Creating 4.5 Xfce VM

WetGeek

The partition manager in the Calamares installer was so easy to use, compared to GEdit or KDE Partition Manager that I don't know why I had trouble with it when I created the Plasma VM - just infamiliarity and a rush to get something done, I guess. I went slower this time, and had no problems creating what I needed, including a swap space big enough for hibernating the finished VM.

Unfortunately, the installation failed when it came time to install the boot loader. I created a bug report in the Dev Tracker. To see whether it was a problem with the partition manager instead of the installer, I'm going to try once more, this time using GParted to prepare the .VDI before attemptin the installation. If that succeeds, I won't log another bug report, but I'll return to here to explain.

When I started GParted, the .VDI disk looked perfect. It included all the correct flags, including the ESP flag along with the BOOT flag, although that hadn't been visible in the Calamares partition manager. But I didn't want to attempt another installation with the same file, and expect a different result, so I created a new partition table and started over from the beginning.

This time the installation continued on to completion. I amended the bug report appropriatey. And indeed, after removing the .ISO file from the virtual CD drive, the device launches just fine. I'm a bit confused by the UI as it appears here, compared with the upper bar and dock that my previous Xfce VMs had, but I suspect it was done this way to appeal to those who don't prefer the GNOME look. I approve. It would also be nice to get rid of that wallpaper before this is released, I think.

I'll continue to configure this VM and report any problems I find. And I'll leave the arrangement of the UI the same, since users probably will as well.

Axios

WetGeek That was one the hardest things I wrangled with when I stopped working.
Slowing downnnnnnnnnnn I still battle it from time to time. (I was one those hyper workers..lol)
When the seasons permit I will get a big Ice tea or what ever I feel Like have a big shade tree in yard
and I go sit under it and let the world wiz by.

brent

Axios That was one the hardest things I wrangled with when I stopped working.
Slowing downnnnnnnnnnn I still battle it from time to time. (I was one those hyper workers..lol)

my day will come to not work (please dear god please) but as a fellow hyper I think in retirement I would probably build an ark, and then an entire truck, and not stop until I had my own servers that I could lease space from...then there's also days I could sit under that tree and drink beer like you mentioned🙂. We will se how it plays out.

@WetGeek last question (maybe)--how do you like the ease of customization? just curious. and excited.

WetGeek

I want to include a narrative of sorts, to describe my initial configuration. I'll do that here, because it doesn't seem appropriate to make it a bug report. Here's how it went.

The bottom panel, as I mentioned, is different from my Xfce VMs that were created from Budgie VMs, but I wanted to keep this UI looking like what the users will see. So there's a bottom panel, on which I installed a workspace switcher and in the settings, I raised the number of workspaces from the default 4 to 9, and named them, to accommodate the apps I'm testing with.

From left to right, those are Email, Browser, Spider, Shisen-sho, Mahjongg, Telegram, System, File Manager, and Terminal. The only thing I would change about the workspace switcher is to change the color of an empty workspace that's been selected. Most other workspace switchers I've used do that, to confirm which one will be used to start an application.

In the terminal, I did an update, then installed the software I'd need to do the testing. That included Terminology, Vivaldi, Restic, and Micro. I used micro to modify the two .bashrc ffiles to include my additions, and to install my NAS shares in /etc/fstab. Then I created mount points in /mnt, and mounted those shares there. Back in my /home folder, I deleted all the folders except Desktop, and replaced them with symlinks to those mounted shares.

I really like Thunar. There was absolutely no drama involved in any of this configuration. Well, except for one thing. I've been unable to find a setting to change the double-click to open an item to a single-click. I'm sure it must be in there somewhere, and I'll probably find it as I refine this configuration.

Right now, though, it's time for breakfast. If I have any reason to, I'll comment further in this thread, but I suspectt that won't be necessary. By the way, I've created this post entirely in the Xfce 4.5 VM. I really like the Xfce Screenshot utility, too. And a general impression of the performance is that it's much "snappier" that I would have expected for a release candidate.

joluveba

WetGeek I've been unable to find a setting to change the double-click to open an item to a single-click. I'm sure it must be in there somewhere, and I'll probably find it as I refine this configuration.

I have used XFCE, and it's very configurable, almost as much as KDE Plasma. There is a way to do it:

https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/preferences

WetGeek Never.

Solus XFCE sounds very good, and I feel tempted to give it a try. But not enough to give up KDE Plasma.

WetGeek

I have one brief comment to add. Instead of shutting down the VM, I tried to hibernate it with the command systemctl hibernate in the terminal. That resulted in an error telling me it couldn't hibernate because there was insufficient swap space.

That's puzzling, because I provided a 6.0 GiB swap partition, and the VM only has 4 GB of RAM. If I can't get to the bottom of it as I work with this VM, I'll create a bug report so it isn't overlooked before release.

brent

WetGeek
Quatro Cosas:
1) When are you saying goodbye to Plasma?
2) Am I the only one who finds the bicycles romantic?
3) My biggest knock on all the XFCEs I've tried is there were far too many settings managers or setting never being unified but scattered like Mate. Still the case here?
4) with the workplace switcher it's a busy beaver of duplicate icons on the task bar. is there a way around that?

nice write-up btw.

WetGeek

brent 1) When are you saying goodbye to Plasma?

Never.

2) Am I the only one who finds the bicycles romantic?

Yes, but for the rest of us, it's very easy to get rid of them.

3) My biggest knock on all the XFCEs I've tried is there were far too many settings managers or setting never being unified but scattered like Mate. Still the case here?

Somewhat. But the main settings are available in a GUI settings manager.

4) with the workplace switcher it's a busy beaver of duplicate icons on the task bar. is there a way around that?

If you mean the worspace switcher plus the icon-only task manager, you could always simply remove the task manager. But that means you'd always need to go to the menu to fetch anything you want to run that's not in the workspace switcher

And that's not the end of the world, either. I definitely wouldn't get rid of the workspace switcher, because that's extremely useful. Those applications are all running on an uncluttered desktop of their own, without competing with any other application. That's huge. Neither the task manager or a dock provides that functionality.

I might be tempted to get rid of the task manager if I install a dock - those two provide the same functionality. But I'm not sure how well a dock would work with a bottom panel. Maybe that's not a problem. If it turns out to be one, I could always change the bottom panel to a top panel, like what I use with Plasma.

brent

WetGeek
you've been great beta tester for this. I'm really looking forward to its official release. Its partition is already made🙂. Thanks for indulging my questions, even the rhetorical ones!

Axios

That would be a deal breaker for me if you started a program and it made its own desktop
If I understand right? Surely if it is one could change that.

WetGeek

joluveba There is a way to do it:

Thanks. It didn't occur to me to look in Thunar preferences. I assumed it would be part of the DE. I'll see if I can find it in Solus' version of Xfce based on that.

Yes, it was easy to find once I new where to look. Thanks again!

WetGeek

brent -how do you like the ease of customization?

I set a goal to build four VMs for the four new versions of Solus (done) and configure them as daily drivers (mostly done, depending on DE) and use them as such for as long as I can in order to find what doesn't work and to log bug reports.

Of course, Xfce is the one I'm concentrating more on, because it's the newest DE for Solus, and the Solus version of Xfce differs so much from the usual presentation. It's as if Solus is doing its best to make it a Budgie twin. And there are lots of things that aren't working well--yet--but i know that they will before this new version of the new DE is made public.

In general, our Xfce seems very customizable, although perhaps not quite to the level of Plasma, or even Budgie. And in many ways it's more difficult to achieve that cutomization. Therer's no task list, for example. What looks like one in the pictures is just some icons that are moved to that end of the bottom panel. And there's no connection between those icons and any running applications. No way to "pin" them to the "task list." To get these icons there, one must go to the main menu, find the application, right-click on it, and select Add to Panel. Then the icon is added to the far right end of the bottom panel, from where it can be carefully moved to the left end, where a real "task manager" is usually found in other DEs.

So, AT THIS TIME, I can accomplish much of the configuration that I can with, say, Plasma, but it's harder to do, and doesn't provide all of the same functionality. I stress AT THIS TIME, because this is a first for Solus. I wasn't very impressed with the first Solus Plasma years ago, either. But for now, I can't find a way to move the Xfce bottom panel to the top, to keep it from conflicting with a dock. I can't get the Xfce VM to hibernate, despite having a swap partition that's 1 1/2 times the size of RAM, and so far, I can't get a dock or plank to work with it. Many of these things were not a problem with the Xfce VM I created from what started as a Budgie VM.

So, am I ready to stop using Plasma? Heh. But the Solus team has a history of working miracles, and I have no douubt that they'll be able to pull off a few of those with Xfce. And the more of us who help, the sooner they'll git 'er done. Testing is vitally important. It's sometimes boring, trying to reproduce an issue, and getting to "root cause," but before developers can solve a problem, the problem needs to be discovered. Every Solus user can help with that.

EbonJaeger

WetGeek Therer's no task list, for example. What looks like one in the pictures is just some icons that are moved to that end of the bottom panel. And there's no connection between those icons and any running applications. No way to "pin" them to the "task list."

XFCE's tasklist does not support pinned launchers; it has no such concept.

WetGeek But for now, I can't find a way to move the Xfce bottom panel to the top, to keep it from conflicting with a dock.

To do this, right-click on the panel, hover over Panel in the menu, and click Panel Preferences. In the General section of the Display tab (shown by default), uncheck the option for Lock Panel. Then, you can move it whereever you want by dragging the panel from the left and right edges.

WetGeek

EbonJaeger To do this, right-click on the panel, hover over Panel in the menu

Thanks. That's probabaly a lot easier to do than it sounds like. And it turns out that that's quite true. As with many other things related to Xfce, it actually does many things that other DEs do--just differently. And moving the bottom panel to the top of the UI made a LOT of difference for me in terms of usability.

I even think so far that it's added task-manager-like functionality to Xfce, although I've barely worked with it so far. When I launch an application from the menu, it creates a launcher in the dock. There's a right-click option to lock an icon to the dock, which is a help. If that will allow them to maintain a position in the dock, that will work for me.

And I was able to access this dock by going to the main menu and typing "dock" in the search field there. Instead of just finding it in the menu, it launched a dock, and I believe that may be the Xfce dock I've been looking for. I'm pretty sure I've managed to remove the other ones that I've tried.

WetGeek

WetGeek And moving the bottom panel to the top of the UI made a LOT of difference for me in terms of usability.
EbonJaeger

I think it would be very wise for Xfce to be distributed in this configuration instead of the pseudo-Budgie format that the RC1 .ISO creates. Most of the steps it takes to achieve this more useful state are not very intuitive to a new user of Xfce. I can personally attest to that.

brent

WetGeek I'm getting the feeling that XFCE is a true Mate replacement: low consumption, solid, no pyrotechnics, easy on the eyes, with it's own set of default applications, and works flawlessly. Again, speaking for myself: stoked.
Thanks to all the Space Monkeys like you who beta test so I can get the best version when ISO comes!

WetGeek

WetGeek And moving the bottom panel to the top of the UI made a LOT of difference for me in terms of usability.

It may be obvious to others who have used Plank that it's indeed what's shown in that image, but I had not used it before. And I had installed three different dock-related packages that I had hoped might work with Xfce, Plank being one of those. I had also removed all three of those packages--again, including Plank--but I had not yet rebooted, so it remained in effect. I had even launched my 4.4 Xfce VM and noticed that the dock didn't look quite the same, but I attributed that as possibly a difference between 4.4 and 4.5.

Today I did a backup and then an update, and when I restarted there was no longer a dock present. And typing dock into the search field on the main menu didn't launch it, as it had before. So on a hunch, I reinstalled Plank from the Solus repository, and that confirmed that it was indeeed what I'd been using. And it still had all my applications listed in it, in the order in which I had arranged them when I'd last used it.

So I believe I now know how to make Solus Xfce usable: just install Plank. Two things that made me believe it was actually part of Xfce is that (1) it automatically loaded launchers representing applications that I'd started from the Xfce menu, and (2) it contains a launcher that turns the Xfce panel off and on. It seems remarkably integrated into the Xfce DE. For all I know it integrates that way to all DEs, but I've never used it with any others, so that's just a guess. To me, it just seemed like a part of Xfce.

ermo

brent WetGeek I'm getting the feeling that XFCE is a true Mate replacement: low consumption, solid, no pyrotechnics, easy on the eyes, with it's own set of default applications

This is indeed what we were going for; something that, for the most part, will feel familiar to existing MATE users, now that MATE has been -- and I use this term generously -- put on "life support" in Solus.

brent

WetGeek xfce technically does not have a dock just a pinned app taskbar like budgie but with, I believe, more limitations (budgie has come a long way) but xfce had not in that dept. I base that on xfce auditions during the Solus Outage period of early this year.

in xfce I fought with pinned stuff not sticking, including native apps, and flatpaks, appimages, etc. too much battling.

budgie pinned app taskbar has come so far as much as dependability that I finally ditched plank. I think XFCE will need a dock like Plank. I am in complete agreement with you here.

(From your picture I can attest that Solus is one of the rare distros that ships Plank with Plank preferences icon at the far left upon install. Most distros you have to terminal/plank --preferences),

edit. xfce-4 panel is what the xfce taskbar is called I suddenly remembered. not a dock, not a taskbar, but a panel in the parlance of our times..)

EbonJaeger

brent edit. xfce-4 panel is what the xfce taskbar is called I suddenly remembered. not a dock, not a taskbar, but a panel in the parlance of our times..)

In XFCE-land, the xfce4-panel project contains a handful of what Budgie would call applets, and the tasklist is one of those; they're just bundled together in one project/package.

WetGeek

EbonJaeger project contains a handful of what Budgie would call applets, and the tasklist is one of those; they're just bundled together in one project/package.

That really surprises me. I've looked through the panel's Add New Items ... list a number of times, looking for a task list, and haven't seen one. What have I misunderstood? Is it an applet that's to be installed on the UI, but not on the panel?