Xfce Forum

the_file

Member

Registered: 2013-02-17

Posts: 36

The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

I really appreciate the whole effort of xfce and its only getting better, but 2 critical things really are missing.

1. A built in method for changing the applications menu via a gui.
2. A real xrandr solution.

To address these issues is really quite simple.

1. Fork the gnome menu editor called "alacarte" and strip everything gnome specific, add a link to the xfsettings UI and problem solved, and solved really well.

2. For xfce 4.12 there is a SIG to implement the windows method of using external monitors and displays. I REALLY like it, it is something that is well designed, however it is not enough for the corner cases many DO HAVE on gnu, many people will still have overscaning and underscanning issues especially with HDMI, which the UI that 4.12 will implement will NOT solve. To resolve this issue simply fork "arandr" and implement it into xfsettings and problem solved.

If you want to post any criticisms please make it constructive, keep up the good work.

ukbrian

Member

Registered: 2013-02-12

Posts: 2

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

Have a look at menuprops

the_file

Member

Registered: 2013-02-17

Posts: 36

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

Have a look at menuprops

What ever the devs deem best easiest menu editing app to impliment is fine by me. Just as long as they add a link to it in the xfsettings UI.

Last edited by the_file (2013-02-18 08:04:25)

the_file

Member

Registered: 2013-02-17

Posts: 36

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

But i think that arandr is a must interms of users being able to fine tune their multi display setupts. I simply have not seen an application that is so simple to use and allows you to change the positioning and scaling of your external displays so easily. Maybe just impliment it and call it "fine tune external displays" or something.

beardedlinuxgeek

Member

Registered: 2013-02-27

Posts: 9

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

But i think that arandr is a must interms of users being able to fine tune their multi display setupts. I simply have not seen an application that is so simple to use and allows you to change the positioning and scaling of your external displays so easily. Maybe just impliment it and call it "fine tune external displays" or something.

Just install arandr if you want it. It doesn't need to be bundled with xfce.

the_file

Member

Registered: 2013-02-17

Posts: 36

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

Just install arandr if you want it. It doesn't need to be bundled with xfce.

If you want to post any criticisms please make it constructive,

I don't think the devs will impliment it, it seems xfce devs are a small circle with a few people calling the shots on whats gonna be changed and whats not.

Last edited by the_file (2013-03-04 01:23:08)

wkr

Member

Registered: 2011-01-01

Posts: 88

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

I don't think the devs will impliment it, it seems xfce devs are a small circle with a few people calling the shots on whats gonna be changed and whats not.

True, but, unlike some forum users, devs listen to users suggestions. The best example is implementation of tabs in Thunar, despite devs saw this feature useless. So any suggestions is useful and may be implemented some day.

the_file

Member

Registered: 2013-02-17

Posts: 36

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

I don't think the devs will impliment it, it seems xfce devs are a small circle with a few people calling the shots on whats gonna be changed and whats not.

True, but, unlike some forum users, devs listen to users suggestions. The best example is implementation of tabs in Thunar, despite devs saw this feature useless. So any suggestions is useful and may be implemented some day.

Funny how people mentioned tabs over so many other usefull features that could of been developed in its place. Nautilus is far superior to thunar; nautilus makes doing work way easier. Just look at how nautilus allows you to modify the icon captions with **3** different properties, thunar doesn't come close in being that usefull.

bwat47

Member

Registered: 2011-04-11

Posts: 22

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

For me the biggest thing they need to implement is a mixer that has proper pulseaudio support.

Some simple opengl compositing would be nice too (nothing fancy, main purpose would be to remove tearing. xfwm's compositing even with the new vsync patch still has tearing at the top of the screen, very annoying when watching fullscreen video), but I understand the xfce developers probably don't have the resources for that (and hopefully wayland will remove the need to have opengl compositing just to remove tearing in the future), for now I've had a good experience using elementary os's lightweight gala compositor in xfce.

Last edited by bwat47 (2013-03-08 04:26:56)

the_file

Member

Registered: 2013-02-17

Posts: 36

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

For me the biggest thing they need to implement is a mixer that has proper pulseaudio support.

Some simple opengl compositing would be nice too (nothing fancy, main purpose would be to remove tearing. xfwm's compositing even with the new vsync patch still has tearing at the top of the screen, very annoying when watching fullscreen video), but I understand the xfce developers probably don't have the resources for that (and hopefully wayland will remove the need to have opengl compositing just to remove tearing in the future), for now I've had a good experience using elementary os's lightweight gala compositor in xfce.

I have no tearing at all; and i am using open drivers. I really hope they won't add any opengl things since its a huge waste of effort, given how they are already limited in their capabilities as far as big complex things go. If you want openGL get compiz - it works really well with xfce. I hope ALSA becomes deprecated, as its a huge pile of junk that is preventing any serious audio development on gnu, ALSA sits on OSS and pulse audio only sits on top of ALSA, the whole thing is a huge pile of poo. The xfce mixers are are really good, there are stand alone mixers for pulse audio as well.

Last edited by the_file (2013-03-09 05:12:43)

aljazek

Member

Registered: 2011-04-29

Posts: 13

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

I love the new xfce4-terminal 0.6.1 with a drop-down option:

Jristz

Member

From: Sud-America

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 111

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

For me the biggest thing they need to implement is a mixer that has proper pulseaudio support.

Some simple opengl compositing would be nice too (nothing fancy, main purpose would be to remove tearing. xfwm's compositing even with the new vsync patch still has tearing at the top of the screen, very annoying when watching fullscreen video), but I understand the xfce developers probably don't have the resources for that (and hopefully wayland will remove the need to have opengl compositing just to remove tearing in the future), for now I've had a good experience using elementary os's lightweight gala compositor in xfce.

I have no tearing at all; and i am using open drivers. I really hope they won't add any opengl things since its a huge waste of effort, given how they are already limited in their capabilities as far as big complex things go. If you want openGL get compiz - it works really well with xfce. I hope ALSA becomes deprecated, as its a huge pile of junk that is preventing any serious audio development on gnu, ALSA sits on OSS and pulse audio only sits on top of ALSA, the whole thing is a huge pile of poo. The xfce mixers are are really good, there are stand alone mixers for pulse audio as well.

A fork of xfce4-volumed that relly on pulse only is available (in Arch in AUR as xfce4-volumed-pulse) in Xubuntu on 13.04 as far I read from the maintainer of it.

and pavucontrol make a good replace for xfce4-mixer using only pulse

Mir, Wayland, X11...Maybeis so early to say who can win and what features add or not but  I know that xfce4 dev steel relly on X11 during a long time more

Pd to dev: use Tabs allways on thunar and on Mousepad and change the order of boovkmarks+network+devices on thunar look a good option

Last edited by Jristz (2013-03-11 05:55:54)

---

XFCE :: Arch Linux
:: AMD E-300 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics @ 1300 MHz
:: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Wrestler [Radeon HD 6310]
:: LED with aspect ration of 16:9 in 14.0'' (1366x768) [Radeon driver]

bwat47

Member

Registered: 2011-04-11

Posts: 22

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

For me the biggest thing they need to implement is a mixer that has proper pulseaudio support.

Some simple opengl compositing would be nice too (nothing fancy, main purpose would be to remove tearing. xfwm's compositing even with the new vsync patch still has tearing at the top of the screen, very annoying when watching fullscreen video), but I understand the xfce developers probably don't have the resources for that (and hopefully wayland will remove the need to have opengl compositing just to remove tearing in the future), for now I've had a good experience using elementary os's lightweight gala compositor in xfce.

I have no tearing at all; and i am using open drivers. I really hope they won't add any opengl things since its a huge waste of effort, given how they are already limited in their capabilities as far as big complex things go. If you want openGL get compiz - it works really well with xfce. I hope ALSA becomes deprecated, as its a huge pile of junk that is preventing any serious audio development on gnu, ALSA sits on OSS and pulse audio only sits on top of ALSA, the whole thing is a huge pile of poo. The xfce mixers are are really good, there are stand alone mixers for pulse audio as well.

With recent intel hardware/open intel drivers the only way to avoid tearing is to use a compositor that page-flips (there is a "tearfree" option you can enable in the intel driver but it has very poor performance), and intel graphics is a pretty big userbase and generally provide some of the best linux support. Would be nice if we didn't have to rely on compiz for this, especially considering that compiz's future is a bit uncertain, canonical will be ditching it when they finish their mir/qt5 switch. They wouldn't have to write an opengl compositor from scratch, it could be based on something well established lightweight and simple, like gnome's mutter/clutter. Still a good bit of work and I understand that they may not have the resources or desire to do so, but adding opengl compositing would not be pointless like you make it out to be I don't really care about effects, I just want no tearing with good performance, thats all I really expect out of a window manager and I wish xfwm could provide that (there's a patch floating around to add vsync to xfwm, but it doesn't really work on intel it still tears on like the top inch of the screen, because as I mentioned above intel doesn't really support "legacy vsync" at the moment and expects page-flipping to be used to remove tearing)

I'm hoping the intel driver improves its tear free option so that its good enough to use in the near future though, that would alleviate the issue until wayland starts being adopted. I do currently use compiz or gala in xfce, but they can be a bit buggy at times with xfce.

Last edited by bwat47 (2013-03-15 17:20:33)

the_file

Member

Registered: 2013-02-17

Posts: 36

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

I love the new xfce4-terminal 0.6.1 with a drop-down option:
http://shrani.si/t/1j/eI/4KcP6pc5/1/screenshot-03082013-0334.jpg

Were is the drop down thing?.

With recent intel hardware/open intel drivers the only way to avoid tearing is to use a compositor that page-flips (there is a "tearfree" option you can enable in the intel driver but it has very poor performance), and intel graphics is a pretty big userbase and generally provide some of the best linux support. Would be nice if we didn't have to rely on compiz for this, especially considering that compiz's future is a bit uncertain, canonical will be ditching it when they finish their mir/qt5 switch. They wouldn't have to write an opengl compositor from scratch, it could be based on something well established lightweight and simple, like gnome's mutter/clutter. Still a good bit of work and I understand that they may not have the resources or desire to do so, but adding opengl compositing would not be pointless like you make it out to be I don't really care about effects, I just want no tearing with good performance, thats all I really expect out of a window manager and I wish xfwm could provide that (there's a patch floating around to add vsync to xfwm, but it doesn't really work on intel it still tears on like the top inch of the screen, because as I mentioned above intel doesn't really support "legacy vsync" at the moment and expects page-flipping to be used to remove tearing)

I'm hoping the intel driver improves its tear free option so that its good enough to use in the near future though, that would alleviate the issue until wayland starts being adopted. I do currently use compiz or gala in xfce, but they can be a bit buggy at times with xfce.

I use open ati drivers and I have NO tearing when I used composition on xfwm4. Its obvious that amd gpus are way better than any intel gpu. Just because conocial will discontinue using a peice of software doesen't make that software obsolete like you are insisting, you can run compiz just fine without conocial using it.

Last edited by the_file (2013-03-15 22:23:11)

MountainDewManiac

Member

From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

I really appreciate the whole effort of xfce and its only getting better, but 2 critical things really are missing.

1. A built in method for changing the applications menu via a gui.
2. A real xrandr solution.

1. I have not, as of yet, felt the need to edit my menu. Although I did install "mintMenu 5.3.8" in order to have a second "menu" on my bottom bar (I moved the stock one to the top of my screen, removed the window buttons gizmo, added a second (bottom) bar, and placed the window buttons on it both because I like my desktop that way and because I have quite a bit of things on the top one) that I could set up as a 3 x 5 block of oft-used apps.

2. I don't even know what xrandr is. Some kind of random number generator... that runs in X?

So I do not see how Xfce really needs to implement those two things when not everyone feels the need for - or even understands - them. Since you do seem to want them, I hope that they are added - because I would hope that if I wanted a feature that was missing, that it would eventually be added. However...

Respectfully, it has been my experience that when one wishes to see something added to an app/DE/OS/anything that is created/maintained by a small group of people that are probably both overworked and doing what they do for free, telling them that they **REALLY** need to add it is generally the surest way to ensure that they do not add it. I'm just saying.

Regards,
MDM

---

Mountain Dew Maniac

How to Ask for Help <=== Click on this link

aljazek

Member

Registered: 2011-04-29

Posts: 13

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

I love the new xfce4-terminal 0.6.1 with a drop-down option:
http://shrani.si/t/1j/eI/4KcP6pc5/1/screenshot-03082013-0334.jpg

Were is the drop down thing?.

Read Me

the_file

Member

Registered: 2013-02-17

Posts: 36

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

I love the new xfce4-terminal 0.6.1 with a drop-down option:
http://shrani.si/t/1j/eI/4KcP6pc5/1/screenshot-03082013-0334.jpg

Were is the drop down thing?.

Read Me

I wana try it, looks very usefull, hopefully they will ship those features with the next revision, however it seems like its seriously delayed.

I really appreciate the whole effort of xfce and its only getting better, but 2 critical things really are missing.

1. A built in method for changing the applications menu via a gui.
2. A real xrandr solution.

1. I have not, as of yet, felt the need to edit my menu. Although I did install "mintMenu 5.3.8" in order to have a second "menu" on my bottom bar (I moved the stock one to the top of my screen, removed the window buttons gizmo, added a second (bottom) bar, and placed the window buttons on it both because I like my desktop that way and because I have quite a bit of things on the top one) that I could set up as a 3 x 5 block of oft-used apps.

2. I don't even know what xrandr is. Some kind of random number generator... that runs in X?

So I do not see how Xfce really needs to implement those two things when not everyone feels the need for - or even understands - them. Since you do seem to want them, I hope that they are added - because I would hope that if I wanted a feature that was missing, that it would eventually be added. However...

Respectfully, it has been my experience that when one wishes to see something added to an app/DE/OS/anything that is created/maintained by a small group of people that are probably both overworked and doing what they do for free, telling them that they **REALLY** need to add it is generally the surest way to ensure that they do not add it. I'm just saying.

Regards,
MDM

I cannot believe you did not edit menu items in "mint menu", most people who use xfce will have a high probability of using xfces' app menu NOT a 3rd party menu. That mentioned, I bet if "mint menu" didn't allow for modifying its items, you WOULD want such a feature.

As far as xrandr, many people use it and probably don't even know what it is, and it IS a needed thing, since xfces' method of duping and exdending screens is like that of windows, meaning its no good.

This tool: http://christian.amsuess.com/tools/arandr/ is by far the easiest and most effective tool for working with multi-monitor setups available on gnu. There is simply no other GUI tool that comes close to its ability to fine tune the displays the way that arandr can.

At least you commented with a constructive and well articulated post.

Last edited by the_file (2013-03-25 01:39:41)

MountainDewManiac

Member

From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

Were is the drop down thing?.

Read Me

I wana try it, looks very usefull, hopefully they will ship those features with the next revision, however it seems like its seriously delayed.

Next revision? It's already in the current (0.6.1) version. You just have to launch it with --dropdown as per the Web UPD8 article that the above person linked to. I followed the directions and created a keyboard shortcut (in Keyboard, in the Application Shortcuts tab) for it, using the following as the command:

xfce4-terminal --drop-down

Here is the preferences tab for it (within the terminal app):

I cannot believe you did not edit menu items in "mint menu", most people who use xfce will have a high probability of using xfces' app menu NOT a 3rd party menu. That mentioned, I bet if "mint menu" didn't allow for modifying its items, you WOULD want such a feature.

Believe it, lol, I have not done any editing. Unless changing some of the icons counts, I think they might have done so when I played around with Xfce's themes settings. But other than that... Why would I want to edit it? To change the displayed names of the apps? Or those neat descriptive bits of text that pop up when I hover my mouse over one of the entries to tell me what the app actually is/does? (I did change the gear-looking icon for the menu to the large Mint icon.)

As for the 3rd-party menu (I guess you mean that Xfce didn't write it, that Mint - or MATE? - did?), well, I've got all kinds of things on my system that weren't written by Xfce, lol. Games, desktop backgrounds, Firefox, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinium. I don't see that it really matters who wrote it. It's actually called (just checked the "About" for it) "mintMenu 5.3.8" and all I use it for is its "Favorites," I've got three choices across the first line that are Internet things (Firefox, Thunderbird, and Pidgin), then a separator line below that, then six media apps (my media player, FBReader (nice eBook app), Hulu Desktop, a Netflix app for when my friend visits (my friend has an account with them) and wants to watch a movie, Minitube (standalone Youtube gizmo), and Radio Tray, which is a nice streaming radio app that sits in the panel area, but uses around 20megs of ram so I don't have it set to automatically run at startup). And then another separator below that and six more apps below that (calculator, AisleRiot solitaire, PokerTH (Texas Hold'em), etc. So - in the way that I use it - it's not really a full menu, just a big, easy to see (I have poor vision) place that I can run some apps that I haven't bothered to set up keyboard commands for. Other than that, I generally use the "menu" menu. And, well, I thought that part of the appeal of linux (in general) was the ability to use ifferent bits of this and that without stepping on any big corporations' toes, so the 3rd-party aspect of the thing does not bother me, as long as it works for what I wish to use it for (and it does do that).

Please don't misunderstand me, I wasn't inferring that you shouldn't be allowed to edit your menus. I just couldn't figure out why you wanted to. AfaIK, when I install something, it appears in the menu, and when I remove something, it goes away. <SHRUGS> But I support your right to set up your system the way that you wish to and, since I tend to like doing things in the GUI more often than not (although I have been using the terminal a bit, here and there, recently), I can understand your wish to have a GUI app to do it, too.

I suppose that it'll be like most things: If the developers judge that there is sufficient interest to warrant the expenditure of time and effort (not sure how much of each such a thing would involve, honestly) that it would take to write such an app - and if they do have that time, of course, since they likely all have full-time jobs and families and do this kind of thing for free - then they will probably end up creating one, eventually. Or, perhaps someone not directly related to the Xfce project who has the necessary skills (and, again, time) will become interested enough to create one and people will be able to install it manually (and, who knows, if that happens, the Xfce team might examine it and decide that it is both useful enough and of decent enough quality to add to the official Xfce packages, IDK).

As far as xrandr, many people use it and probably don't even know what it is, and it IS a needed thing, since xfces' method of duping and exdending screens is like that of windows, meaning its no good.

Oh, that explains why I hadn't heard of the thing - I do not have multiple computers on either my laptop, desktop, or my loaner laptop. But, yes, a lot of people do and I'm sure they want their setups to work well. I never really thought about it before, but I guess such a thing would have to be handled at the DE - if not the basic system - level and not through a simple app that could be installed.

BtW, as I mentioned, I do not have multiple monitors, so I do not have experience with the software that makes them work. But I once lived beside a "pilot nut" who, when he wasn't working, sleeping, or actually up in the air could be found, more often than not, sitting at the flight simulator setup that he'd put together. He had three large monitors and the few times I saw him "playing" (he might take offense if he knew I used that word, lol), they looked like they were very well coordinated. Then again, he admitted that he had several thousand dollars (IIRC) in just the controls and the like, even had radio panels, switches, rudders - said a lot of it was made by the same companies that supplied the kinds of airplane and helicopter simulators that you might find on airbases or in the possession of the large airline corporations, the kind you have to climb into... So I suppose that his setup was nothing to judge the average one by. I suspect it would have been a Microsoft OS, though, because it was some years ago. (Or possibly unix, who knows?)

Best of luck on your quest,
MDM

---

Mountain Dew Maniac

How to Ask for Help <=== Click on this link

the_file

Member

Registered: 2013-02-17

Posts: 36

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

Read Me

I wana try it, looks very usefull, hopefully they will ship those features with the next revision, however it seems like its seriously delayed.

Next revision? It's already in the current (0.6.1) version. You just have to launch it with --dropdown as per the Web UPD8 article that the above person linked to. I followed the directions and created a keyboard shortcut (in Keyboard, in the Application Shortcuts tab) for it, using the following as the command:

xfce4-terminal --drop-down

By next revision I meant the next revision of xfce. Anyhow it is unstable in my distro, I installed it anyways. Just because its released from xfce devs doesn't mean its stable in the distros.

I can't figure out how to restore focus to it via a keyboard shortcut.

BtW, as I mentioned, I do not have multiple monitors, so I do not have experience with the software that makes them work. But I once lived beside a "pilot nut" who, when he wasn't working, sleeping, or actually up in the air could be found, more often than not, sitting at the flight simulator setup that he'd put together. He had three large monitors and the few times I saw him "playing" (he might take offense if he knew I used that word, lol), they looked like they were very well coordinated. Then again, he admitted that he had several thousand dollars (IIRC) in just the controls and the like, even had radio panels, switches, rudders - said a lot of it was made by the same companies that supplied the kinds of airplane and helicopter simulators that you might find on airbases or in the possession of the large airline corporations, the kind you have to climb into... So I suppose that his setup was nothing to judge the average one by. I suspect it would have been a Microsoft OS, though, because it was some years ago. (Or possibly unix, who knows?)

Best of luck on your quest,
MDM

Yes exactly, that setup is an abnormal one, it is not the usual testcase people have on gnu...

But I would like to see pictures of his setup and the hardware.

Believe it, lol, I have not done any editing. Unless changing some of the icons counts, I think they might have done so when I played around with Xfce's themes settings. But other than that... Why would I want to edit it? To change the displayed names of the apps? Or those neat descriptive bits of text that pop up when I hover my mouse over one of the entries to tell me what the app actually is/does? (I did change the gear-looking icon for the menu to the large Mint icon.)

So you DID edit the menu items, or the items in the menu....

I suppose that it'll be like most things: If the developers judge that there is sufficient interest to warrant the expenditure of time and effort (not sure how much of each such a thing would involve, honestly) that it would take to write such an app - and if they do have that time, of course, since they likely all have full-time jobs and families and do this kind of thing for free - then they will probably end up creating one, eventually. Or, perhaps someone not directly related to the Xfce project who has the necessary skills (and, again, time) will become interested enough to create one and people will be able to install it manually (and, who knows, if that happens, the Xfce team might examine it and decide that it is both useful enough and of decent enough quality to add to the official Xfce packages, IDK).

Ideally devs listen to users and cater what they can.

Last edited by the_file (2013-03-26 03:23:06)

MountainDewManiac

Member

From: Where Mr. Bankruptcy is Prez

Registered: 2013-03-24

Posts: 1,115

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

But I would like to see pictures of his setup and the hardware.

Moved away some years ago; then I moved away.

Believe it, lol, I have not done any editing. Unless changing some of the icons counts, I think they might have done so when I played around with Xfce's themes settings. But other than that... Why would I want to edit it? To change the displayed names of the apps? Or those neat descriptive bits of text that pop up when I hover my mouse over one of the entries to tell me what the app actually is/does? (I did change the gear-looking icon for the menu to the large Mint icon.)

So you DID edit the menu items, or the items in the menu....

Well, I changed the icon that displays on my top Xfce panel bar that shows where the menu is - the thing you click on to bring the menu up when you have the mouse in your hand and don't feel like pressing the Microsoft-Windows-Button-with-a-Penguin-Sticker-On-It (or Alt-F1, if you haven't changed the shortcut). I suppose that might be considered to be editing the menu; I was thinking you meant editing the entries in the menu (I haven't done that). BtW, I did open the menu file in a text editor and, while the text itself looks simple, all those spaces (tabs?) preceding the text, I don't understand that at all but assume it's necessary or they wouldn't have messed up what would otherwise have been a simple text list. So I can now well understand why, if a person wanted to edit the thing, they would wish to have a GUI app.

Regards,
MDM

---

Mountain Dew Maniac

How to Ask for Help <=== Click on this link

bwat47

Member

Registered: 2011-04-11

Posts: 22

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

I love the new xfce4-terminal 0.6.1 with a drop-down option:
http://shrani.si/t/1j/eI/4KcP6pc5/1/screenshot-03082013-0334.jpg

Were is the drop down thing?.

With recent intel hardware/open intel drivers the only way to avoid tearing is to use a compositor that page-flips (there is a "tearfree" option you can enable in the intel driver but it has very poor performance), and intel graphics is a pretty big userbase and generally provide some of the best linux support. Would be nice if we didn't have to rely on compiz for this, especially considering that compiz's future is a bit uncertain, canonical will be ditching it when they finish their mir/qt5 switch. They wouldn't have to write an opengl compositor from scratch, it could be based on something well established lightweight and simple, like gnome's mutter/clutter. Still a good bit of work and I understand that they may not have the resources or desire to do so, but adding opengl compositing would not be pointless like you make it out to be I don't really care about effects, I just want no tearing with good performance, thats all I really expect out of a window manager and I wish xfwm could provide that (there's a patch floating around to add vsync to xfwm, but it doesn't really work on intel it still tears on like the top inch of the screen, because as I mentioned above intel doesn't really support "legacy vsync" at the moment and expects page-flipping to be used to remove tearing)

I'm hoping the intel driver improves its tear free option so that its good enough to use in the near future though, that would alleviate the issue until wayland starts being adopted. I do currently use compiz or gala in xfce, but they can be a bit buggy at times with xfce.

I use open ati drivers and I have NO tearing when I used composition on xfwm4. Its obvious that amd gpus are way better than any intel gpu. Just because conocial will discontinue using a peice of software doesen't make that software obsolete like you are insisting, you can run compiz just fine without conocial using it.

The tearing issue is not because intel has "bad gpu's". Its because of the way the hardware/drivers work. I've heard that recent nvidia drivers have the same problem (require page-flipping for tear-free output). The problem is with xrender, its ancient and really has no way to provide proper tear-free output.

Luckily I've found a very nice solution recently: https://github.com/chjj/compton

very simple compositor that has an opengl backend that can properly vsync on intel, and that does not need to be intrusive and replace the window manager like compiz. So I can now use XFWM and have proper tear-free output The only problem I've had so far is certain apps have problems with the way compton draws shadows so I had to exclude them in the compton config (synapse, firefox, conky, xfce4-notifyd, xfce4-power-manager)

Last edited by bwat47 (2013-04-30 13:03:45)

the_file

Member

Registered: 2013-02-17

Posts: 36

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

I love the new xfce4-terminal 0.6.1 with a drop-down option:
http://shrani.si/t/1j/eI/4KcP6pc5/1/screenshot-03082013-0334.jpg

Were is the drop down thing?.

With recent intel hardware/open intel drivers the only way to avoid tearing is to use a compositor that page-flips (there is a "tearfree" option you can enable in the intel driver but it has very poor performance), and intel graphics is a pretty big userbase and generally provide some of the best linux support. Would be nice if we didn't have to rely on compiz for this, especially considering that compiz's future is a bit uncertain, canonical will be ditching it when they finish their mir/qt5 switch. They wouldn't have to write an opengl compositor from scratch, it could be based on something well established lightweight and simple, like gnome's mutter/clutter. Still a good bit of work and I understand that they may not have the resources or desire to do so, but adding opengl compositing would not be pointless like you make it out to be I don't really care about effects, I just want no tearing with good performance, thats all I really expect out of a window manager and I wish xfwm could provide that (there's a patch floating around to add vsync to xfwm, but it doesn't really work on intel it still tears on like the top inch of the screen, because as I mentioned above intel doesn't really support "legacy vsync" at the moment and expects page-flipping to be used to remove tearing)

I'm hoping the intel driver improves its tear free option so that its good enough to use in the near future though, that would alleviate the issue until wayland starts being adopted. I do currently use compiz or gala in xfce, but they can be a bit buggy at times with xfce.

I use open ati drivers and I have NO tearing when I used composition on xfwm4. Its obvious that amd gpus are way better than any intel gpu. Just because conocial will discontinue using a peice of software doesen't make that software obsolete like you are insisting, you can run compiz just fine without conocial using it.

The tearing issue is not because intel has "bad gpu's". Its because of the way the hardware/drivers work. I've heard that recent nvidia drivers have the same problem (require page-flipping for tear-free output). The problem is with xrender, its ancient and really has no way to provide proper tear-free output.

Luckily I've found a very nice solution recently: https://github.com/chjj/compton

very simple compositor that has an opengl backend that can properly vsync on intel, and that does not need to be intrusive and replace the window manager like compiz. So I can now use XFWM and have proper tear-free output The only problem I've had so far is certain apps have problems with the way compton draws shadows so I had to exclude them in the compton config (synapse, firefox, conky, xfce4-notifyd, xfce4-power-manager)

Drivers do make the major difference but the hardware that powers things do to. Anyhow compiz is just a very good and usefull window manager; which I hope will be completely ported to wayland. Also I hope xfce will be ported to run on top of wayland natively.

bwat47

Member

Registered: 2011-04-11

Posts: 22

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

Were is the drop down thing?.

I use open ati drivers and I have NO tearing when I used composition on xfwm4. Its obvious that amd gpus are way better than any intel gpu. Just because conocial will discontinue using a peice of software doesen't make that software obsolete like you are insisting, you can run compiz just fine without conocial using it.

The tearing issue is not because intel has "bad gpu's". Its because of the way the hardware/drivers work. I've heard that recent nvidia drivers have the same problem (require page-flipping for tear-free output). The problem is with xrender, its ancient and really has no way to provide proper tear-free output.

Luckily I've found a very nice solution recently: https://github.com/chjj/compton

very simple compositor that has an opengl backend that can properly vsync on intel, and that does not need to be intrusive and replace the window manager like compiz. So I can now use XFWM and have proper tear-free output The only problem I've had so far is certain apps have problems with the way compton draws shadows so I had to exclude them in the compton config (synapse, firefox, conky, xfce4-notifyd, xfce4-power-manager)

Drivers do make the major difference but the hardware that powers things do to. Anyhow compiz is just a very good and usefull window manager; which I hope will be completely ported to wayland. Also I hope xfce will be ported to run on top of wayland natively.

In the case of intel its both the hardware and the drivers. Recent intel hardware is designed with a compositor in mind, the reason for this is power-saving. I wouldn't be suprised if this becomes the trend for other graphics hardware too, proper compositing is the future, even for a lightweight environment: here is a quote from an intel devleoper:

First note that all Intel hardware up to SandyBridge has functional vsync support with no greater cost than stalling the GPU until the blit can proceed.

The problem is that with the agressive powersaving of SandyBridge and the greater decoupling between the display engine and the GPU, the ability to delay rendering until a particular scanline had passed was assumed to be a legacy feature and the GPU commands to do so were removed. By presuming that all updates would then be through a compositor using pageflipping (i.e. their primary target, Windows Vista/7/8), they were then able to make further power savings. If you use an OpenGL (really DRI2) compositor that only pageflips (i.e. doesn't try to take "advantage" of MESA_copy_sub_buffer), you will not see any tearing, suffer very little jitter, and maximise the power savings of the GPU.

The TearFree option (still in its infancy, and really only a proof-of-principle at this stage) is to make sure that even a bare X only ever pageflips. This is primarily because future hardware will have even more widespread aggressive power savings that assume a compositor, and worst case scenario, the display engine will only be functional with a pageflipping compositor.

Last edited by bwat47 (2013-05-07 18:57:33)

the_file

Member

Registered: 2013-02-17

Posts: 36

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

The tearing issue is not because intel has "bad gpu's". Its because of the way the hardware/drivers work. I've heard that recent nvidia drivers have the same problem (require page-flipping for tear-free output). The problem is with xrender, its ancient and really has no way to provide proper tear-free output.

Luckily I've found a very nice solution recently: https://github.com/chjj/compton

very simple compositor that has an opengl backend that can properly vsync on intel, and that does not need to be intrusive and replace the window manager like compiz. So I can now use XFWM and have proper tear-free output The only problem I've had so far is certain apps have problems with the way compton draws shadows so I had to exclude them in the compton config (synapse, firefox, conky, xfce4-notifyd, xfce4-power-manager)

Drivers do make the major difference but the hardware that powers things do to. Anyhow compiz is just a very good and usefull window manager; which I hope will be completely ported to wayland. Also I hope xfce will be ported to run on top of wayland natively.

In the case of intel its both the hardware and the drivers. Recent intel hardware is designed with a compositor in mind, the reason for this is power-saving. I wouldn't be suprised if this becomes the trend for other graphics hardware too, proper compositing is the future, even for a lightweight environment: here is a quote from an intel devleoper:

First note that all Intel hardware up to SandyBridge has functional vsync support with no greater cost than stalling the GPU until the blit can proceed.

The problem is that with the agressive powersaving of SandyBridge and the greater decoupling between the display engine and the GPU, the ability to delay rendering until a particular scanline had passed was assumed to be a legacy feature and the GPU commands to do so were removed. By presuming that all updates would then be through a compositor using pageflipping (i.e. their primary target, Windows Vista/7/8), they were then able to make further power savings. If you use an OpenGL (really DRI2) compositor that only pageflips (i.e. doesn't try to take "advantage" of MESA_copy_sub_buffer), you will not see any tearing, suffer very little jitter, and maximise the power savings of the GPU.

The TearFree option (still in its infancy, and really only a proof-of-principle at this stage) is to make sure that even a bare X only ever pageflips. This is primarily because future hardware will have even more widespread aggressive power savings that assume a compositor, and worst case scenario, the display engine will only be functional with a pageflipping compositor.

Seems like Intel is doing more to save power than trying to power the apps its supposed to run.

bwat47

Member

Registered: 2011-04-11

Posts: 22

Re: The 2 things xfce **REALLY** needs to impliment.

Drivers do make the major difference but the hardware that powers things do to. Anyhow compiz is just a very good and usefull window manager; which I hope will be completely ported to wayland. Also I hope xfce will be ported to run on top of wayland natively.

In the case of intel its both the hardware and the drivers. Recent intel hardware is designed with a compositor in mind, the reason for this is power-saving. I wouldn't be suprised if this becomes the trend for other graphics hardware too, proper compositing is the future, even for a lightweight environment: here is a quote from an intel devleoper:

First note that all Intel hardware up to SandyBridge has functional vsync support with no greater cost than stalling the GPU until the blit can proceed.

The problem is that with the agressive powersaving of SandyBridge and the greater decoupling between the display engine and the GPU, the ability to delay rendering until a particular scanline had passed was assumed to be a legacy feature and the GPU commands to do so were removed. By presuming that all updates would then be through a compositor using pageflipping (i.e. their primary target, Windows Vista/7/8), they were then able to make further power savings. If you use an OpenGL (really DRI2) compositor that only pageflips (i.e. doesn't try to take "advantage" of MESA_copy_sub_buffer), you will not see any tearing, suffer very little jitter, and maximise the power savings of the GPU.

The TearFree option (still in its infancy, and really only a proof-of-principle at this stage) is to make sure that even a bare X only ever pageflips. This is primarily because future hardware will have even more widespread aggressive power savings that assume a compositor, and worst case scenario, the display engine will only be functional with a pageflipping compositor.

Seems like Intel is doing more to save power than trying to power the apps its supposed to run.

Intel GPU's are designed to be power efficient to be used in laptops and such.

Its also worth noting that its not just hardware thats being designed with compositing in mind, but software too: X's sucessor, wayland, is designed from the ground up with composting in mind.

Last edited by bwat47 (2013-05-08 22:34:38)