Suspending the computer using Kupfer

Andy Balaam from Andy Balaam's Blog

I have recently started using Kupfer again as my application launcher in Ubuntu MATE, and I found it lacked the ability to suspend the computer.

Here is the plugin I wrote to support this.

To install it, quit Kupfer, create a directory in your home dir called .local/share/kupfer/plugins, and create this file suspend.py inside:

__kupfer_name__ = _("Power management")
__kupfer_sources__ = ("PowerManagementItemsSource", )
__description__ = _("Actions to suspend the computer")
__version__ = "2021-05-05"
__author__ = "Andy Balaam "


from kupfer.plugin import session_support as support


class Suspend (support.CommandLeaf):
    def __init__(self, commands):
        support.CommandLeaf.__init__(self, commands, "Suspend")
    def get_description(self):
        return _("Suspend the computer")
    def get_icon_name(self):
        return "system-suspend"


class PowerManagementItemsSource (support.CommonSource):
	def __init__(self):
		support.CommonSource.__init__(self, _("Power management"))
	def get_items(self):
		return (Suspend((["systemctl", "suspend"],)),)

# Copyright 2021 Andy Balaam, released under the MIT license.

Now restart Kupfer, go to Preferences, Plugins, and tick “Power management”.

You should now see a “Suspend” item if you search for it in the Kupfer interface.

Inspired by: Mate Session Management – Kupfer Plugin.

Reference docs: Kupfer Plugin API

Allow drag-to-side, but not drag-to-top in Ubuntu MATE (Marco)

Andy Balaam from Andy Balaam's Blog

I love the “tiling” feature in many window managers including Marco that means I can drag windows to the side of the screen and get them covering one half.

However, I never use the similar feature that allows dragging a window to the top, and it often triggers when I just want to move a window upwards.

Today I discovered that Marco (the non-fancy window manager in Ubuntu MATE and probably other places) does allow me to have one without the other, even though the UI configuration tools don’t expose the option.

Here’s what I did:

gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general allow-top-tiling false

Now my windows can be dragged to the side for half-screen maximisation, but not to the top for full-screen!