The future of Xfce

[Mauser]

I was thinking that there might be a way of getting around CSD is by installing Kwin or Kvantum. Only time will tell if this would work. What say you?

[imschmeg]

I don't anticipate success.

And that's what I got - a lack of success. I can build gtk3-nocsd in a fully up-to-date Fedora 31 VM with Gnome 3.34.4, but it doesn't do anything. Clients run with it still use CSD. This used to work in earlier Fedoras/Gnomes (note the git repo README gives dependency instructions for Fedora), but no more.

[dreamer]

What's all the fuss about, then? Sorry, this thread was tl;dr...

Look at the screenshot imschmeg posted. Not exactly an elegant solution. Imagine it was Thunar... Might as well use CSD, instead of having two titlebars. Or install Caja which I have already done. It works well (after a few tweaks) both for normal user and via mx-pkexec for manipulating files owned by root. gtk3-nocsd is a hack (words by developer) to let the wm stay in charge, but how long will that hack be possible? One thing that the Linux desktop doesn't need is more hacks. The fuss is about Xfce going down the wrong path, becoming Gnome and probably pulling in a lot of Gnome dependencies in the process.

PS On a more positive note MX-19 is pretty awesome so personally I'm good until 2024. Can't really wish for more...

Yes, and it works well at the moment, if you don't mind duplication of title and icon. But that might only be because Xfce isn't yet skewed towards CSD. I wonder how it would work in Gnome. I should try it...

Developer description:

A hack to disable gtk+ 3 client side decoration

gtk3-nocsd is a small module used to disable the client side decoration of Gtk+ 3.

##Introduction: Since Gtk+ 3.10, its developers added a so-called header bar or custom title bar. With this and the client-side decoration, the original title bar and window border provided by the window manager are disabled by Gtk+. This makes all Gtk+ 3 programs look alike. Even worse, this may break some window manager or compositors.

Unfortunately, the Gtk+ developers decided to be against the existing standards and provide "no option" to turn it off.

Luckily, with gtk3-nocsd, we still have a way to (partially) turn it off. Window manager (title bar and window border) can be re-enabled.

it will probably still have some ability to theme windows that aren't gtk3....Qt, gtk2, heck even electron might still need window decorations.

all xfce is talking about is their own apps, IIRC.

The MX team is always working, never complaining and that's why you are so successful. On the other hand even if nothing was achieved it was important to let Xfce developers know that the majority of Xfce users are against CSDs. They can decide whatever they want, but threads on Xfce forum, here, on Reddit and other places show that many people use Xfce because it's NOT Gnome. The GTK3 port has already pulled Xfce closer to Gnome.

Of course you are right that xfwm will still be there. But for Xfce it's a big shift. All settings windows, all preferences windows for panel plugins and eventually everything including Thunar. Not everything will happen for Xfce 4.16, but in a year or two I think Xfce will be fully CSD. That might be the biggest change to Xfce since 1996... I can't say the developers are wrong, they are eyeing Wayland compatibility etc. Although someone mentioned that it's now possible to use GTK on Wayland with SSDs.

Ultimately, I think it's just a bad decision. It takes away xfwm theming which has always been popular among users. It takes away some wm functionality. Buggy applications can make the entire window unresponsive. It's bad design. Maybe I have missed something, but I can't remember anything positive about CSDs. The space argument isn't necessarily true. CSD/headerbar isn't always smaller than titlebar/toolbar.

[freemedia2018]

It takes away xfwm theming which has always been popular among users. It takes away some wm functionality. Buggy applications can make the entire window unresponsive. It's bad design.

weighing pros and cons is important. people weighing the problems often get put on the defensive, constantly being told they have to like everything, "take it or leave it."

thats a very different tone and philosophy from the beginning of the gnu/linux world, when not everybody was polite and not everyone was happy about everything-- and people had plenty of choices. im glad we can still talk about the good as well as the bad here. most people are pretty chill and understanding about it, and that encourages more intelligent and thoughtful (but not always positive) discussion. constantly being told youre wrong and just reacting, just doesnt do that. but theres thankfully very little of that here.

its very nice that someone made a hack to help with this, but sometimes newer developers arent very thoughtful about these things. which is why the hack is a third party tool, instead of a native option which would make perfect sense. imagine the options people would have, if even having options in the first place was still a welcomed idea? of course im referring to upstream, not mx.

often people pretend that those complaining are lazy do-nothings who only complain and dont contribute. theres no way to prove thats true, but often there is evidence that people are actually working quite hard to preserve options, like some of the developers in this thread. the truth is that people who preserve options and defend the user are not always welcome-- nor is the flexibility they provide us. they arent simply unsung heroes-- they are actually smeared by their philosophical opponents. people may find this thread boring or tedious, but its a thread where practically everybody did the best possible thing for the future of xfce. thats worth some consideration.

[imschmeg]

The space argument isn't necessarily true. CSD/headerbar isn't always smaller than titlebar/toolbar.

The default Gnome handlebar size is huge. Also, those that argue about screen space neglect other solutions that would save even more, such as auto-hiding the titlebar+widgets. I really like the VirtualBox fullscreen where it allows you to autohide the menubar or pin it. That would be a great option for an SSD WM. Mouse over the top border, and down scrolls a titlebar and widgets.

I think I've said this before - I don't fear the immediate future, but the eventual future. I've shown that the latest Gnome doesn't support gtk-nocsd at all, so one wonders if other DE/WMs that are itching to go CSD will go as fully that way as Gnome has. Also, I've read that Wayland has a built-in preference for CSD, and I'm trying to find a non-CSD WM that works on Wayland to see how bad things are there. My experiment with Fedora/Gnome was to find a CSD theme I could use - and I did, but it's ugly as sin, and I haven't figured out how to modify it. I may have to learn how to, and then spend time constructing my own CSD theme from scratch. But the fact that it is CSD still makes me fear the evolution of apps that decide not to obey the theme precisely, because their devs have their own idea of what looks cool.

[asqwerth]

The space argument isn't necessarily true. CSD/headerbar isn't always smaller than titlebar/toolbar.

Yep.

And on the other hand, a CSD title bar+widgets can be so crammed that there's no space to grab onto when trying to move the window. E.g Nautilus.

...
I've shown that the latest Gnome doesn't support gtk-nocsd at all,

That may be true , as in you can't easily convert a CSD app to no-csd when running in Gnome. But you can still have a gtk3 app that is made to be non-csd, running in Gnome the way it was meant to be.

I use Nemo and pcmanfm mainly in my Fedora Gnome install. And geany.

All gtk3 non-csd apps.

[JmaCWQ]

If users only want to use CSD for Xfce's settings dialogs but not the rest you can use the corresponding xsetting to disable CSD in the toolkit's native dialogs:
xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Gtk/DialogsUseHeader -s false

From here - https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16375#c2

Not sure what that means, whether it can be done easily by users or not?

Interesting reading nonetheless.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I've shown that the latest Gnome doesn't support gtk-nocsd at all

The gtk3-nocsd package forces the applications to use the window manager's own decorations but the GNOME window manager doesn't provide native decorations because they've gone full CSD.

If the Xfce devs go the same way then it should still be possible to replace the Xfce window manager (xfwm) with, for example, openbox by running this command:

Code: Select all

xfconf-query --channel xfce4-session --property /sessions/Failsafe/Client0_Command --set openbox --force-array

Then openbox would provide the traditional decorations for GTK3+ applications.

It's not a perfect solution (openbox only provides XBM-based decorations and it can't do transparency-while-dragging) but it should remove the CSD eyesore for those who find them so objectionable.

[nathan2423]

Is another option to provide a fork of XFCE based on the prior GTK2-only releases? I have been comparing icewm and fluxbox and lxde and thinking to myself that as long as I have an operable whisker menu plus dockbarx plus core xfce functions that haven't changed in years then i am happy.

For my uses xfce has only been getting heavier and slower and generally going backward. I find Spacefm to be just as fast and tremendously more configurable than thunar so I wouldn't care about the slow development that has taken place in recent versions of thunar/xfce at all. Older versions of XFCE would compare favorably, it seems to me, to the other "low resource" desktop options. When I think back and look back at my mx14/15 installation I don't see anything missing in xfce compared to today's version that seems slower and is mutating into gnome.

[freemedia2018]

For my uses xfce has only been getting heavier and slower and generally going backward.

bloat is a real issue, i use icewm even with an i5 and im very happy with it. but its gtk2 and at some point, hopefully years from now, ill have to find an alternative.

i dont think gtk2 is getting forked, so forks relying on gtk2 will only buy time. that doesnt answer your question but it certainly provides context. im still very sad that leafpad (gtk2) was dropped from debian recently. but when you rely on gnome for anything, theyre going to leave you disappointed, if only because ultimately youll be looking for a fork or alternative. im not even a huge qt fan. its pretty much the only alternative (no disrespect to any fltk fans, i suppose this is really their time to shine.) if im wrong and gtk2 has another 15 years it, thats the best free software news this year.