XFCE, Lxde & Other, alternate, Window Managers

[houndstooth]

Xfce-4.18 ydrv addons for LxPupSc

Those look really nice & would flourish with more user development. In my trial the menus were really busy but worth cleaning up for a user's primary distro. Besides looks, once you drag a launcher to a panel you'll realize how much easier it is to use.

If I were a Slackware user I'd be in it.

[peebee]

LXDE addons for FP96-CE and FossaPup64-mini-9.5:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/lxpup/ ... LXDE-ydrv/

[peebee]

https://www.xfce.org/about/news/?post=1734220800

News
Xfce 4.20 released
Dec 15 2024

[wiak]

XFCE team still talking about Wayland, but considering the number of years between releases it seems to me they may lose users and miss the boat. In the Wayland becoming mainstream dominant circumstance any distro focussed on X seems dated and effectively unattractive for new adoption. I wouldn't myself plan for any new distro releases that didn't use Wayland; similarly, forum discussions about distros still reliant on X come across as yesterday's news and, along with its old style distro, leaves the forum itself looking like some old place of nostalgia rather than fresh innovation.

[Luluc]

I will actually avoid Wayland for as long as possible and couldn't care less if anyone thinks it's old. It's been serving me exceedingly well for more than 20 years, there is nothing I would ever change about it if I could.

Then again, I am not a hacker and could say the same about systemd. All the grievance and grousing and whining and moping against systemd gets old very fast. For me, it just works. The alternatives not so much. There are applications that expect systemd to work correctly. Why break stuff?

Back to the topic, I wish there were some puppy-style app or mechanism to help us configure other window managers. Installing them tends to be easy, what with so many puppies and dogs shipping with synaptic and total apt compatibility. The big problem is configuring the system and X, glorious X, amazing X, fantastic X, super useful X, to start with the other WM. You people certainly are obsessed with JWM and Rox.

[mistfire]

BEWARE!!!

pup-volume-monitor partially broken on XFCE 4.20, It can show drives on thunar but it cannot show drives on Desktop (xfdesktop). However GVFS udisks-volume-monitor was able to show drives on xfdesktop 4.20. I requires some fixes on pup-volume-monitor/

UPDATE: It only shows, optical drives on XFCE desktop. Not fixed drives

[bigpup]

If you are using apt or synaptic to install window managers.

There is a good chance you are not getting the config GUI to use.

It is very easy to not get all the needed parts of a software package.

Everything is individually listed as separate items to select.

Even the listed ones that are suppose to be the complete package download.
Sometimes they do not get everything needed.

Usually the meta labeled one is the complete package.

Also, none of the repositories apt and synaptic are getting stuff from, have stuff specifically compiled for Puppy.
They hold stuff compiled for the compatible Linux OS, that Puppy version is based on.
So not 100% they will all work in the Puppy version.
Some stuff is going to need specifically compiled for Puppy version being used.

[wiak]

Then again, I am not a hacker and could say the same about systemd. All the grievance and grousing and whining and moping against systemd gets old very fast. For me, it just works. The alternatives not so much. There are applications that expect systemd to work correctly. Why break stuff?

Having spent my life as an engineer, prior to retirement, my goal has always been to make things work, as simply and efficiently as possible. I thus really liked XFCE as a desktop because it pretty much comes configured out of the box and though it can ot of course be quite as reponsive as smaller simpler window managers such as JWM it offers far more and JWM configuration requires a lot of time-consuming dev work. JWM also has some inherent design limitations that no config can fix such as inability to open apps when file dragged and dropped to minimised app on taskbar.

Having an engineers mindset I have zero interest in flame wars about systemd, which being pretty much chosen default by upstream distros nowadays generally works better than any other init mechanism. People who moan about systemd usually simply do not have experience in configurating it correctly.

The reason I now will always use wayland is because, like systemd, that is where all future upstream team dev work concentrates. But also, in practical tests I am delighted how small and efficient it is or can be compared to X and that I find applies to both super small compositor use, such as Sway, but also KDE which in my tests was painfully slow with X but great with wayland so almost as efficient as XFCE has been. Admittedly my feelings about KDE using wayland are currently just early impressions.

[Luluc]

If you are using apt or synaptic to install window managers.
There is a good chance you are not getting the config GUI to use.
It is very easy to not get all the needed parts of a software package.
Everything is individually listed as separate items to select.
Even the listed ones that are suppose to be the complete package download.
Sometimes they do not get everything needed.
Usually the meta labeled one is the complete package.

I always install the meta labeled one, plus obconf and something else I don't remember. In my case, it's always Openbox/LXDE.

If I install some login manager, sometimes I can choose the LXDE session from the login screen options. Sometimes, I can't. And I would rather skip the login screen.

(Note that some login managers are a-holes and won't let us log in as root, which is very unpuppily.)

[peebee]

bdrv addon:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/lxpup/ ... s/download

Has same "volume management" issues as previously reported by mistfire
.

Screenshot.png (249.5 KiB) Viewed 1060 times