A taskbar.

After some work, this can be made sensible. I prefer LXPanel or fbpanel.

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2017-07-07 – on Mate 1.8.1 ∞

(I don’t know how to learn mate-panel’s version.)

Layout ∞

To destroy all your hard work and reset it back to default, do:

\mate-panel  --reset

The general instructions are:

Right-click somewhere appropriate to get a menu. Many items will have a small handle to their left. That’s where you would click.
To remove something, you may need to:
- [_] Lock To Panel
Right-click and move to have it sticky to the mouse. Wave the mouse until the object goes somewhere you like, then click. Yes, this is insane.

The sane layout, from left-to-right, is:

Main Menu
Separator
(optional) Application Launcher…
1. Internet > Pale Moon Web Browser
Window List
Notification Area
Separator
Clock
- Customizing the clock properly has to be done in an overcomplex way. See below for instructions.
Log Out…
Shut Down…

My smaller monitor is picked up as the primary/default monitor.

Even when I make my large monitor primary, and reboot, the taskbar remains on the other monitor. The Debian LiveUSB will do this.

Turning the smaller monitor off will move the taskbar to the only remaining window.

# as root
\apt-get  --install dconf-editor

# as your user
\dconf-editor

Within dconf-editor, go to this folder:

org > mate > panel > objects > object_x > prefs

where object_x is a number. It’ll likely be the only one with a prefs under it.

For format, click on its right-side, under value, and type the word custom.

For custom-format, click on its right-side, under value, and type your value. The clock will be immediately changed.

I use:

2017-07-07, Fri - 6:58 pm

%Y-%m-%d, %a - %l:%M %P

NOTE – While you can use %n for a newline, the bar isn’t tall enough to deal with that. I suppose you could change the font/size. See below.

edit /home/user/.gtkrc-2.0.mine

I haven’t played with this much.

Here’s a rough example:

style "clock-applet"
{
  fg[NORMAL] = "#444AA9"
  font_name = "Arial 9"
}
widget "*.clock-applet-button.*" style "clock-applet"

To view it, open a terminal and type:

\mate-panel  --replace &