Recently, I showed the new global menu bar in action on Maverick’s Kubuntu Netbook. That post only covered getting the menubar widget to work with Qt/KDE applications. I’ve now got it working for Gtk apps too.
This is a screenshot of me editing the last post’s screenshot with The Gimp on Kubuntu Netbook.
To get Gtk applications working with plasma-widget-menubar, you need to install appmenu-gtk using your favorite package management system. Currently there is one special trick needed in addition. You need to edit /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80appmenu and remove “export APPMENU_DISPLAY_BOTH=1”. After you’ve installed the package and edited the file, you’ll need to restart your session.
ScottK might have something to say ... 
I assume that this is (or will be) cross-compatible with the corresponding effort on the Ubuntu/GNOME side?
Yes. That’s the intent. Jono blogged the other day showing k3b menus using the Gtk implementation.
I assume the icons are temporary and will eventually use the actual ones?
It’s a cross desktop environment bug I think. Ubuntu doesn’t use icons in menus anymore, but Kubuntu still does. I filed Bug 603734 about it.
If the export line doesn’t appear in 80appmenu, will global menu (on kubuntu) still work with gtk apps?
I think it does, but I didn’t check recently.
The above export line doesn’t appear in my 80appmenu but still the global menu does not work for me with gtk apps. Is there anyway to work around this problem?
hrm.. this didn’t work for me. Like djolk, I don’t have that line in my /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80appmenu, I just have
export UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=”libappmenu.so”
After installing appmenu-gtk, I retarted kde, and it didn’t change anything. Any other ideas?
Is it just me or does the menubar jump when changing applications? The only way to prevent it from doing this is to shrink the height of the panel to some extremely low size, maybe 22px but I can’t tell since KDE removed the exact height numbers when height resizing.
And like the others, I didn’t have the relevant line in my 80appmenu and the menubar doesn’t work with GTK apps.