. Just one thing with regard to the MATE Desktop install; the mentioned repo: “deb http://repo.mate-desktop.org/debian wheezy main” has recently stopped working. Is it (& “deb http://packages.mate-desktop.org/repo/debian wheezy main” no longer supported due to the upcoming Debian support in Wheezy?). The repo: “deb http://http.debian.net/debian wheezy-backports main” seems to do the trick now & offered many new updates & features for my Kali installation… Thanks for the brilliant Kali page; really appreciate the work & time you’ve put into it :) SP

So, you need to just use his new repo and everything else is exactly same as before .

echo "deb http://http.debian.net/debian wheezy-backports main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list && apt-get update
apt-get --yes --quiet --allow-unauthenticated install mate-archive-keyring

Install base MATE Desktop Packages

Following command installs the base packages

apt-get install kali-defaults kali-root-login desktop-base mate-core

(or) Install MATE Desktop Packages with extras

Following command installs mate-core and more extras

apt-get install kali-defaults kali-root-login desktop-base mate-desktop-environment

(or) Install MATE Desktop Packages with even more extras

Following command installs mate-core + mate-desktop-environment and even more extras.

apt-get install kali-defaults kali-root-login desktop-base mate-desktop-environment-extra

How to remove MATE Desktop Environment in Kali Linux

In case you want to remove MATE Desktop, use the following command:

apt-get remove mate-core

Now the only problem is MATE doesn’t show the nice Kali Linux Menu.

How to Fix Kali Linux Menu in MATE Desktop

To fix Kali Linux Menu in MATE Desktop, edit the following file.

leafpad /etc/xdg/menus/mate-applications.menu

In the file go down to the section named Internet and add the following line:

<!-- Kali Linux Menu -->
<MergeFile type="path">applications-merged/kali-applications.menu</MergeFile>

So it should look something like this

.....
 <!-- Internet -->
 <Menu>
 <Name>Internet</Name>
 <Directory>mate-network.directory</Directory>
 <Include>
 <And>
 <Category>Network</Category>
 </And>
 </Include>
 </Menu>  <!-- End Internet -->
 <!-- Kali Linux  -->
 <MergeFile type="path">applications-merged/kali-applications.menu</MergeFile>
 .....

Now save the file, Logout and Login back. The “Kali Linux” menu should display fine in Mate desktop’s application menu.

Back to main article: How to install/remove different Desktop Environment or Window Manager in Kali Linux 1.x

Thanks for reading.

October 29, 2013 4 comments

Desktop Managers

How to install/remove GNOME Desktop Environment on Kali Linux

by blackMORE October 29, 2013

written by blackMORE

How to install/remove GNOME Desktop Environment on Kali Linux

GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software and is developed by both volunteers and paid contributors, the largest corporate contributor being Red Hat. It is an international project that includes creating software development frameworks, selecting application software for the desktop, and working on the programs that manage application launching, file handling, and window and task management.

Initially, “GNOME” was an acronym of GNU Network Object Model Environment, referring to the original intention of creating a distributed object framework similar to Microsoft’s OLE; it was dropped, because this no longer reflects the core vision of the GNOME project.

The GNOME project provides two things: The GNOME desktop environment, a graphical user interface and core applications like Web, a simple web browser; and the GNOME development platform, an extensive framework for building applications that integrate into the rest of the desktop and mobile user interface.

How to install GNOME Desktop Environment on Kali Linux

apt-get install gnome-core kali-defaults kali-root-login desktop-base

How to remove GNOME Desktop Environment on Kali Linux

apt-get remove gnome-core

Back to main article: How to install/remove different Desktop Environment or Window Manager in Kali Linux 1.x

October 29, 2013 3 comments

Desktop Managers

How to install/remove LXDE Desktop Environment in Kali Linux

by blackMORE October 29, 2013

written by blackMORE

How to install/remove LXDE Desktop Environment in Kali Linux

LXDE is a free and open source desktop environment for Unix and other POSIX compliant platforms, such as Linux or BSD. The goal of the project is to provide a desktop environment that is fast and energy efficient. The name LXDE stands for “Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment”.
LXDE is designed to work well with computers on the low end of the performance spectrum such as older resource-constrained machines, especially those with low amounts of RAM. In 2010, tests suggested that LXDE 0.5 had the lowest memory usage of the 4 most popular desktop environments of the time (GNOME 2.29, KDE Plasma Desktop 4.4, and Xfce 4.6), and that it consumed less energy, which suggests mobile computers with LXDE 0.5 drained their battery at a slower pace than those with other desktop environments.
LXDE is the default desktop environment of Knoppix, Lubuntu and Raspbian, among others.

LXDE is written in the C programming language, using the GTK+ toolkit, and runs on Unix and other POSIX compliant platforms, such as Linux and BSD. GTK+ is commonly used in many Linux distributions and allows applications to run on different platforms. LXDE uses rolling releases for the individual components (or group of components with coupled dependencies). Its window manager is Openbox. LXDE includes GPL licensed code as well as LGPL licensed code.

## LXDE Desktop ##

How to install LXDE Desktop Environment in Kali Linux:

apt-get install lxde-core lxde kali-defaults kali-root-login desktop-base

How to remove LXDE on Kali Linux:

apt-get remove lxde-core lxde

Back to main article: How to install/remove different Desktop Environment or Window Manager in Kali Linux 1.x

Thanks for reading.

October 29, 2013 6 comments

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