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Xfce is great

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Re: Xfce is great

#241
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that’s true, the stock GNOME apps and third party GTK3/4 apps (which tend to follow GNOME design philosophy) work more smoothly under GNOME than those built with Qt or other frameworks, and so deviating makes for a materially worse experience. And yes you can switch between multiple installed DEs and I have done so in the past, but that makes for a messy experience with many redundant apps that the user must…

Shrug, I run Gnome apps in KDE all the time. They run smoothly for me. I’m sure the inverse is perfectly fine as well. I certainly don’t expect most users to switch between desktop environments but there are so many of them that complaining about one is a waste of breath.

Qt apps under GNOME aren’t great thanks to the client side declaration drama with the GNOME team. In short, the GNOME team believes that programs should be responsible for drawing their own titlebars/chrome (as opposed to windows being provided standard chrome for “free”), and so Qt apps have to draw a simplistic makeshift titlebar which doesn’t match anything when running under GNOME.

Re: Xfce is great

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely wondering why everybody hates modern GNOME. I have long been running Linux on headless systems but Windows on my daily, and only recently switched to dailying a Linux desktop. I started with Kubuntu LTS, it was easy to switch from Windows (shortcuts, UX) but it felt too "complicated" and distracting, not very good looking OOTB and had some graphical glitches here and there (w/ nvidia). Now I'm on Fedora…

Gnome is quite 'opinionated' in what it chooses; if you like their choices you enjoy it; if you don't....hmm. Personally I also have some things I specifically dislike; I prefer to have a fixed 3x3 virtual desktop grid, and Gnome didn't let me do that. I generally don't like the heavy use of menus and random stuff in the title bar of windows.

You can do that with an extension, I do a 2x2 workspace. Although extensions can be problematic and break between versions, I haven't had any issues with this one.

Re: Xfce is great

#243
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shrug, I run Gnome apps in KDE all the time. They run smoothly for me. I’m sure the inverse is perfectly fine as well. I certainly don’t expect most users to switch between desktop environments but there are so many of them that complaining about one is a waste of breath.

Qt apps under GNOME aren’t great thanks to the client side declaration drama with the GNOME team. In short, the GNOME team believes that programs should be responsible for drawing their own titlebars/chrome (as opposed to windows being provided standard chrome for “free”), and so Qt apps have to draw a simplistic makeshift titlebar which doesn’t match anything when running under GNOME.

Yes, this is really annoying.

Re: Xfce is great

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland just seems really unstable to me. I try it occasionally, but glitches, freezes or crashes quickly drive me back to X.

Here's a nickel, kid. Get yourself some non-Nvidia hardware.

Everything I have runs AMDGPU.

Re: Xfce is great

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland just seems really unstable to me. I try it occasionally, but glitches, freezes or crashes quickly drive me back to X.

That's not wayland - you have some config or driver issue. I've been using Wayland as my daily driver for a few years now. Any issues I have are from my window manager or apps and not wayland itself.

Maybe you're right, or maybe your anecdote doesn't actually invalidate my anecdote.

Re: Xfce is great

#246
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand the target of your snark, Gnome shell on my machine uses 172MB of RAM, if I sum all other gnome-related stuff (gdm-wayland-session, gjs, gnome-session-service, etc), it's 200MB. Hardly GB. You don't have to lie to make a point.

yeah, i have a couple older machines and tried xfce and it wasn't really worth it memory wise, sure xfce is probably lighter but it's easily less than 100 meg difference

Ok, but did you also run it for a while and compare how snappy or laggy the different DEs are? Because with xfc my old T440s Thinkpad from 2013 is still perfectly fine for browsing the web, or watching movies on the HD projector, without sacrificing too many modern interface conveniences.

I can't say the same for Gnome or KDE, and that's no slight against either (I happily use the latter on my more recent work laptop).

Having said that VSCode runs perfectly fine on the T440s too, so Electron and JavaScript aren't the fundamental reason those DEs are too demanding to use.

Re: Xfce is great

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have "hatred" towards Gnome3. I use it for friends and families desktops, they seem to like it. I have also rolled out about ~20 Gnome3-based desktops for my employer. That said, there are definitely areas were Gnome could be improved. Some of them are understandable and probably stem from a lack funding / devs. Others less so, like removing the options to scale / stretch / center the wallpaper w/o installing…

Yeah - I find it a little frustrating that the first thing to do after installing Gnome3 is to install Tweaks.

It's not even the chore of installing it, Ansible will mostly do that for me. It's that I can't comprehend why something as basic as fundamental wallpaper config is not part of the normal GUI. The reasoning for that one is beyond me.

Re: Xfce is great

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not wayland - you have some config or driver issue. I've been using Wayland as my daily driver for a few years now. Any issues I have are from my window manager or apps and not wayland itself.

Maybe you're right, or maybe your anecdote doesn't actually invalidate my anecdote.

I think you should look for more anecotes - there's like a million of us using wayland daily with zero issues.

Re: Xfce is great

#249
post #204

I am a fvwm person, but if I had to use a desktop environment, xfce would be my first choice. I find it works great for me. Once it ends up on Wayland and I am forced to use Wayland, right now xfce will be my choice. Only one thing I wish I could set, allow windows to cover the 'bar'. Yes, I can make the bar auto-hide, but I cannot have a portion of it covered by a window. The same is true for GNOME, but KDE it is al…

> Only one thing I wish I could set, allow windows to cover the 'bar'. Yes, I can make the bar auto-hide, but I cannot have a portion of it covered by a window.

If I understand your comment correctly, right click on the Panel --> Panel Preferences, Display tab. Checkmark "Keep panel above windows". This allows windows to use the panel section of the screen. Combine with "Automatically hide the panel: intelligently".

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