How can I change the volume icon in Lubuntu 11.10?

Question

I've got a clean install of Lubuntu 11.10, with pulseaudio and pulseaudio-dbg installed. The thing that bothers me is the volume icon. I've got a VOL+ and VOL- button on my keyboard that both work, but the volume icon won't show me the actual volume without hovering over it. And unlike changing the screen brightness, I won't get a popup showing the volume when changing it.

Is there any way to change the volume icon in Lubuntu 11.10, or at least make it show the actual volume?

Solution 1

volwheel

As you can see the vertical bar shows the volume level

to install

Download the 0.2.8 tar file from here and extract it.

Using lxterminal:

sudo apt-get install alsa-utils
cd ~/Downloads/volwheel-0.2.8/lib
sudo mv * /usr/lib/perl/5.12
cd ..
sudo ./install.pl

To start:

Either add volwheel in your startup applications or run

nohup volwheel &

in a lxterminal

EDIT:

the following maybe required:

gksudo pcmanfm /usr/local/share/

Rightclick volwheel, then click on the tab on the right. Change all the dropdown menus to 'Read and Write'.

mv ~/Downloads/volwheel-0.2.8/icons /usr/local/share/volwheel/icons 

Restart and the volume application will be there!

If you want the bar to show the master volume (which is probably the case), rightclick the icon, click 'Settings' and change 'Default channel' to 'Master' (without the quotes).

To start volwheel from login

gksudo leafpad /etc/xdg/autostart/VolWheel.desktop 

Copy and paste this in Leafpad:

[Desktop Entry] 
Name=VolWheel 
GenericName=VolWheel 
Comment=Starts VolWheel 
Exec=volwheel 
Terminal=false 
Type=Application 
Icon=/usr/local/share/volwheel/volwheel.svg 
Categories=Volume 
StartupNotify=false 
NotShowIn=LXDE; 

Save the file.

Solution 2

I don't know if Lubuntu has such a thing, but its ancestor (IIRC, lxde kinda forked xfce) has a package called xfce4-volumed that would at least show the volume change as a notification like with brightness.

As for the first part of your question, the volume icon from xfce can't be reused here because the lxpanel does not work with xfce4-panel plugins and the ubuntu indicator-sound is another beast entirely.