[Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

PhotonX · 2011-05-07 18:03:23

Now that Gnome2 is gone from the repos and Gnome3 is totally inconfigurable I ended up with switching to XFCE and trying to make it look like my old Gnome2 desktop. This works quite good but there are some little things that were easy to manage with Gnome's configuration tools and are a bit trickier to achieve with XFCE.

1. [Solved (use the AUR package xfce4-panel-compiz)] The workspace switcher applet doesn't allow to switch workspaces with mousescroll though the appropriate option is selected in its settings. I think that this is related to the fact that I'm using Compiz and it has its "viewports" instead of the workspaces since with XFWM everything works properly. Maybe there's a way to make it work with Compiz though?

2. [Solved (controlling gmusicbrowser via dbus: http://gmusicbrowser.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=dbus_api)] I'm trying to make the multimedia keys of my keyboard work which itself is not a big deal. But XFCE doesn't offer actions to control the media player like "next track" or "play/pause". I'm using gmusicbrowser and couldn't find out how to call these actions through the shell so I don't know what command to assign to the media keys.

3. [Solved (bug has been fixed)] The nice notification bubbles have "Show" buttons in Pidgin's libnotify notifications but they don't do anything when clicked: neither open a new chat window nor focus to an already opened one. Might be a Compiz effect again, but seems to happen with XFWM, too.

4. [Solved (found an Xfce replacement for all necessary applets, no need for xfapplet)] I can't find the xfapplet-plugin neither in the repos nor in the AUR. Has it been removed together with all the other Gnome2 stuff because of depending on gnome-panel? If so, how realistic would it be to maintain appropriate AUR packages?

5. [Solved (by activating the "Prompt on logout" option and a launcher for xfce4-session-logout)] I thought, I would have solved this problem but now it appears again: I'm unable to deactivate XFCE's session saving. I disabled all checkboxes in the first session settings tab and manually edited /etc/xdg/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-session.xml and its equivalent in ~/.config to look like

[...]
  <property name="general" type="empty">
    <property name="FailsafeSessionName" type="string" value="Failsafe"/>
    <property name="SaveOnExit" type="bool" value="false"/>
    <property name="AutoSave" type="bool" value="false"/>
  </property>
[...]

and then removed the cached sessions from ~/.cache/sessions while no session was running. After the next boot everything was ok (apperently because of removing the cached sessions), but the boot after this one was wrong again (last session saved). Is there any success story concerning deactivating the session saving?

Thanks,
PhotonX

edit: Reported the current status on this six years later for future reference.

Last edited by PhotonX (2017-02-16 17:06:54)

ewaller · 2011-05-07 23:24:38

2. I'm trying to make the multimedia keys of my keyboard work which itself is not a big deal. But XFCE doesn't offer actions to control the media player like "next track" or "play/pause". I'm using gmusicbrowser and couldn't find out how to call these actions through the shell so I don't know what command to assign to the media keys.

Under Settings->keyboard there is an option to bind keys to operations. Those actions can be any command you would issue from a command line, including parameters.

I don't use gmusicbrowser, but This page from their Wiki seems to have some nice dbus incantations

pogeymanz · 2011-05-07 23:45:19

Unfortunately there is no way to fix #1. You might file a feature request at xfce.org, though.

PhotonX · 2011-05-08 06:21:09

ewaller: Thanks, the wiki page was exactly what I was searching for and not able to find!

pogeymanz: Thanks for the hint, I found an existing bug report: https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7176 But it refers to a three years old patch (which was updated to 4.8 though) so I think that the XFCE devs are not much faster in implementing new stuff than the Gnome devs.

alez · 2011-05-08 16:02:14

For #3 you may want to try guifications. It's old and maybe you won't like the look (you can add themes if you want) but for me gets the job done and very well, especially if what you want is to get some control by clicking on them.

onexused · 2011-05-08 19:42:49

PhotonX wrote:

4. [Unsolved] I can't find the xfapplet-plugin neither in the repos nor in the AUR. Has it been removed together with all the other Gnome2 stuff because of depending on gnome-panel? If so, how realistic would it be to maintain appropriate AUR packages?

I don't know how realistic it would be to maintain the appropriate AUR packages, but if you hurry, http://archlinux.bulkbookstore.com/ is still out of sync. It would have a place to start with the abs PKGBUILDs for xfce4-xfapplet-plugin and the rest.

R00KIE · 2011-05-08 21:47:16

#1 works fine here but I'm not using compiz. It also works if I scroll on an empty desktop.

linuxfool76 · 2011-05-08 21:50:04

Along those same lines... Does anybody know if it would be possible to compile NetworkManager (and others) against gtk2 and maintain it as 'xfce4-network-manager' or something similar in AUR or in our own repository? Have changes upstream with the release of gtk3 made such a manuver impossible? I've just started researching this for myself but if others are up on the details please let me know! I'd also be curious to see if others are interested in going such a route...

Neil

PhotonX · 2011-05-09 05:40:23

linuxfool76: I think, quite many Gnome2 users would be interested (I am interested at least), but unfortunately I don't have any further details either... If I remember correctly there is a thread here on the forums where some user had the idea to make a repo for the whole Gnome2 - but then gave up since this would be unmaintainable. Don't know whether the chances are better for some single GTK2 apps. At least I've found file-roller2 on the AUR but who knows how long it will rest there...

R00KIE: Yeah, that's a Compiz issue, see the bugreport in post #4.

onexused: Thanks for the hint! Unfortunately the gnome-deps, gnome-panel and gnome-panel-bonobo are already gone from this repo, but it's a start though.

alez: Nice idea, I used them on Windows years ago and totally forgot about their existance. Will try.

edit: I made some digging (see http://archlinuxppc.org/packages/extra/ … l-bonobo/) and created a dependency list for xfce4-xfapplet-plugin:

--xfce4-xfapplet-plugin--
gnome-panel=2.32.1
gnome-panel-bonobo 2.32.1

--gnome-panel-bonobo--
libgnome>=2.32.0
libbonoboui>=2.24.3

--gnome-panel--
evolution-data-server>=2.32.1
gnome-desktop>=2.32.1
gnome-menus>=2.30.5
hicolor-icon-theme
libcanberra>=0.25
librsvg>=2.32.1
libwnck>=2.30.6

--evolution-data-server--
db>=5.1
heimdal>=1.3.2
libgdata>=0.6.5
libgnome-keyring>=2.32.0
libgweather>=2.30.3
libical>=0.44
libsoup>=2.32.0
nss>=3.12.8

--libgweather--
gconf>=2.31.91
gnome-icon-theme
libsoup-gnome>=2.31.92

--libgdata--
libsoup-gnome>=2.32.0

--gnome-desktop--
gconf>=2.32.0
startup-notification>=0.10

--gnome-menus--
pygtk>=2.22.0
    
--pygtk--
libglade
pygobject
python2-cairo

--pygobject--
glib2
gobject-introspection
pygobject-devel
python2
python2-cairo


--libbonoboui--
libgnome>=2.32.0
libgnomecanvas>=2.30.2

--libgnome--
gconf>=2.32.0
gnome-vfs>=2.24.3
gvfs>=1.6.6
libbonobo>=2.32.0
libcanberra>=0.25
libgnome-data=2.32.0

--libgnome-data--
gconf

--gconf--
dbus-glib>=0.86
gtk2>=2.22.0
libldap>=2.4.23
libxml2>=2.7.7
orbit2>=2.14.18
polkit>=0.98

--gnome-vfs--
avahi>=0.6.27
bzip2
fam
gconf>=2.32.0
gnome-mime-data>=2.18.0-2
gnutls>=2.8.6
hal>=0.5.13
heimdal>=1.3.3
smbclient>=3.5.5

--gnome-mime-data--
shared-mime-info

--gvfs--
fuse>=2.8.4
gnome-disk-utility>=2.32.0
libarchive>=2.8.4
libcdio>=0.82
libsoup-gnome>=2.32.0

--gnome-disk-utility--
avahi
dbus-glib>=0.86
hicolor-icon-theme
libgnome-keyring>=2.31.92
libnotify>=0.4.5
libunique>=1.1.6
udisks>=1.0.1

--libsoup-gnome--
gconf>=2.32.0
libgnome-keyring>=2.32.0
libproxy>=0.4.6
libsoup=2.32.2

--libgnome-keyring--
dbus-core>=1.4.0
glib2>=2.26.0
libgcrypt>=1.4.6

--libsoup--
glib2>=2.26.1
gnutls>=2.8.6
libxml2>=2.7.8

--libgnomecanvas--
libart-lgpl>=2.3.21
libglade>=2.6.4

--libart-lgpl--
glibc

--libglade--
gtk2>=2.16.0
libxml2>=2.7.3

--gtk2--
atk
cairo
gnutls
gtk-update-icon-cache
heimdal
libcups
libxcomposite
libxcursor
libxdamage
libxi
libxinerama
libxrandr
pango
shared-mime-info

--gtk-update-icon-cache--
gdk-pixbuf2

Some of the packages are still in the official repos, so it's bigger than it could. Also maybe one could compile some things with less deps (like remove the evolution thing from the gnome-panel deps). But still looks like much bloat for a single package. What do you think?

Last edited by PhotonX (2011-05-09 06:39:17)

PhotonX · 2011-05-09 16:56:53

Another problem added.

R00KIE · 2011-05-09 17:40:31

PhotonX wrote:

R00KIE: Yeah, that's a Compiz issue, see the bugreport in post #4.

Only later I noticed that after reading your post again

Now about session saving, I don't use session saving because before it used to go haywire from time to time and cause all sorts of problems. The only thing I've done is in the "Session and Startup" preferences disable "Automatically save session on logout" but I keep "Prompt on logout". With this you will be prompted about what you want to do (reboot/shutdown/logout/suspend/hibernate) and there will be a checkbox to choose if the session gets saved or not. I have only needed to uncheck the box once and the session doesn't get saved. However if you don't want to see the action selection box/dialog I have no idea of how to solve the problem.

Last edited by R00KIE (2011-05-09 17:40:55)

PhotonX · 2011-05-09 19:05:17

That would be ok, but I'm using the session menu applet which has its own prompt dialog where no such checkbox exists... In fact it would be a workaround to use the menu entry (the dialog looks even better) but then you'd need to open up the menu to reach it. Maybe there is some way to create a launcher in the panel to call this dialog with one click?

skunktrader · 2011-05-09 19:25:33

PhotonX wrote:

Maybe there is some way to create a launcher in the panel to call this dialog with one click?

The command for your launcher should be xfce4-session-logout

PhotonX · 2011-05-09 20:04:53

Thanks, works great, I'll test whether it solves the session save issue.

edit: I could disable session saving with the above hints, thanks!

Last edited by PhotonX (2011-05-10 16:21:04)

PhotonX · 2011-05-10 16:46:14

I checked which of the xfapplet-plugin dependencies are still present in the repo and if you remove them from the list following packages stay:

--xfce4-xfapplet-plugin--
gnome-panel=2.32.1
gnome-panel-bonobo 2.32.1

--gnome-panel-bonobo--
libgnome>=2.32.0
libbonoboui>=2.24.3

--gnome-panel--
gnome-desktop>=2.32.1
gnome-menus>=2.30.5
hicolor-icon-theme
libcanberra>=0.25
librsvg>=2.32.1
libwnck>=2.30.6

--gnome-desktop--
gconf>=2.32.0
startup-notification>=0.10

--gnome-menus--
pygtk>=2.22.0

Those are just four non-existent dependencies. Does anybody know whether all the other 2.3x packages that are in the repo now will be removed soon?

Arch Linux

#1 2011-05-07 18:03:23

[Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

#2 2011-05-07 23:24:38

Re: [Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

#3 2011-05-07 23:45:19

Re: [Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

#4 2011-05-08 06:21:09

Re: [Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

#5 2011-05-08 16:02:14

Re: [Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

#6 2011-05-08 19:42:49

Re: [Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

#7 2011-05-08 21:47:16

Re: [Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

#8 2011-05-08 21:50:04

Re: [Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

#9 2011-05-09 05:40:23

Re: [Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

#10 2011-05-09 16:56:53

Re: [Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

#11 2011-05-09 17:40:31

Re: [Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

#12 2011-05-09 19:05:17

Re: [Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

#13 2011-05-09 19:25:33

Re: [Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

#14 2011-05-09 20:04:53

Re: [Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

#15 2011-05-10 16:46:14

Re: [Solved] Some little problems with XFCE

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