State of Xfce in Fedora - upstream defaults versus custom defaults

[Philippe Lemaire]

Hello there,

I'm a relatively new Fedora user, but I've been using Xfce on and off on
several distros such as Xubuntu, Mint, Debian, and Arch.

From my understanding, Fedora spins tend to provide desktop experiences
that are close to the default setting for Gnome, Plasma, Xfce, and others.

That's usually a reasonable approach, but in the case of Xfce, I think the
defaults are horrible and give a wrong impression of a lackluster and ugly
desktop environment.
Defaults are usually used in release screenshots and in reviews, and if you
compare Xubuntu and Fedora Xfce, you might get the impression that the
latter is far less polished.

The differences are technically minimal, but can make a bit difference for
newcomers and reviewers.
This morning I installed xfce on my fedora 25 base and I spent about 30
minutes configuring it to a state where it looks good (subjective), works
like I want (highly subjective) and it now is a very pleasant experience.

Here are some things in the settings I did that I feel should be default
behavior, but are not :

- Tile a window to the left / right with Super + Left / Right
- Maximize a window with Super + Up
- Don't drag a window across virtual desktops (since it clashes with snap
to edge behavior)
- Whisker menu
- Don't change focus when you simply scroll over a window
-Orage Time date plugin

Can this kind of straight improvements be implemented in the spin, or has
this already been discussed to death and rejected?

Best regards,

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On 24 January 2017 at 11:02, Philippe Lemaire
<lemaire.philippe(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  Hello there,
>
>  I'm a relatively new Fedora user, but I've been using Xfce on and off on
>  several distros such as Xubuntu, Mint, Debian, and Arch.
>
>  From my understanding, Fedora spins tend to provide desktop experiences that
>  are close to the default setting for Gnome, Plasma, Xfce, and others.
>
>  That's usually a reasonable approach, but in the case of Xfce, I think the
>  defaults are horrible and give a wrong impression of a lackluster and ugly
>  desktop environment.
>  Defaults are usually used in release screenshots and in reviews, and if you
>  compare Xubuntu and Fedora Xfce, you might get the impression that the
>  latter is far less polished.
>
>  The differences are technically minimal, but can make a bit difference for
>  newcomers and reviewers.
>  This morning I installed xfce on my fedora 25 base and I spent about 30
>  minutes configuring it to a state where it looks good (subjective), works
>  like I want (highly subjective) and it now is a very pleasant experience.
>
>  Here are some things in the settings I did that I feel should be default
>  behavior, but are not :
>
>  - Tile a window to the left / right with Super + Left / Right
>  - Maximize a window with Super + Up
>  - Don't drag a window across virtual desktops (since it clashes with snap to
>  edge behavior)
>  - Whisker menu
>  - Don't change focus when you simply scroll over a window
>  -Orage Time date plugin
>
>  Can this kind of straight improvements be implemented in the spin, or has
>  this already been discussed to death and rejected? 
The discussion usually goes like this:

Person A: I think this is all ugly and needs fixing.
Person putting Spin together: OK, can you send me what needs to be done?
Person A: .....

Patches are welcome. They may or may not be agreed on later but having
actual patches for what needs to be done in what files is what is
needed.


>  Best regards,
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  xfce mailing list -- xfce(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  To unsubscribe send an email to xfce-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Tue, 24 Jan 2017 17:02:57 +0100
Philippe Lemaire <lemaire.philippe(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
...snip...

>  default behavior, but are not :
>  
>  - Tile a window to the left / right with Super + Left / Right
>  - Maximize a window with Super + Up
>  - Don't drag a window across virtual desktops (since it clashes with
>  snap to edge behavior)
>  - Whisker menu
>  - Don't change focus when you simply scroll over a window
>  -Orage Time date plugin
>  
>  Can this kind of straight improvements be implemented in the spin, or
>  has this already been discussed to death and rejected? 
It has been discussed several times, but never gotten to the point
where anything was done. As you note, appearance is somewhat subjective
and people have different ideas what looks nice or how they want it. 

Personally, I am pretty against changing any keybindings as that can
definitely come up to bite us later if upstream assigns something new
to that keybinding we used. (This has happened before). 

I thought we did add whisker menu and orage should be there (although
it might not be active in the panels). 

I like to think of the default setup as a 'starting point' where you
can adjust and add whatever panels and setup you like. To avoid the
problem of people looking at initial screenshots, perhaps we could make
a nice gallery or possible setups? That would show people all the power
they have to customize things. 

kevin

[Mukundan Ragavan]

On 01/24/2017 12:05 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
>  
>  I like to think of the default setup as a 'starting point' where you
>  can adjust and add whatever panels and setup you like. To avoid the
>  problem of people looking at initial screenshots, perhaps we could make
>  a nice gallery or possible setups? That would show people all the power
>  they have to customize things.  

I agree with Kevin here. I would much rather leave the upstream defaults
- which are a nice starting point.

One change I would be ok with would be to include Whisker menu as
default instead of standard Xfce menu. In fact, whisker does seem to be
rather popular.

Any panel changes, theme changes, everything becomes too subjective I think.

My two cents.

-- 
GPG Key - E5C8BC67
-------

[Philippe Lemaire]

​Q​
uestion about the keybindings:

are the keybindings set on the multimedia keys to commands for the media
player pragha defaults from upstream?
This is the first time I’ve seen that.

Pragha was not installed on my system (I started from a default workstation
install, and installed xfce via dnf groupinstall xfce)

Thanks
​

On Wed, Jan 25, 2017 at 12:05 AM, Mukundan Ragavan <nonamedotc(a)gmail.com&gt;
wrote:

>  On 01/24/2017 12:05 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
>  >
>  > I like to think of the default setup as a 'starting point' where you
>  > can adjust and add whatever panels and setup you like. To avoid the
>  > problem of people looking at initial screenshots, perhaps we could make
>  > a nice gallery or possible setups? That would show people all the power
>  > they have to customize things.
>
>
>  I agree with Kevin here. I would much rather leave the upstream defaults
>  - which are a nice starting point.
>
>  One change I would be ok with would be to include Whisker menu as
>  default instead of standard Xfce menu. In fact, whisker does seem to be
>  rather popular.
>
>  Any panel changes, theme changes, everything becomes too subjective I
>  think.
>
>  My two cents.
>
>  --
>  GPG Key - E5C8BC67
>  -------
>  _______________________________________________
>  xfce mailing list -- xfce(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  To unsubscribe send an email to xfce-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>

[Mukundan Ragavan]

On 01/25/2017 06:32 AM, Philippe Lemaire wrote:
>  ​Q​
>  uestion about the keybindings:
>  
>  are the keybindings set on the multimedia keys to commands for the media
>  player pragha defaults from upstream?
>  This is the first time I’ve seen that.
>  
>  Pragha was not installed on my system (I started from a default
>  workstation install, and installed xfce via |dnf groupinstall xfce|)
>  
>  Thanks
>  
>  ​ 
Nope.

The keybindings for media controls are fedora specific. This predates my
involvement but I suspect this has to do with the decision to add pragha
as default media player in Xfce spin.

Here is the fedora keybindings patch that does this -

https://src.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/libxfce4ui.git/plain/libxfce4ui-4...

-- 
GPG Key - E5C8BC67
-------

[Stanislav Kontar]

On 01/24/2017 06:05 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
>  On Tue, 24 Jan 2017 17:02:57 +0100
>  
>  I like to think of the default setup as a 'starting point' where you
>  can adjust and add whatever panels and setup you like. To avoid the
>  problem of people looking at initial screenshots, perhaps we could make
>  a nice gallery or possible setups? That would show people all the power
>  they have to customize things.  
The gallery would be great. I remember I was not sold on Xfce until I
have seen what Xubuntu did with it. Having like 5 very distinct and
polished setups to show would be nice.

I have this "Windows on steroids" setup
(https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?pid=41109#p41109), but I think
people will have "Two panels", "GNOME like", "Launcher
only", or "No
panels at all" setups, and different light or dark themes, icons etc.

-- 
Stanislav Kontar

[Philippe Lemaire]

I agree about the gallery.

As for pragha being part of the xfce spin, shouldn't it be pulled as a
dependency when a users does

    dnf groupinstall xfce

?

Or is there another group to install to get the full package? I had several
packages that seemed missing, like pragha and galculator, even though they
had keyboard shortcuts set.

Regards,

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 9:11 AM, Stanislav Kontar <skontar(a)redhat.com&gt;
wrote:

>  On 01/24/2017 06:05 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
>  > On Tue, 24 Jan 2017 17:02:57 +0100
>  >
>  > I like to think of the default setup as a 'starting point' where you
>  > can adjust and add whatever panels and setup you like. To avoid the
>  > problem of people looking at initial screenshots, perhaps we could make
>  > a nice gallery or possible setups? That would show people all the power
>  > they have to customize things.
>
>  The gallery would be great. I remember I was not sold on Xfce until I
>  have seen what Xubuntu did with it. Having like 5 very distinct and
>  polished setups to show would be nice.
>
>  I have this "Windows on steroids" setup
>  (https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?pid=41109#p41109), but I think
>  people will have "Two panels", "GNOME like", "Launcher
> only", or "No
>  panels at all" setups, and different light or dark themes, icons etc.
>
>  --
>  Stanislav Kontar
>  _______________________________________________
>  xfce mailing list -- xfce(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  To unsubscribe send an email to xfce-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Wed, 25 Jan 2017 20:47:29 -0500
Mukundan Ragavan <nonamedotc(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  On 01/25/2017 06:32 AM, Philippe Lemaire wrote:
>  > ​Q​
>  > uestion about the keybindings:
>  > 
>  > are the keybindings set on the multimedia keys to commands for the
>  > media player pragha defaults from upstream?
>  > This is the first time I’ve seen that.
>  > 
>  > Pragha was not installed on my system (I started from a default
>  > workstation install, and installed xfce via |dnf groupinstall xfce|)
>  > 
>  > Thanks
>  > 
>  > ​  
>  
>  Nope.
>  
>  The keybindings for media controls are fedora specific. This predates
>  my involvement but I suspect this has to do with the decision to add
>  pragha as default media player in Xfce spin.
>  
>  Here is the fedora keybindings patch that does this -
>  
>
> https://src.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/libxfce4ui.git/plain/libxfce4ui-4...
Yeah, this was added long long long ago so 'media keys' would work. 

kevin

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Thu, 26 Jan 2017 10:54:29 +0100
Philippe Lemaire <lemaire.philippe(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  I agree about the gallery.
>  
>  As for pragha being part of the xfce spin, shouldn't it be pulled as a
>  dependency when a users does
>  
>      dnf groupinstall xfce
>  
>  ?
>  
>  Or is there another group to install to get the full package? I had
>  several packages that seemed missing, like pragha and galculator,
>  even though they had keyboard shortcuts set. 
It's actually in the 'xfce-media' group along with other multimedia
stuff. 

kevin

[Christoph Wickert]

2017-01-26 2:47 GMT+01:00 Mukundan Ragavan <nonamedotc(a)gmail.com&gt;:

>  The keybindings for media controls are fedora specific. This predates
> my
>  involvement but I suspect this has to do with the decision to add pragha
>  as default media player in Xfce spin.
>
>  Here is the fedora keybindings patch that does this -
>
>
> https://src.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/libxfce4ui.git/plain/libxfce4ui-4...
That was me. :-) I think these changes are useful, but I agree with
Kevin that the patch can cause problems if there are changes upstream.
Nevertheless I think we should not just drop the patch but try to
upstream it, at least the parts that make sense. But I'll leave this
decision to the maintainers of the package as I am stepping down (see
my other mail on this topic).

Best regards,
Christoph