Install a HUD like Unity's on any Ubuntu-based distro

As those of you who use Ubuntu with Unity will already know, this distro comes with a very useful tool installed that allows us attempting from installed programs to files on our PC. This tool is known as HUD (Heads Up Display) and makes it much easier for us to search for a file or an application lost by our system.

In this article we want to show you how we can install the Unity HUD in Ubuntu MATE, in Linux Mint, in Xubuntu, and ultimately any Ubuntu based distro. We tell you.

• Doesn't work for Firefox or Thunderbid
• Doesn't work with QT5 apps
• It does not work with LibreOffice.
• To work with Java applications that use the swing library, you will need to install Javatana.

Installing i3-hud-menu

First of all, you need to install a couple of packages, which are basically python3, python-dbus, dmenu, appmenu-qt, unity-gtk-module, and wget. To do this, just run:

sudo apt install python3 python-dbus dmenu appmenu-qt unity-gtk2-module unity-gtk3-module wget

Now we can proceed to download and install the application. For this we execute the following:

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/jamcnaughton/i3-hud-menu/archive/master.tar.gz
tar -xvf master.tar.gz
sudo mkdir -p /opt/i3-hud-menu
sudo cp -r i3-hud-menu-master/* /opt/i3-hud-menu/

Basically, what we do is get the entire source code project from its Github repository, save it in / tmp /, unzip it and create a directory where we will copy the entire project.

Now, we have to open the file ~ /.profiles of our system. How do you see when you start with "." It is a hidden file, so if you are going to open it graphically, in order to view it you will have to press Ctrl + H.

Once the file is open, we add the following source code at the end of it:

export APPMENU_DISPLAY_BOTH=1
if [ -n "$GTK_MODULES" ]
then
GTK_MODULES="$GTK_MODULES:unity-gtk-module"
else
GTK_MODULES="unity-gtk-module"
fi

if [ -z "$UBUNTU_MENUPROXY" ]
then
UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=1
fi

export GTK_MODULES
export UBUNTU_MENUPROXY

If it doesn't work for you, you can try copying this same source code into the file ~ / .bashrc.

Now, and as a last step, we only have to make the application run at the beginning of our session. To do this, we have to make the program that is executed at the beginning is called i3-appmenu-service.py inside the directory ~/ opt / i3-hud-menu /. If you are on Xubuntu, you can go to System settings, then in Session and Startup (or its equivalent in Spanish), then in Application Auto start and finally click Add and then fill in the information as follows:

• En Name we have to put "i3 menu service", or a name that helps us to identify the application.
• En Description we can write a little explanation about what the application does, although this field is not necessary.
• En Command we have to put the program path, which in our case is /opt/i3-hud-menu/i3-appmenu-service.py.

The way to add startup applications depends on the distro we are using, but in general we must always follow the same "path": Configuration -> Startup applications -> Add and finally fill in the fields as we just mentioned.

Now, the interesting thing would be to be able to open this application using a combination of keys, right?

Well, to do so, we just have to go to the system configuration, and click on the tab:

• Keyboard on Xubuntu.
• Keyboard shortcuts in Ubuntu Mate.
• Add custom shortcut on Linux Mint.

Next, we have to choose the combination of keys that we want (in my case (Alt + L), and we will get a window like the following:

In which we will have to write the path of the program to be executed, which in our case is /opt/i3-hud-menu/i3-appmenu-service.py en Command (or its translation in Spanish).

From now on you will have it a little easier when searching for applications on your system. Until next time 😉

Original source: Wepupd