Partner links

Lancelot Menu Style

Lancelot is one of three menu styles for KDE, the K Desktop Environment. It is similar in some respects to mintMenu of Linux Mint, but with a lot more features and a lot more configurable options. This article is written to showcase all the features of this menu, which is developed and maintained by Ivan Čukić.

The screenshots used in this article were taken from an installation of Pardus 2011.1. (See Pardus 2011.1 review.)

Our first screenshot shows a default view of Lancelot. Aside from the buttons column, there are two main visible columns – the Favorites and Applications Category column. You can make the buttons column narrower by right-clicking on any of the button icons and selecting the only available option.
Lancelot Default Menu

Which gives you this view. Notice that the buttons column is now narrower. You can remove an application from the Favorites column by right-clicking on its name and selecting the only available option.
Lancelot on Pardus 2011

If desktop real estate is really at a premium, you can configure Lancelot to show the buttons inside the applet, that is, right next to the menu icon on the panel. Doing that gives you this view.
Lancelot Menu Style

When you click on an application category, it collapses into the space originally occupied by the Favorites column, revealing the applications under it. To add an application to the Favorites column, right-click on it and choose the only available option.
Lancelot Menu

The next three screenshots show Lancelot’s configuration options, which you can access by right-clicking on the menu’s icon. This screenshot shows that you have a choice of icons and that you may opt to have the menu open simply by mousing over it.
Lancelot Settings

And this one shows the activation options. Categories may be activated on hover or by clicking.

There are several search plugins enabled by default. You can choose to search Wikipedia and other Web-based sources straight from the menu’s search box.

This just shows the menu’s search box in use.
Pardus 2011.1 Dama Dama Desktop

Lancelot can be configured to open categories in a popup menu, and this screenshot shows just how that looks.
Lancelot Menu on Pardus 2011.1 Dama Dama

And here is what happens if you click on a sub-subcategory. This ability to open categories in a popup is an experimental feature, but it seems to work quite well.
Lancelot Menu on Pardus Desktop 2011.1 Dama Dama

Lancelot is not perfect, but it is so much better than the alternatives that you should at least take it for a spin. Let us know what you think.

Share:

Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
LinkedIn

Partner links

Newsletter: Subscribe for updates

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
11 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
analogtek
analogtek
8 years ago

Will Lancelot be ported to KDE/Plasma 5? This is very important to me. I like your manger over the standard plasma manger’s.

علی
12 years ago

how can i install this menu in openSUSE 12.1?

mismo
mismo
12 years ago

Great tip, well written.

Thanks.

darkduck
12 years ago

Video ad in the top-left corner which starts automatically is absolutely disgusting!
It does not relate to the post content though. It is brilliant. But I won’t share this site because I don’t want my followers to listen to annoying video ad.

stesha
stesha
12 years ago

… definitely the best menu for KDE… hat’s off to developer!!! 🙂

skin27
skin27
12 years ago

Lancelot should be made default in KDE so that easily can switch between Lancelot and the KDE Classic Menu and Kickoff.

neeraj
neeraj
12 years ago

Definitely Lancelot-menu is one of the best one in its class.. its so useful and stylish.

Abe
Abe
12 years ago

“And here is what happens if you click on a sub-subcategory. This ability to open categories in a popup is an experimental feature, but it seems to work quite well.”

This is the ultimate that I have been waiting for and should have been one of the first feature in Lancelot and Kickoff menus. One reason why many users kept switching back to the classical hierarchical menu is because it is faster, uses less landscape and needs less mouse clicks. This feature is going to change all that and Lancelot will do what Classical does and a lot more making it the most preferred menu.

Keep up the good work and make sure this feature is flawless, fast and elegant.

Congratulation on a Great Job.

goek
goek
12 years ago

Awesome! Thank You!

Get the latest

On social media

Security distros

Hacker
Linux distros for hacking and pentesting

Crypto mining OS

Bitcoin
Distros for mining bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

Crypto hardware

MSI GeForce GTX 1070
Installing Nvidia GTX 1070 GPU drivers on Ubuntu

Disk guide

LVM
Beginner's guide to disks & disk partitions in Linux

Bash guide

Bash shell terminal
How to set the PATH variable in Bash
Categories
Archives
11
0
Hya, what do you think? Please comment.x
()
x