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I have been using XFCE for 5 or 6 years, the _best_ thing about it are it's developers, they don't keep updating it. XFCE avoids the plague which affects rest

I have been using XFCE for 5 or 6 years, the _best_ thing about it are it's developers, they don't keep updating it. XFCE avoids the plague which affects rest of the software industry (me included) - dedicate design, marketing, and development teams who constantly have to add something to justify their jobs and bonuses. Look at the number of app updates on mobile phones, every freaking week there is a update available. If you don't update they will eventually block older versions.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
flyinghamster 8y ago
I've been a big Xubuntu fan for quite a while myself. I recently put 18.04 on a VM to give it a test drive, and found that they've tweaked XFCE so that you have to be ridiculously precise at moving the mouse to a lower corner if you want to resize a window. The margin for getting a lower-corner drag cursor seems to be one pixel at best. Argh. I've seen this problem over and over on a variety of Ubuntu versions over the years, as if they don't want me resizing windows. Is there any way to tweak this? I'm not at all liking it. My 16.04 installations are much better in this regard.
- tacoman 8y ago
  Press Alt when you're near where the window handle would be and then you don't have to find the 1 pixel border.
- tacotime 8y ago
  "Apparently this problem has been around for years, and one bug report has been closed "won't fix". The issue has been reopened with Bug 11808 - Xfwm: Increase the resize border of window. The width of the grab area is controlled by the theme." 1 Most people appear to circumvent the problem by using another means of resizing windows. "As soon as your keyboard-shortcut (in Xfce upstream its Alt+F8) is hit, you can then resize the window by either moving your mouse (no need to click or drag) or use your keyboard arrow keys." 2 1 https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/156435/how-can-i-make-windows-easier-to-resize-in-xfce https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/156435/how-can-i-ma... 2 https://xubuntu.org/news/window-resizing-in-xubuntu-and-xfce/ https://xubuntu.org/news/window-resizing-in-xubuntu-and-xfce...
- benjaminjackman 8y ago
  This isn't a solution but `a just in case you are not aware` You can press alt+right click and hold then drag near the corner of the window to resize it (alt+left drag moves it). I understand that there are times when that isn't work so it's nice to have both options. ( I wrote a browser based windowing system and have experimented with having the bezels on the windows be quite large and/or auto-expanding when the mouse nears them to make resizes as easy as possible since hard to hit pixel thing annoys me so much)
- fb03 8y ago
  The tweak I found was essentially learning a new way to resize windows. Hold ALT and right-click-drag from anywhere inside the windows at the lower right corner and it'll grab the window and resize it as you move the mouse. I know it's not a fix, and it is still cumbersome if all you have at the moment is a laptop trackpad. But it beats having to update your destkop environment's chrome and all that jazz. I find XFCE's window chrome pleasing and minimal, the only issue is exactly that, you only have 1px of hot area at the borders.
- foresto 8y ago
  Doesn't this depend on the theme you choose in Window Manager settings? Kokodi or Moheli might give you more pixels to grab than whatever theme you're using now.
obelix_ 8y ago
Just curious, how these Devs develop immunity to the "plague"?
- catach 8y ago
  In this particular case, the small team size and the multi-year effort to upgrade the DE to GTK+ 3 is likely a strong contributor.
- digi_owl 8y ago
  I would not say they are immune, simply that they have the "metabolism" of sloths. In other words, a small team of volunteers rather than a big group of full time developers working for a big name corporation.
dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
There are two reasons as you probably know. In the mobile sphere you can't really afford not updating your app because it will fail to comply with the newer standards and eventually it will be removed from the app store. It's unfortunate, it's against the interest of conservative mobile device users, but there's nothing we can do about it.
trumped 8y ago
that's one good thing about opensource software that is not sponsored by corporations, they don't need to waste money just because they have a bunch of engineers on their payrolls
quentindemetz 8y ago
Huge fan of xfce here but couldn't get hidpi to work properly... Any hints?
dredmorbius 8y ago
Windowmaker perfects this ;-)

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

flyinghamster 8y ago

I've been a big Xubuntu fan for quite a while myself. I recently put 18.04 on a VM to give it a test drive, and found that they've tweaked XFCE so that you have to be ridiculously precise at moving the mouse to a lower corner if you want to resize a window. The margin for getting a lower-corner drag cursor seems to be one pixel at best. Argh. I've seen this problem over and over on a variety of Ubuntu versions over the years, as if they don't want me resizing windows. Is there any way to tweak this? I'm not at all liking it. My 16.04 installations are much better in this regard.

tacoman 8y ago
Press Alt when you're near where the window handle would be and then you don't have to find the 1 pixel border.
tacotime 8y ago
"Apparently this problem has been around for years, and one bug report has been closed "won't fix". The issue has been reopened with Bug 11808 - Xfwm: Increase the resize border of window. The width of the grab area is controlled by the theme." 1 Most people appear to circumvent the problem by using another means of resizing windows. "As soon as your keyboard-shortcut (in Xfce upstream its Alt+F8) is hit, you can then resize the window by either moving your mouse (no need to click or drag) or use your keyboard arrow keys." 2 1 https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/156435/how-can-i-make-windows-easier-to-resize-in-xfce https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/156435/how-can-i-ma... 2 https://xubuntu.org/news/window-resizing-in-xubuntu-and-xfce/ https://xubuntu.org/news/window-resizing-in-xubuntu-and-xfce...
benjaminjackman 8y ago
This isn't a solution but `a just in case you are not aware` You can press alt+right click and hold then drag near the corner of the window to resize it (alt+left drag moves it). I understand that there are times when that isn't work so it's nice to have both options. ( I wrote a browser based windowing system and have experimented with having the bezels on the windows be quite large and/or auto-expanding when the mouse nears them to make resizes as easy as possible since hard to hit pixel thing annoys me so much)
fb03 8y ago
The tweak I found was essentially learning a new way to resize windows. Hold ALT and right-click-drag from anywhere inside the windows at the lower right corner and it'll grab the window and resize it as you move the mouse. I know it's not a fix, and it is still cumbersome if all you have at the moment is a laptop trackpad. But it beats having to update your destkop environment's chrome and all that jazz. I find XFCE's window chrome pleasing and minimal, the only issue is exactly that, you only have 1px of hot area at the borders.
foresto 8y ago
Doesn't this depend on the theme you choose in Window Manager settings? Kokodi or Moheli might give you more pixels to grab than whatever theme you're using now.

obelix_ 8y ago

Just curious, how these Devs develop immunity to the "plague"?

catach 8y ago
In this particular case, the small team size and the multi-year effort to upgrade the DE to GTK+ 3 is likely a strong contributor.
digi_owl 8y ago
I would not say they are immune, simply that they have the "metabolism" of sloths. In other words, a small team of volunteers rather than a big group of full time developers working for a big name corporation.

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago

There are two reasons as you probably know. In the mobile sphere you can't really afford not updating your app because it will fail to comply with the newer standards and eventually it will be removed from the app store. It's unfortunate, it's against the interest of conservative mobile device users, but there's nothing we can do about it.

trumped 8y ago

that's one good thing about opensource software that is not sponsored by corporations, they don't need to waste money just because they have a bunch of engineers on their payrolls

quentindemetz 8y ago

Huge fan of xfce here but couldn't get hidpi to work properly... Any hints?

dredmorbius 8y ago

Windowmaker perfects this ;-)