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henry
Asked: 2013-01-26 02:07:46 +0800 CST

How can I have a dash-like search under Xfce?

  • 772

About 1.5 years ago, I tried out Ubuntu 11.04. I remember the dash being a rather helpful tool and I like the equivalent features on both Windows 7 (via the Start-button) and the Mac OS.

When I press Alt + F2, it opens the app finder but this only gives me a little window that I do not understand how to use. If I type in Terminal or Writer, it shows neither the command terminal or LibreOffice Writer.

How can I get functionality similar to the dash?

An important edit, because 14.04 happened

Synapse still works on 14.04! :) Please go here and upvote this post (click here).

Update 2019-09-13

I strongly suggest to use Albert: https://albertlauncher.github.io :)

xubuntu

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If you don't like the xfce-appfinder, you can replace it with another offering from the application store. synapse is a very capable example. Then assign the Alt+F2-shortcut to it.

    • 16

  2. I guess your best bet is to use any of the following two recentish plug-ins:

    • xfce4-whiskermenu: "Whisker Menu is an alternate application launcher for Xfce. [..] You can browse through all of your installed applications by clicking on the category buttons on the side. [..] Additionally, Whisker Menu keeps a list of the last ten applications that you’ve launched from it. [..] If you’re not sure exactly where a program is listed, instead of browsing through each category you can simply enter a search term. The search field is focused when opening the menu, so you can just start typing."

      To me this plug-in recalls the Windows 7-style Start button. There are several PPAs (including this PPA) that provide it for easy installation.

      Whisker Menu

    • xfdashboard: "Maybe a Gnome shell like dashboard for Xfce"

      It comes with extensive documentation and screenshots.

      xfdashboard

    • 7

  3. To access the Xfce4 Terminal from the Alt+F2 screen, one has to type

    xfce-terminal

    and then click the Execute button. See how over here: http://docs.xfce.org/apps/terminal/getting-started (but note that typing Xfce Terminal as mentioned in the link may not work whereas xfce-terminal will).

    xfce doc

    To know more about the two modes of the Alt+F2 screen, take a look at http://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-appfinder/usage.

    As far as Writer is concerned, my guess is that you'll have to type 

    libreoffice3.6 --writer

    or 

    libreoffice --writer
    • 3

  4. I had the same question; and the xubuntu devel mailing list recommended to turn to the "kupfer" launcher.

    Synapse is no longer actively maintained; therefore you will not find it in the official repositories any more.

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