There are many occasions where you might want to draw something on your screen. Most commonly, during a presentation. LibreOffice Impress, and other presentation software, has a pen built into the presenter mode which enables you to draw on slides. But what if you want to show a programming example, and you want to draw on the terminal, or on the IDE to highlight something? There are a few options available to do this.
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Compiz
The "Compiz" compositor has on screen annotation built in. You can enable it in the options, and set up shortcuts for clearing the screen etc.
Gromit
Gromit is available for installation from the Funtoo repositories.
emerge gromit
After installing it, you need to change the settings in the .gromitrc settings file:
nano ~/.gromitrc
Here are some example contents of settings:
"red Pen" = PEN (size=7 color="red");
"blue Pen" = "blue Arrow" (arrowsize=2);
"yellow Pen" = "red Pen" (color="yellow");
"Eraser" = ERASER (size = 95);
"Core Pointer" = "red Pen";
"Core Pointer"[SHIFT] = "blue Pen";
"Core Pointer"[CONTROL] = "yellow Pen";
"Core Pointer"[2] = "Eraser";
Gromit has not been updated for a very long time. The latest version is 20041223-rc1. It can be extremely slow and because of how slow it is to draw there are cases where it becomes impossible to use for anything else than putting a point on the screen.
To start drawing on the screen, you press the Pause button (usually located close to the numeric keyboard). Quitting Gromit is done with Alt-Pause, and you can hide the painting and bring it back by pressing Ctrl-Pause. Clearing the annotations for the entire screen is done with Shift-Pause.
Gromit-MPX
https://github.com/bk138/gromit-mpx
There is a development of Gromit called Gromit-MPX, which is currently under active development. This is much faster than the original Gromit and uses the XCOMPOSITE extension if it is available (e.g. if you are using Compton with Openbox). Therefore, this is a much preferable alternative for those who want to draw on the screen in a light weight installation such as LXQt. Gromit-MPX uses GTK3 to create a panel applet that can be used for controlling its behaviour.
Gromit-MPX is currently not available in Funtoo repositories, but the link to the source code is provided above.
To draw on the screen in Gromit-MPX you would by default press F9, otherwise the same as Gromit.
Gromit-MPX also has an option to change the opacity of the drawing layer:
gromit-mpx -o <opacity>
Note
Browse all our available articles below. Use the search field to search for topics and keywords in real-time.
| Article | Subtitle |
| Article | Subtitle |
| Awk by Example, Part 1 | An intro to the great language with the strange name |
| Awk by Example, Part 2 | Records, loops, and arrays |
| Awk by Example, Part 3 | String functions and ... checkbooks? |
| Bash by Example, Part 1 | Fundamental programming in the Bourne again shell (bash) |
| Bash by Example, Part 2 | More bash programming fundamentals |
| Bash by Example, Part 3 | Exploring the ebuild system |
| BTRFS Fun | |
| Funtoo Filesystem Guide, Part 1 | Journaling and ReiserFS |
| Funtoo Filesystem Guide, Part 2 | Using ReiserFS and Linux |
| Funtoo Filesystem Guide, Part 3 | Tmpfs and Bind Mounts |
| Funtoo Filesystem Guide, Part 4 | Introducing Ext3 |
| Funtoo Filesystem Guide, Part 5 | Ext3 in Action |
| GUID Booting Guide | |
| Learning Linux LVM, Part 1 | Storage management magic with Logical Volume Management |
| Learning Linux LVM, Part 2 | The cvs.gentoo.org upgrade |
| Libvirt | |
| Linux Fundamentals, Part 1 | |
| Linux Fundamentals, Part 2 | |
| Linux Fundamentals, Part 3 | |
| Linux Fundamentals, Part 4 | |
| LVM Fun | |
| Making the Distribution, Part 1 | |
| Making the Distribution, Part 2 | |
| Making the Distribution, Part 3 | |
| Maximum Swappage | Getting the most out of swap |
| On screen annotation | Write on top of apps on your screen |
| OpenSSH Key Management, Part 1 | Understanding RSA/DSA Authentication |
| OpenSSH Key Management, Part 2 | Introducing ssh-agent and keychain |
| OpenSSH Key Management, Part 3 | Agent Forwarding |
| Partition Planning Tips | Keeping things organized on disk |
| Partitioning in Action, Part 1 | Moving /home |
| Partitioning in Action, Part 2 | Consolidating data |
| POSIX Threads Explained, Part 1 | A simple and nimble tool for memory sharing |
| POSIX Threads Explained, Part 2 | |
| POSIX Threads Explained, Part 3 | Improve efficiency with condition variables |
| Sed by Example, Part 1 | |
| Sed by Example, Part 2 | |
| Sed by Example, Part 3 | |
| Successful booting with UUID | Guide to use UUID for consistent booting. |
| The Gentoo.org Redesign, Part 1 | A site reborn |
| The Gentoo.org Redesign, Part 2 | The Documentation System |
| The Gentoo.org Redesign, Part 3 | The New Main Pages |
| The Gentoo.org Redesign, Part 4 | The Final Touch of XML |
| Traffic Control | |
| Windows 10 Virtualization with KVM | |