The future of Xfce

[freemedia2018]

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.

that always sucks. it shouldnt be hopeless from a dev standpoint. modernisation is a tricky word-- its used by google to mean "we are a huge for-profit corporation only supporting three browsers, but we dont want people saying we are proprietary or guilty of anti-trust-- so we are just going to say 'use a modern browser' instead"

this word gets thrown around a lot in some pretty illegitimate rationalisations for things. on the one hand, i have always appreciated the commitment to users that xfce has, over gnome and over other projects. on the other hand, ive watched a lot of projects get taken over, and its too early to say if thats happening. for what its worth, these complaints are the sort that people make as projects get taken over and sabotaged. im not saying thats happened to xfce, only that i watch things like this and continue to formulate theories regarding the state of the free software ecosystem. if this is NOT an example of a project being taken over, then im very happy that its an exception to the rule. not only are exceptions possible, they are a first goal! xfce has always resisted annoying, useless fashion trends. thats a feature.

So if XFCE chooses to go all CSD, it will only affect their native apps.

interesting.

[imschmeg]

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?

My argument against CSD is not the same as most others. Most people argue against it based on visual appeal or personal control. My problem is that my vision is impaired to the point where I cannot easily pick up low contrast differences on a computer screen. If there are several CSD windows on the screen at once, I can have trouble determining which among them has the focus. There are subtle but not user-controllable hints distinguishing which window has focus under CSD that are quite obvious to others, but I might not pick them up unless I get very close to the screen. Or strain my eyes. This is both annoying and a bit of a security problem, as I do not want to do something like type a password when the wrong window has focus. I have tried Debian with Gnome, but can't use it for this reason (although for other security reasons, I really want to use wayland instead of Xorg, if/when wayland becomes truly ready for prime time).

The theme I use in Xfce has brightly colored titlebar and borders that are very different when the window is active vs. not. I need those highlight hints for all windows in whatever WM or DE I use.

[SwampRabbit]

Maybe the only thing that I think will really get to me is the big fat title bars, but it seems there are some temp workarounds for that.

I'm packaging something right now that a user requested from the application developer to start implementing some fancy GTK3 stuff.
The user gave mock window layouts and they weren't bad, just a bit different.

[asqwerth]

....My problem is that my vision is impaired to the point where I cannot easily pick up low contrast differences on a computer screen. If there are several CSD windows on the screen at once, I can have trouble determining which among them has the focus. There are subtle but not user-controllable hints distinguishing which window has focus under CSD that are quite obvious to others, but I might not pick them up unless I get very close to the screen. Or strain my eyes. This is both annoying and a bit of a security problem, as I do not want to do something like type a password when the wrong window has focus. I have tried Debian with Gnome, but can't use it for this reason (although for other security reasons, I really want to use wayland instead of Xorg, if/when wayland becomes truly ready for prime time).

The theme I use in Xfce has brightly colored titlebar and borders that are very different when the window is active vs. not. I need those highlight hints for all windows in whatever WM or DE I use.

Let me check on some gtk themes and get back to you maybe tomorrow.

It might come down to finding a theme that implements a difference between active and inactive windows that is visible enough for you.

[LU344928]

Maybe Lxqt is the future ???

[asqwerth]

Maybe Lxqt is the future ???

Personally I really don't like it.

Tried it before in Sparky, Artix (not antiX).

[LU344928]

Maybe Lxqt is the future ???

Personally I really don't like it.

Tried it before in Sparky, Artix (not antiX).

Sure, no Whisker menu but having used LXDE a lot I like it's simplicity and I believe LXDE development is almost at an end and they're handing it over to Lxqt.

However, one thing in Lxqt that does annoy me is when you log out or shutdown down you always get a nag screen saying "If you leave now you will lose all unsaved work. Are you sure?'

I wouldn't mind so much if there was a field saying 'Don't ask again' that you could check but there isn't. Either the devs have overlooked this annoyance or they're treating us like, well, perhaps I shouldn't use that...

[Mauser]

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.

That's because the Xfce developers ignore their user base and go off in the opposite direction in some cases like this CSD idea they have. In the https://forum.xfce.org/ there are many good recommendations that get ignored.

[JmaCWQ]

Question to MX Linux users:
Will you stay with Xfce or use something else (another DE or WM)?

I would be very disappointed if I can't use my custom window manager theme with Xfce as I do currently and have been for many years.
Not sure if I'd leave MX because of it though.
Hopefully by the time this change is forced on everyone someone will have a fix/workaround/different option available so those of us that love Xfce can continue to happily use it.
I guess the coding side of it is very complicated but if it's possible for the devs to give users the simple choice of yes or no, that would probably be very much appreciated.

[sunrat]

The Xfce dev team is likely smaller than that of MX, and all volunteers. I'm sure they listen to their users judging from some of their comments on those forum pages linked earlier. I suspect they even may be considering going in that direction because it may be a lot harder not to, due to GTK being subject to the whims of Gnome devs.
Please restrict your negative comments about Xfce devs. Or go join their team and help code.