The future of Xfce

[imschmeg]

Dearest Xfce Devs,

We like your product more than Gnome. We're sorry that you have a problem with this.

Love (for now),
non-CSDers

[freemedia2018]

Dearest Xfce Devs,

We like your product more than Gnome. We're sorry that you have a problem with this.

Love (for now),
non-CSDers

<3

[figueroa]

Help make me smarter. What's the matter with CSD? It looks like a walk in the park to me. https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/01/xfc ... decoration, and https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.16/roadm ... ral_ui/csd

What am I missing?

[asqwerth]

While I prefer the no-CSD look, I've been running MX the past few years with CSD apps (gnome-sudoku, Archive manager aka file-roller, simple-scan, lollypop music player, gthumb, oomox, evince for a short period) co-existing with the non-CSD stuff.

I have decided that I can live with the mixed look.

[ADDED - of course, a lot depends on the overall performance of XFCE 4.16 when it does come out. I will get an earlier look at its gradual development since I run Manjaro XFCE as well, and it'll probably roll the new changes even before 4.16 becomes final (ie, 4.15+), once a large chunk of the work is done. So we'll see. Anything happens, I have LXDE and Budgie respectively as a second DE on my 2 Manjaro installs.]

[freemedia2018]

Help make me smarter. What's the matter with CSD?

there is not much wrong with options.

whats wrong with breaking things that collective millions of people use, then telling them to switch to it? nothing, if its optional. gnome has an adversarial relationship with options. they dont like them, they dont want you to have them. thats the real problem here. the example is fairly new-- the problem is not. its more of a modus operandi at this point.

[JayM]

The only thing that I see that CSD "breaks", from looking at the various images, are the Window Manager-themed titlebars. It's too soon to tell how Xfce 4.16 will handle window manager theming so maybe that will be addressed by the time it's released in a couple of years or so. The icons in the upper right to minimize, window and maximize apps are still there, just a bit further down. Actually I think those windows in Xfce 4.16 with CSD look less old-fashioned and more polished. It should please Dedoimedo anyway. And it's not anything we need to be concerned about until perhaps MX-22.

[freemedia2018]

The only thing that I see that CSD "breaks", from looking at the various images, are the Window Manager-themed titlebars. The icons in the upper right to minimize, window and maximize apps are still there, just a bit further down.

so the only thing it breaks is the ability of window managers to decorate windows.

or (unless this is inaccurate, please let me know if so-- im interested in the truth here) it basically breaks the ability of a window manager built with gtk to do one of its primary tasks (which is to control the appearance of window decorations.)

[JayM]

The only thing that I see that CSD "breaks", from looking at the various images, are the Window Manager-themed titlebars. The icons in the upper right to minimize, window and maximize apps are still there, just a bit further down.

so the only thing it breaks is the ability of window managers to decorate windows.

or (unless this is inaccurate, please let me know if so-- im interested in the truth here) it basically breaks the ability of a window manager built with gtk to do one of its primary tasks (which is to control the appearance of window decorations.)

We're looking at a few screenshots taken from probably an alpha release so it's too soon to tell how Xfwm 4.16 is going to handle theming.

[JayM]

I feel sorry for the Xfce devs. It's like "damned if they do, damned if they don't." They were criticized for Xfce 4.14 only making under the hood changes and improvements while on the surface it was still the same old Xfce DE for the most part. Now they want to do something to modernize its appearance and they're getting jumped on for that too.

Personally I don't really care as long as it 1. works without hogging resources or slowing my computer down and 2. stays out of my way.

[asqwerth]

So far, devs can still choose to use gtk3 toolkit without using CSD, I think. That's why you can have gtk3 geany and pcmanfm, for example, which still have no CSD. Or Cinnamon's nemo file manager.

So if XFCE chooses to go all CSD, it will only affect their native apps. What will affect me personally the most is Thunar and probably xfce4-terminal. If Thunar starts to annoy me in future (which was the case with gnome's Nautilus after it got gnome3-ified and crippled), I'll just install pcmanfm or Nemo.

I still use geany over mousepad or even MX's default featherpad (which is a QT app).

And frankly how many native XFCE apps are used in MX? We don't use mousepad or parole by default. Instead of parole, we have Clementine and VLC. We have nomacs, which is an independent viewer (and has its own theming), instead of ristretto.

XFCE Terminal - again, let's see. The thing that annoyed me about gnome-terminal currently is the loss of transparency and insistence of removing the menubar (you can reinstate it for a session but it doesn't stick, even if you use the dconf settings to try to set it by default). In AUR, there is a patched version of gnome-terminal with transparency, so I assume it can be done.

Really, a lot depends on the XFCE devs' choices.