I set up what I call a background shell. It's just a transparent borderless terminal that covers most of my desktop background. I've done this with both Eterm and gnome-terminal and I think any term program that supports transparent backgrounds will work. Here's how I set my "background" shell up: First you can not use Metacity as your WM b/c it does not support borderless windows (I find Metaciy VERY lacking). I use sawfish as my WM. I currently use gnome-terminal b/c it supports UTF-8 better that Eterm so I'll describe that setup. 1) Fire up a gnome-terminal and create a new profile for the transparent background. Edit --> profiles --> new profile. Here's my settings: General: Give the profile a name (I used "bkgrnd") and set the font if you want. I used Courier 10 Pitch. Title and Command: Set the Initial title (I used bkgrnd) and set Dynamically-set Title to Isn't displayed. Colors: Nothing to see here. Move along. Effects: Set transparent background. Shading at 0% Scrolling: No change Compatibility: No Change 2) Save the profile and set "Profile used when launching a new terminal" to Default. Don't use your background profile or you'll have a bunch of transparent borderless terminals running around. 3) Launch a gnome-terminal using the bkgrnd profile and set the size. /usr/bin/gnome-terminal --geometry=128x41+105+0 --hide-menubar \ --window-with-profile="" The geometry setting is Width x Hight x X-offset x Y-offset. This setting works for my resolution and font size. YMMV. Try different settings until you get your window just right. The "window-with-profile="" should be the name of the profile you just created. 4) I set my session to launch the terminal on startup. Gnome Menu --> Preferences --> More Preferences --> Sessions --> Startup Programs tab. Add a startup program and enter your gnome-terminal command. 5) Shut off the borders and other window configuration. Here's some of that advanced window manager functionality that Metacity lacks. Start your Gnome-terminal. Bring up the configuration manager for sawfish: Gnome Menu --> Preferences --> Windows Go to the Matched Windows tab and add a Matcher. Select matcher by Name (in the left drop down) and hit the grab button. Click on your gnome-terminal. You should now have a matcher by Name called ^bkgrnd$ or whatever your window title is. Here's how I configured the "actions" tabs: Placement tab: Depth = -1 This keeps the background shell in the background not allowing it to come forward above other windows. Focus tab: Raise on focus = no, nothing else checked Appearance tab: Frame type = none. This gets rid of the border. State tab: Ignored=yes, Sticky=yes (puts the terminal in all workspaces), Window list skip=yes Other tab: Nothing checked That's it! I set this up back in my RH 7.2 days b/c I thought it looked cool but now I can't live w/o it!
