AfterStep on Ubuntu (12.04/12.10/13.04)

Compilation

Prerequisites

Packages required for compilation:

sudo apt-get install gcc autoconf libtool libfreetype6-dev xorg-dev x11-utils

Compilation

The actual compilation step should be quite painless:

cd afterstep-stable
./configure
make
sudo make install

At this point you should have AfterStep installed in /usr/local/bin (binaries) and /usr/local/share/afterstep (data files).

Setup

Really, once you run above installation steps all you have to do is logout, select AfterStep session from the list of available sessions and log back in. AfterStep should just work.

Hints

If you find that services for your favorite desktop environment are not starting automatically - you may need to manually override the desktop name in your profile, like so:

export XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME

(replace GNOME with KDE/Ubuntu/XFCE/etc.)

If you want your GNOME panel back, just go to menu/Desktop/Config Files/Autoexec, add Exec "I" gnome-panel to InitFunction, save and restart session.

If you find that GNOME apps have weird appearance and ignore current theme - you need to add gnome-settings-daemon to your autoexec as well, although it should be started automatically. Same goes for gnome-screensaver. See above.

To get AfterStep as your KDE window manager - add

export KDEWM=afterstep

to your profile.

System Configuration

MS Core Fonts, so that you can use Helvetica, Courier, Times, etc. fonts (Optional):

sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer