Theme here is greybird-mx-dark. Greybird-mx-dark's xfwm theme for THunar looks a little rough. It does look like Thunar remained non-CSD. This is XFCE4.16pre2 though, not the final Thunar for 4.16.
Arc's xfwm theme looks better. Not sure if Arc is maintained in Debian 11 but the xfwm theme should keep on ticking. See screenshot below from a second VM. Ignore the power-manager icon here as this particular VM is messed up, perhaps because I installed and then removed KDE Standard from it (Plasma no longer worked after I updated to xfce 4.16pre1 and pre2).
Thanks for the links. They are quite depressing. I had no idea Gnome was not a neutral player in all this. I've been openly wondering if legacy tech companies are paying the bills for a few developers to sabotage OSS projects. Is anyone paying the Gnome people to do this to us?
What are the chances of back-porting bug fixes to 4.14?
I wonder if the client-side decorations will be less responsive or more responsive under high system load, or the occasional problems with the window manager. I'm betting it makes things less usable. Anyone know for sure?
This sort of thing happened to KDE too. I liked KDE3, loved KDE4, but I despise KDE5. When KDE5 started breaking things, everyone assured us that that KDE5 would eventually look as good as KDE4, but they aren't even trying. The only reason I'm on XFCE at all is because KDE4 isn't available. Is XFCE going the same route, becoming subservient to the idiocy that the desktop is no longer required?
I have a serious question.... is anyone on the MX project a developer for XFCE? If so, I would love to start an independent thread on what it would take to start developing XFCE. I have a whole laundry list of changes I'd like to make to the current XFCE, but every time I look under the hood, I find very confusing, undocumented code. Many people have pointed out that there aren't many developers for XFCE. Maybe would could make some more that would serve the needs of the desktop.
Sooo.. this looks like the new GNOME 3 look and..wait for it.. SMARTPHONE icons! So everything GUI on OSs is headed to smartphone and tablet interface gui elements. I hate smartphones and pads because of the interfaces so this sucks. Will MX 19.3 be still usable for years to come or will I be forced to upgrade like with Windows? I noticed all the really nice 3D look themes(window frame,icons, and gtk widgets),have been replaced by those smartphone flat themes.. This affects not only Linux GUIs but Windows too! Since Windows 8 there have been alot of changes in Gnome and XFCE to favor the look and feel of Windows metro and other Smartphone and tablet GUIs. Oh I can rant on and on.. I love the classic looks because of the 3D widgets and thus I rock CDE desktop in MX and other Debian distros. UBUNTU does not allow CDE desktop to install, so I do not use Ubuntu. I know I am just one little speck in a sea of change, so my voice may not be heard, but darn, I want the beautiful GTK1.x/GTK2 themes to work in Linux again! Steampunk, Wood and Brass, Marble, Brushed metal, dark alloy, Brass alloy, Amber metal, and other beautiful GUI elements. Have you noticed how striking GUIs were with HPUX,IRIX,old LINUX distros, SOLARIS, UNIXWARE, etc? Then came Windows 8, and Linux community followed suit with UNITY desktop and then "flat themes" Like in Windows 8.. wackala, as we say in Puerto Rico.. but change, good or bad, is inevitable I guess. XFCE is changing and so is the Penguin. I just pray I can enjoy the Penguin for years to come for free and for fun. I guess if i have to settle for a smartphone/tablet interface, I can accept it, but I do not have to like it.
Now, i realize, that devs are hard at work to provide us with software for free to use and enjoy. So I am very thankful to them all. I just voice my opinion of the changes. In this time of horror, I wish GUI elements and Linux changes was our only real problem or gripe. If that was the case, we would be really happy eh!! So I just want to thank you devs for the work you do and the gifts you provide. I guess in retrospect, it is nothing but a chicken wing as they say in the USA lol!
asqwerth wrote: Thu Dec 24, 2020 12:34 pm
2. Do you get irritated when you use simple-scan and Archive Manager that come default with MX19 XFCE (also gthumb, disk usage analyzer)?
I find this in fact very annoying and don't understand why Archive Manager for instance is included with MX at all. It is a GNOME app and as that apparently not supposed to integrate with anything else. There are many alternatives that adhere to basic standards (such as server side decorations), which hence would be much better suited for being included by default.
I do understand that XFCE is in a difficult situation here. They started their project years ago based on the independent GIMP toolkit, and are now stuck with GNOME's toolkit. I also agree with pianokeyjoe on the decline of the Linux desktop, but who knows, maybe this flat design thing is only a trend, and as such, will go away again.
fladd wrote: Sun Dec 27, 2020 6:32 pmI do understand that XFCE is in a difficult situation here. They started their project years ago based on the independent GIMP toolkit, and are now stuck with GNOME's toolkit. I also agree with pianokeyjoe on the decline of the Linux desktop, but who knows, maybe this flat design thing is only a trend, and as such, will go away again.
XFCE started out as the X Forms Common Environment, and was based on XForms.
You may want to look into KDE. The KDE desktop has seen massive improvements just in the last 3-4 releases. When you disable some of the crap like Akonadi, it only takes slightly more resources to run (in the order of a few MBs more) than XFCE and offers many more features in return.
I'd say, if anything, it's probably not the Decline of the Linux desktop, but rather, the decline of technology in general. Computing now is much less exciting than yesteryear's machines and software, and there's nothing novel.
One of Linux' biggest mistakes though is the lack of a decent standard GUI API. We have a mashup of all kinds of bizarre toolkits: GTK breaks every release, but Qt completely butchers the C++ language and is hard to implement in a C program. Also it's bloated.
Beyond the original Xaw/Athena/Motif kits, there's nothing spectacular out there anymore, so what better way to keep business up than to add bloat.
I copy & paste to the terminal. Liars, Wiseguys, Trolls, and those without manners will be added to my ignore list. 
